By Jonathan LaRowe SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC NEWS) – The Taste of Syracuse festival will take place this Friday and Saturday in downtown Syracuse. The event will start Friday morning and will last all day Friday and Saturday and end Saturday night.
On Wednesday, there were dozens of workers busy preparing for the event in Clinton Square. The workers were involved in setting up a multitude of tents and building multiple stages.
The event is free to attend. There will be three different stages that will host a number of different live musical acts. The headliner of the festival is Sugar Ray. The band will perform on Saturday night.
One of the primary draws of the festival is the large menu of different sampling options. More than 80 vendors will be in attendance and each vendor is required to provide at least one item for sampling. The item will be a small item off the menu that can be purchased for one dollar.
Brittney Christie, the event sales director for the festival, said that the sampling menu is one of the primary draws of the festival.
“I think people love all of the different options that the sampling menu provides,” Christie said. “It is definitely the thing I hear people mention the most about what they love about the festival.”
Christie said that many people want to compare the festival to the New York State Fair because of the wide array of food and music options, but she said there is one major difference.
“The state fair is bringing in massive amounts of people but they’re not from here so those people probably aren’t going to come back and buy your product they probably aren’t going to come back to your restaurant,” Christie said. “The people that attend this event more than likely are going to come back.”
Last year’s festival brought in more than 200,000 people over the course of the two days. Christie said she hopes that, weather permitting, there will be even more this year.
