By all accounts, the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival is a runaway success.
Now twelve years running, originally starting as a humble one day celebration on the Florida International University Campus, the SBWFF has morphed into a four-day annual beachfront financial juggernaut, attracting big dollar sponsors, 60,000+ festival attendees and TV chefs clamoring to fortify their brands and touch their rabid fans.
Every household name celebrity chef was in attendance Bobby Flay, Giada De Laurentiis, Masaharu Morimoto, Rachael Ray, Anthony Bourdain, Emeril Lagasse, Geoffrey Zakarian, and countless more conducted cooking demonstrations, hosted late night parties, hocked books and partied like rock stars.
Even Guy Fieri, seeming nonplussed by the recent parody menu skewering his NY flagship restaurant, made the rounds.
While the festival itself is non-profit, with all proceeds benefitting Florida International University, attending the festival can be quite pricey.
Want to attend the event "Tribute Dinner Honoring Nobu Matsuhisa and Christophe Navarre with Mistress of Ceremonies Martha Steward Presented by Bank of America part of the New York Times Dinner Series"? That event alone is $500pp and there are up to twenty events per day, scattered across hotels, restaurants and tents around Miami Beach.
Join us on a peek inside the PR and financial machinations of America’s sexiest food fest.
First things first … time to pick up the Media Passes to the festival, so off to Suite #437 at The Loews Hotel, the spectacular beachfront convention resort where the South Beach Food & Wine Festival’s PR team was based, and where many of the star chefs stayed during the festival.
The festival entrance to the Whole Foods-sponsored Grand Tasting Village lays squarely on the doorstep of America’s Riviera, 13th Street & Ocean Drive in South Beach. Fans start lining up at 10:30 am in the hot Miami morning sun.
Getting into the Grand Tasting Village takes about 20 minutes, with thousands of people snaking around stanchions until they reach Check In, where they receive a Tasting Glass (more on that later), and a Buick-emblazoned Gift Bag containing a wackadoodle array of Diet Pepsi, Badia steak seasoning and olive oil, Ziggy Marley roasted hemp seeds, a Kingsford can coozie, Cape Cod potato chips and Goya guava nectar.
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