Why Feast is Good For You - Even If You Don’t Go

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Caryn Brooks, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Mike Thelin, one of the founders of Feast. Photo by Caryn Brooks

This Thursday, Sept. 18, Feast Portland kicks off its third year celebrating the region’s bounty with a swirl of grand tastings, intimate dinners, before-parties, after-parties, and championship-level business card exchanges.

Pioneer Courthouse Square transforms from Portland’s living room to Portland’s party den. A rush of food and drink industry insiders will hit town and a slew of chefs you may have seen on TV will join the crew at local restaurant kitchens.

And, even if you don’t go to one event (they do tend to sell out quickly), Feast has the capacity to benefit you and it may already have.

While smartly conceived and expertly programmed festivals such as Feast may at first glance seem like mere playgrounds for the overfed and over-walleted, that’s just the veneer.

When a festival like Feast takes root, it has the potential to influence the local economy in big and small ways.

Tourism

For sure, there’s the tourism aspect and its influence on our tax base.tourism brought in $95.7 million in local tax revenue in 2013, according to Travel Portland.

Not bad.

But the economic engineering I’m thinking about is the sort that makes Feast co-founder Mike Thelin’s voice rise a few octaves with excitement.

“When we talk about food in Portland, we're really good at talking about it from the pop culture side. We're really good at talking about it from the what's new, what's hot,” Thelin says. “But from the pure economic impact side, it's really, really big.

"This is a conversation that is starting to happen a lot, but it's important that we think about this as well, because it's creating all sorts of jobs at many, many levels.”

Growing local industry

Collaborations and connections formed at a festival such as Feast can help grow local industry. Thelin talks about throwing Oregon’s pear consortium together with Widmer to make a brew called Krystal Pear that’s been picked up by Whole Foods.

The rising tide theory is at play. If your neighbor is a graphic designer who makes labels for Widmer, she benefits. If your cousin imports boxes used in Widmer’s shipping, he benefits. And with increased commerce comes an increased tax base.

Of course, these factors have their own factors.

Business Portland economist Michael Meyers explains, “The magnitude of those impacts really depends on the increased revenue generated, what those increased revenues mean in terms of jobs created at the company directly impacted, the wages of jobs at the company directly impacted, and the amount of that company's supply chain that is based in the region.”

The bottom line, though, as Thelin puts it: “When you're helping to bring together the industry, business happens.”

A great food destination

Of course, bringing the industry together only sparks business if the product is good, and it’s in this arena that Thelin pulls on the gloves to make the case (although I’m already sold).

“When you look at the whole culinary landscape and the whole festival landscape, everything has a festival (Nashville has a festival the same weekend as ours now). There's the whole ‘this city is the hot new thing and that city is the hot new thing’,” he says. “But when all is said and done, if all this press goes away and all the TV interest goes away, the most important thing to remember is that what makes Oregon and Portland great food destinations has everything to do with Oregon and Portland.

"It has everything to do with the growing season and the hops and the grapes and all the fruit and the vegetables and the proximity to the sea.”

Thelin takes on all comers: “Nashville doesn't have that. Austin is in a drought every year: it doesn't have that. So all these cities that we're constantly compared to, it's just horseshit.

"We have so much more than almost any city in the entire country when it comes to agricultural bounty and wealth," Thelin continues. "It’s nice to have an event like Feast to experience it, but at the end of the day, people who live in Portland and Oregon and the Northwest, it's like they live in a food festival every day.

"If we don't see you at the festival, we’ll see you at the farmer's market.”

Hopefully all those unlucky saps who don’t get to live here or even visit can still buy a piece of our awesomeness at their local store.

If Feast has anything to do with it, they will.

Find out more about Feast Portland and buy tickets to events not already sold out here.

Caryn Brooks is a former Associated Press and Time Magazine staffer who now lives in Portland. You can follow her on twitter at: @carynbrooks

Homepage photo credit: iStock