Beer Festival Professional

The Second Street Festival, held at The Piazza in Northern Liberties, might have been the block party of the summer. All of 2nd St. was closed off to traffic to make way for the event. There were vendors littering both sides of the street for as far as they eye could see. Smells of slow cooked meat filled the air, while cold beer filled the cups. There were bands playing at two different stages, and I get to call this work.
The second half of my position with DrinkPhilly.com is much different than the time I spend writing in the basement of a coffee shop. We’re out in the world traveling from A.C. to D.C. working at events sponsored by breweries and the like. We stand at our table amidst all the other vendors and try to accumulate as many e-mails for our weekly newsletter as we can.
We have gone about this process from a variety of angles. We give away bottle openers, play ring toss to give away shirts and sunglasses, and we have people guess how many bottle caps there are in a jar to potentially win a gift basket. At these events, we get to sample the free beer in our little 4 oz. tasters, but talking to the breweries in attendance is more beneficial than getting us loosened up.
By informing these companies of what our organization actually does, we begin to foster relationships with the marketing teams that could potentially turn into ad sales. Personally, I got the wheels in motion that made Dock St. Brewing one of our closest affiliates. Events like these have been a major factor in expanding our website as far as we have in the past five years.