A festival in South Louisiana– it’s a way to showcase our art, music, and food. In the planning, we started a goal of creating an event that is really family-friendly.

Abita Springs, if you know it, you love it. It’s full of families. We built relationships with families through our restaurant next door, and we just decided, hey. Let’s have something that’s gonna be fun to come to. You know, you can listen to music. There’s lots for the kids and families to do together. There’s lots of local food and cuisine, lots of artists and different crafters there as well. 

The Cuisine Stage is new. We did have music there last year, but we decided to put a little stage there and enhance it this year. Working with the North Shore Traditional Music Society as another nonprofit, bringing in music all over the fest. Just like when you go to Jazz Fest, there’s music all over. So wherever you are, you can hear some music.

I came up with a little raffle to raise money to give back because the 1st year, you know, with all the expenses, you really don’t make a profit. We raised money for the 2 schools and the recreation center in town.

The other groups– Friends of the Park, Abita Springs Women’s Society, Trailhead Museum, Garden Club, and Keep Abita Beautiful— are all groups that are responsible for doing really good things in town to keep it moving, you know, keeping our trash picked up, keeping our park updated and clean, things like that.

Absolutely. You can [. . .] volunteer in one of those organization’s names if you live in town and you think that Keep Abita Beautiful does really awesome things for the town. You can volunteer in their name and you can say, I want my volunteer hours to go towards that group.

When we start a lineup, I’ll tell you, from my perspective as someone in Abita Springs, we are full of locally talented musicians that can be found at many of our local events. Even at Abita Brew Pub, we have music every weekend from 6 to 9 PM every Friday and Saturday.

Some of our local bands, we pulled directly from these events and our own group hub. Some of the bands we picked this year have new albums, and we thought it’d be great to showcase these bands like the Abita Stumps, the Pontchartrain Shakers, Soundtrack Era, and Tab Benoit– They all have new albums. 

We have wood-fired pizza from Isabella’s Pizzeria, which is a local family. The Rustic Press— they’re known for their smash burgers and really good truffle fries. Creole Tomateaux is another local restaurant that also has a food truck. They’ll be there Friday night. We have a new funnel cake and ice cream vendor this year– JB’s Softee Treats.

Saturday, we have a new little place open in Mandeville called Dip It. They’re gonna be there with their rolled ice cream, funnel cake bites, and cotton candy. We have some award-winning Brazilian food from Brazilian Bites. [. . .] Quite a few local, well-known food vendors will be out there. 

Number 1, I got this from my cofounder, and you’re gonna laugh, but we get so many people asking, “Do we need to bring a chair?” So we’re like, the number one thing if it’s your first time– bring a chair. You’re not gonna wanna leave you because you’re gonna be doing all these activities, and you’re gonna need a break.

Number 2, try an Abita Beer or Root Beer. Abita brings back a retired seasonal beer for our fest, the Abita Fall Fest, and it’s one of my favorite beers.

Number 3, make sure to experience one of our activities. The most fun we see people having is when they’re doing these activities. You know? I walk around the park and I look in all areas, and all I see is kids and families having fun.

It’s very important that we mention our sponsors. There’s a sponsor for everything. We have 2 title sponsors that are very important. They are Abita Brewing Company and Greer Equipment. Without them, we probably couldn’t have the fest, but we also have a sponsor for each stage, each activity, and each area.

We really like to reiterate how thankful we are for these sponsors. We have at least 60 this year. This year, we’ve gotten more sponsors than any other year.