- So from local businesses, from brand new businesses, to visitors from Wisconsin, to a small town in Lewisburg, love seeing what a festival can do.

Erik, we touched a little bit on how perhaps not every local business is going to be on the same page or understand what 100,000 people or even 500 people outside their front door can do.

As an organizer, how do you communicate that?

How do you communicate the benefits of that?

And well, do that hard work of community organizing.

- Yeah, so in my experience, I've noticed that a lot of brick and mortar business owners in town are frustrated with events sometimes because the parking is disrupted, the flow of traffic on the street is disrupted, and it might scare away some of their regular customers.

So when I coordinate events, I reach out to each business individually and I just let them know that the event is happening.

I invite them to it.

And I even extend a courtesy that if the event is disrupting their block, they're free to set up a table outside their store for free.

And that way they're not shut out, there's not a vendor plopped in front of their brick and mortar store they pay rent and taxes to be at.

And that way they can participate in the event without it being a financial barrier.

- You have a perspective as a small business owner and involvement in small businesses.

How does that perspective add to your role as a community organizer and add to the way you're able to communicate with those business owners?

Tell us a little bit more about that.

- Yeah, so my family actually runs a gift shop in Courthouse Square for downtown Stroudsburg.

So we are disrupted basically every Saturday for the farmer's market.

And I think 13 of the other 26 weekends are also clogged up with events.

So there's a lot of disruptions.

We are always happy as a business to set up at the event the first year and see how it goes.

Unfortunately, we find that on event days, sales are usually a little bit lower than they would be for a normal Saturday or Sunday.

But we look at it as an opportunity to get people to see our store.

I can't tell you how many locals say, "Oh, you've been here for 10 years, we never saw you."

And so we'll do an activity, a little free activity or we'll set up a photo op.

So that way folks can take a photo with a character or with something that has our logo in the background and then use that as an opportunity to get people in the door.

- What about return visitors?

And Francene, I think I wanna ask you to talk a little bit about Scranton.

When 150,000 people visit over the four days of La Festa, how do you know that they're coming back?

How does the community know what the long-term impact of that event has been?

- So personally, I manage our social media as well.

So I can tell who's coming back because they reach out over and over every year and ask, "Will this be there?

"Is this vendor gonna be there?

"Where can I find this stand?"

We do have a brochure that has the map of all the vendors and most of the vendors stay in the same spot because they want to, the guests may not know what the name was, but they remember, "Oh, it's on this street, "over here on the corner."

And even at our stand, we have people that come every year from out of state and they want our souvenirs.

They want to bring back Italian merchandise.

They want to buy Scranton merchandise for their families, their grandkids.

Just in the communication between our social media and meeting all the guests, they return every year and they'll reach out to us.

Like I said, they'll email, they'll post on social media asking, "Where's this again?

"I was here last year, two years ago."

They want to have the same experience as they did before and enjoy.

We have the free live entertainment and the guests can set out their lawn chairs and we'll have guests come Friday morning at 7.30 and start lining their chairs up.

(laughing) And they'll reach out again.

- What does hotel bookings look like and how far in advance?

- Yeah, the hotels are, they're pretty far in advance because there could be other events going on that weekend at the train station or the concerts at Montage.

So the hotels get booked up pretty early and of course the vendors are staying there, our entertainment is staying there.

So it is quite a massive area that it reaches in the community because a lot of guests come for the whole weekend or at least two days just to be able to experience other things.

And as you mentioned, sometimes they'll eat at our festival over at lunch but then they'll dine somewhere at dinner at their favorite restaurant or vice versa.

They'll go to an event or go to the train station or somewhere and then come for dinner.

So it does create quite an experience for our guests and they do stay and they visit multiple times.

And then the last day, they'll take stuff to go.

(laughing) They'll get a dozen cannolis or six sandwiches.

So it does last even longer.

But yeah, it does have a great community impact.

- Flor, do you see a similar thing happening in Shenandoah?

So visitors coming in for the Heritage and the Kielbasa Festival.

What's that look like from your perspective?

- There's so many that come.

There's people from out of state, they come because they love Kielbasa.

So they come and then the Heritage Day, just the parade itself, it's just like to top it off.

And then there's so many different foods there.

You can try one thing, another thing.

And like she said, we have people that are like, "Oh, I want one of this, one of that, "one of this, one of that."

And we're packing stuff up because they're taking it with them 'cause they wanna try the Kielbasa, they wanna try the pierogies, they wanna try all the church foods and everything like that, the blinis, but everything you can find in Schuylkill County, you can find it there at the Heritage Kielbasa Festival in Shenandoah.

But it's just, it's wonderful.

Like you say, like so many people come from out of town and they're visiting and then they go and they visit local businesses or like even like Nobles, they'll go there, they take advantage that they're in town, they'll go to Jim Thorpe, they'll go on the trains.

So it's like, it's a great experience, it's a great benefit to all the businesses.

And us ourselves, we're at the Hometown Farmers Market and that's every Wednesday.

Now, we started that because we were looking for, something to do outside of our restaurant to make it grow more because at one point, sometimes business isn't that great, so you start looking.

So we got a food truck.

Now, those food trucks from one place to another, we find different people from different counties that try our food.

They're like, oh, where are you located?

Where are you based out of?

Luckily we have a restaurant now, so we can tell them, oh, we're here and we have so many people that come from Bloomsburg, from Allentown, from different places to try our food.

And then they look at the local businesses and purchase things, but yes.

- That's great.

I love how the diversity of the community is celebrated through the festival, but especially through food.

That's a great way to bridge difference is to appreciate something delicious.

- They always say, how do you get to a man's heart?

It's through his stomach.

(laughing) - I wanna talk about with all of you, but Francene, perhaps first, how can local businesses take advantage?

And this is one final tip.

So I read from a great colleague of ours from the Scranton SVDC, Keith Urgofsky.

He wrote a little while ago about some tips about how small businesses could take advantage, make the most out of big events in Scranton.

So one final tip for businesses to take advantage of festivals happening in their area.

- So for us, it's clear, theme your meals, drinks around Italian.

Being Italian, have some Italian specialty drink.

If you have any type of retail store, we've had some of the local stores do sidewalk sales that weekend, which is great 'cause you have a crowd of people that normally wouldn't even be in front of your doors.

But we do have a lot of the area restaurants that are on the square.

Some of them actually have a stand, so it's very convenient 'cause the restaurant is right across the street from them.

But definitely theme anything that you have in your store.

Do some kind of Italian discount, an Italian cocktail, an Italian drink, an Italian appetizer, or anything that's themed around Italian and Italy, and it always goes over really well.

- Well, Erik and Flor, one word tip each.

- Yeah.

- How can they take advantage of- - I advise a lot of people to do the same thing for my event.

We're limited, only half a day, basically.

So I encourage any other business around town or in the area to match the event.

Have a drag event the night before, something like that.

- So much fun.

And Flor, we're gonna eat, right?

- Yes, yes.

- All right.

- Just food, food, food, that's the most important part.

- Thank you all, and thank you for joining us tonight.