by Community Hospice
Share
Remembering the inaugural Riverside Craft Beer Festival’s unexpected success
BY MICHELE LEIVAS
Resident Community News
When the Rotary Club of Riverside hosted its inaugural Riverside Craft Beer Festival in 2014, rotarian and event co-chair Chris Croft never imagined it would be as successful as it was.
He never imagined, for example, that all the beer distributors would run out of beer, thus forcing the club to stop selling tickets. He also never imagined he’d have to stand guard beside his car while fellow rotarian Jeff Thompson was quite literally stuffing cash into the center console of his Expedition from ticket sales.
“We weren’t expecting the turnout we got,” he said. “It was more than anything we expected.”
Between event sponsorships and the day’s ticket sales — mainly in cash but some via credit card — the Rotary Club netted approximately “$75,000 after expenses,” Croft said. This was an astronomical increase from the profits raised from the golf tournaments the club had hosted years prior.
“At the time we were happy to make $20,000 at our golf tournament,” he said.
Croft organized that first festival with Ben Davis, rotarian and founder of Jacksonville brewery Intuition Ale Works. In the years since, the Riverside Craft Beer Festival has evolved to accommodate the growing crowd the Rotary Club has come to expect at this annual event, which has garnered the attention from breweries, distributors and visitors from across the country. Some things, however, have not changed, including the reason the club hosts the festival in the first place.
Proceeds from the beer festival are reserved for charity, Croft explained. Some of the funds raised are earmarked for the club’s foundation to support its own charitable projects, but the bulk of the money is donated to the Community Hospice and Palliative Care’s Community PedsCare program.
“Our club is always focused on helping children so it’s worked out great,” he added. “…We were excited to be able to help [the Community PedsCare program] as much as we have.”
“Over the past seven years, the Riverside
Rotary Foundation has raised over $450,000 for the Community PēdsCare® program through the Riverside Craft Beer Festival,” wrote The Community Hospice and Palliative Care Foundation Executive Director Annie Tuttle in an e-mail. “The impact this has had on Community Hospice & Palliative Care® is quantifiable- from this partnership, 19,142 days of care have been provided to children with life-limiting conditions. Community PēdsCare® is a nationally recognized pediatric program that provides palliative and hospice services to children (prenatal to age 21) without a financial burden to families.”
With the recent growth Jacksonville has seen and the growth it’s projected to see in the coming years, Rotary Club of Riverside Incoming President Tim Gaskin said the Riverside Craft Beer Festival provides an opportunity to showcase the Jacksonville craft beer and food scenes to both new visitors and residents.
“Twenty years ago, we may have seen 400 or 500 people,” he said. “Now we’ll see 1,000. It makes a tremendous difference and it does give all these new residents an opportunity to see what Jacksonville’s all about. There’s plenty of parking. It’s easy to get to. It’s just an all-around good event for people to visit and partake in a lot of the area’s breweries all in one place.”
The festival is free and open to the public, although a wristband is required to sample the beers. The ninth annual Riverside Craft Beer Festival will be held on Sunday, Feb. 26 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Riverside Arts Market. Details, including ticket purchases, can be found at www. riversidecraftbeerfestival.com.
