We sat down with Ruston Main Street Director Amy Stegall to talk about the 2024 Peach Festival held last weekend.
LPJ: How do you judge whether it is a success?
Amy Stegall: So clearly, smiles on faces is a great way. Conversations both during the day and afterwards from people like seeking me out in the grocery store to say “This was phenomenal. Y’all are doing a great job. Thank you so much.” These are obviously a great measure. But also, our vendors, in the market and how well they have done. We had the lemonade stand who has been there since before we took over the event. They were out of lemons for their lemonade by 3 p.m. They have never been out, ever. They were like, what do I do? And that was early in the afternoon or towards the evening. And so, they were freaking out because they have never run out and have always made it to 11 p.m. We had three of our arts vendors completely sell out. One of our businesses downtown told me that she did 110% better than she did last year. So those are the kinds of things that we look to measure and say “okay, not only did the people who we brought in as vendors do well, but our regular merchants also did well and saw great numbers in record days.
LPJ: What other type of feedback have you received?
Amy Stegall: There is always feedback of we could turn the air conditioner down. Yes, that is always the feedback. But this year, for the first time, we have heard “We’re so glad it’s a little bit earlier because thinking about three weeks from now how hot it would be. Thank you for taking that into consideration.” We have heard a lot of positives about the kid’s alley. And so, people really enjoyed having free, first of all, and then also free activities for their kids to do. And so that is a huge community component of this because that is sponsored by Century Next Bank. But then also totally and completely run by organizations within the community such as the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H, NLAC, those tried-and-true organizations that are out there doing free things for the kids. And so, it is a great marriage in that way.
LPJ: Can you tell how many people attended and what the makeup was as far as Lincoln Parish residents compared to out-of-parish attendees?
Amy Stegall: We will know those numbers better when we get our metrics back because it will tell us a radius and we can pull mileage wise. But I have lived here since the ’90s. I have been to Peach Festivals a lot. I would say just in Amy Stegall terms of metrics it was 2 to 1 people that I did not know, which is insane. We will have cellular metrics and hopefully in a month or so we will have more definitive numbers on the attendance. We just want to make sure we are reporting correct numbers. I saw people that I had never seen before, which was great. We love to see visitors come in for it. I think it being free had a lot to do with that. If the weather forecast had been better during the week leading up to it, I think we would have seen even more people.
LPJ: Any surprises, good or bad?
Amy Stegall: Attendance was a big surprise. We knew free was going to be good for it, but we had such a tremendous turnout. And the Peach Prize Hunt was so much fun. It brought back memories of festivals from years past. In the recent past people have found it quickly and this year it took all five days. It made for a fun festival feel all week and people got excited about it. So that was a pleasant surprise for sure.
LPJ: Do you get vendor feedback?
Amy Stegall: We do ask for feedback from our vendors. We have heard things like “This is the best festival we get to go to.” They want the same spot, the same everything for next year. We do have that correspondence. We have in the past few years have done a survey and we typically have not gotten much feedback from it. We had QR codes up one year asking for feedback and like no one did it but like three of us making sure the QR codes worked. We do pay attention to all our social media accounts and do take the responses to those into consideration. We hear what people say like it was hot, or it was really congested during these hours. We are listening to those things, and we are making adjustments as we can to feel what that could look like next year. We are having footprint conversations. There are a lot of logistics that go into all of this. Last year we heard that people really missed the parade, so we made sure the parade came back this year and we figured out how to make it work.
LPJ: How was parking for this year’s event?
Amy Stegall: Parking was a bear. It is always going to be. The CVB really stepped up. We had strategic conversations with different entities leading up to it. We knew if it was free then it meant more people and we were going to have to figure out a way. We ran two shuttles. People used the shuttles. We also utilized a shuttle for the hotels so anyone who was in town could utilize it. We stopped at every hotel and brought them down here. That was a great move. General parking was over at Tech and so we ran a shuttle to that parking area as well. We have heard accessibility issues. We are listening to that. That is a very hard part of a festival, trying to make sure it is accommodating for everyone, but it’s very important to us and so that is something we are definitely we will work on to make better. Maybe have designated lots and drop off areas to get in and out of. We just want to make sure we are accommodating and open to everybody.
LPJ: Is there anything you want to add that we have not talked about?
Amy Stegall: I would just like to say that we are over the moon excited about the number of people that showed up, and that we have heard only good things from our merchants and from the vendors. They are seeing the benefits of the festival and where it is and how we do it. And so, just continuing to encourage people to come out, sponsor, volunteer, or do all the things because it is a great community event. I also want to thank our city staff. We are not a big city, so we are limited on workers and all of our folks who were a part of making this such a success spent a lot of hours trying to make it a success. I cannot thank everyone enough for their part in this year’s event.
