The Taste of Whitewater was held on Saturday September 15, 2007 at Cravath Lakefront Park in downtown Whitewater. Sponsored planned and coordinated by Downtown Whitewater, Inc., UW-Whitewater, the Royal Purple campus newspaper and the City of Whitewater, this highly successful event was created as a way of introducing new and returning students to downtown Whitewater, as well as a way of drawing visitors from the local area and surrounding communities.


Goals The Taste of Whitewater (the Taste) accomplished a number of goals in addition to the above.

1) To draw students and visitors to the downtown. Having many fast food franchises, the only grocery store and Wal-Mart all on the west end of town, bringing students downtown is a real challenge.
2) To form a more solid working relationship between the Campus and Community, specifically Downtown Whitewater, Inc.
3) To give restaurants and merchants a way to introduce themselves to students, faculty and staff in addition to residents and visitors.
4) To better integrate local residents and students through participation and cooperation. This can be challenging in any college town.
5) To create a fun, exciting event that college students as well as families could enjoy.

Entertainment We tried to plan a big variety of entertainment and fun so as to appeal to each of our target groups.

Ten local restaurants set up side by side under one big tent and served their best food. Offerings ranged from steak and shrimp to polish sausage from our new meat market to ice cream, subs, soups, burgers, pizza, and Chicago hot dogs to gourmet coffee and lattes.

The beer tent offered a variety of Wisconsin beers including our own local Randy’s Fun Hunters Brewery, New Glarus Brewing, Capitol City Brewery and Leininkugel’s. In keeping with the theme of a local taste, we stayed away from the big national brands.

The music stage featured two Wisconsin acts, Pat McCurdy and from the Madison area, The Mighty Short Bus. These acts were a great draw for the students.

Fred Scheer’s Lumberjack Show from Hayward, WI was the main draw for families and students alike. They did three shows through out the day and each one was attended by several hundreds of spectators.

Jo Don Farms provided an animal show featuring exotic animals. They did an outstanding job and were a big hit with the kids and families.

Another big hit with the kids was the magic show and balloon sculpting performed by local magician Tim Glander.

The Frisbee Golf Challenge was a Frisbee golf course set up on the lake. The object was to get a Frisbee inside one of the floating inner tubes set out on the water. First prize was a 32 inch TV, donated by Wal-Mart, for hitting the furthest one out. This was a fund raiser to help defray costs.

Chalk Fest saw kid’s and adults alike having fun doing sidewalk chalk art along the sidewalks surrounding the park.

The Restaurants- how it worked

1) Each restaurant paid a $100 booth fee (this covered the tent rental)
2) Each restaurant was responsible for their own license fee & health inspection
3) Restaurants were limited to four (4) ounce portions (a taste so that customers don’t fill up at one booth
4) Maximum price - $4.00
5) Items served must be on their menu at the restaurant
6) each restaurant was responsible for their own set up and cleanup (volunteers assisted)
7) Must stay open during the entire event, 11 am – 7 pm

The Taste was marketed as follows: Locally
1) 4’ by 8’ signs on all roads entering the city
2) The Royal Purple Campus Newspaper via feature articles and advertisements. The paper also ran a contest on campus where they gave away limo shuttle rides from campus to the event.
3) www.tasteofwhitewater.com
4) The Whitewater Register – Local newspaper
5) The Goodmorning Advertiser – Local
6) Articles in the Jefferson County Daily Union

Regionally
1) A grant from our local tourism council allowed us to advertise to fifteen(15) different markets in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.
2) The Walworth County Visitors Bureau helped promote the event.
3) Articles in the Jefferson County Daily Union
4) www.tasteofwhitewater.com with links from other websites including the restaurant websites, the performers websites, the city website, the campus website, the Royal Purple News website, Chamber of Commerce, Whitewater Tourism, Walworth County Visitors Bureau and many others.
5) Interviews and PSAs on WFAW/WKCH/WSJY Fort Atkinson/Janesville radio
6) Campus Radio Station
7) Posters & Flyers

Technical aspects and challenges Perhaps one of the bigger challenges was providing enough electrical power for ten (10) restaurants along with the main stage and beer tent. While there is some power in the park itself, the restaurant equipment demand is far more than is available.

1) This was accomplished through the use of a 60 kilowatt generator and distribution system, rented from Kohler Event Rental of Wisconsin. It allowed for easy hook up and no problems with blown circuit breakers often associated with this kind of event.
2) A local electrician volunteered to oversee all of the electrical connections.
3) All of the restaurants were housed under a rented 20 x 100 tent. The 20 x 60 beer tent was also rented and fenced in by city crews.
4) Beer distributors donated refrigerated tapper trailers for the beer.
5) A local trucking company donated a refrigerated semi trailer for the restaurants to store food on site.
6) The park has an outdoor stage with electrical wired in.

Results and Impact on the Downtown The entire event ran very smoothly thanks to the amazing efforts of over eighty student volunteers, the Office of Leadership Development at UW-Whitewater, the Royal Purple staff, the City of Whitewater and of course our downtown Promotion Committee.

Our goal for attendance was 750 people, which was far exceeded. We estimate actual attendance to be 1,500 – 2,000 through out the day.

Total Expenses: $15,018.46
Total Revenue: $14,064.65
First year deficit $953.81

We are very pleased with the financial results for the first year of an event of this magnitude. Going forward we are confident that this can be at least a break even event and probably provide some net revenue. We barely scratched the surface on advertising revenue in 2007.

Many merchants commented on the traffic they saw in their establishments that day and have seen increased student traffic downtown since. The students were still talking about this event two months later and look forward to next year.

Merchants are very pleased and are discussing ways to be more involved next year. A scavenger hunt downtown and a sidewalk sale are being discussed.

The Royal Purple Campus Newspaper, The Whitewater Register and the Jefferson County Daily Union all did great follow up stories the week after the event. All of the stories they ran, before and after, also covered information on downtown Whitewater and our Main Street program as well as the event itself.

Final Analysis While there are a great number of events on the UW-Whitewater campus during the Fall of the year, the Taste of Whitewater is the first major Fall event in the downtown. Virtually all of the comments from attendees were very positive; in fact, it surprised many of us how great the feedback was.

Every organization that was involved, and some that now want to be, agree that this event met or exceeded all expectations and will be a very important event going forward. Planning has already begun for Sept 2008 and we will be looking for more ways to reach out to students, as well as their parents who often come to visit. Scheduling this event early in the school year gives us the opportunity to build on it through out the rest of the year. The Taste of Whitewater provides us an excellent vehicle to introduce students to our downtown while at the same time attracting visitors from other communities.