Frost Fest has become a bit of a tradition in Fayetteville. Sophia Nourani reflects on how Frost Fest began with Fossil Cove’s director of marketing, Andrew Blann. He said this is their seventh year of the festival.
“The first one was in 2016, and then we took a break during COVID," Blann said. We brought it back last year for the first Frost Fest since COVID, and now we’re onto our second one.”
Were you involved in the first Frost Fest?
“Yes, yes I was.”
How does it feel to reflect on how long you have been doing it?
"I mean, I think for anyone that attended the first Frost Fest, we've improved, just about every aspect of it," Blann said. "It's really just been cool to experience the growth of it and more breweries embracing it. I think the first year we had under 30. And we almost had to beg people to come and pour and be like, ‘No, this is going to be a great event’. And we've just been able to kind of create an atmosphere where breweries want to come back. And the attendees want to come back. And, you know, people have been, we've got folks that have been involved in it with us since the first time that are still coming and enjoying it. And it was really, really awesome to be part of building an event that hopefully, you know, has staying power and will be going on for the foreseeable future.”
So what can we expect this year? I saw you guys are having some local music, obviously beer, an After Party?
“Yeah, so lots, well, first, lots of just awesome craft beer. We've got 63 breweries right now that are going to be at Frost Fest," Blann said. "They're coming from an eight state region. And one thing that’s really cool about Frost Fest is that every brewery there, the folks that are pouring your beer and pouring your samples, work for that brewery, they're affiliated with it. So they know the beer and the product better than anybody else. And they can kind of give you some great insight into what their breweries are all about and special things that they're doing. And another thing, so we are able to bring in breweries for frost fest that don't distribute in Arkansas. So we'll have breweries from Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, that you know, really the only day in 2024 you're gonna be able to try them in Arkansas is at Frost Fest, which we think is a really cool thing that we can do. And then you're talking about music, we've got bands that are going to be playing. We have four bands at frost. Three will be in the big tent, and those are Bonnie Montgomery, Stepmom and Sad Palomino and then Garden Snakes, they'll be on a satellite stage for us. And then we got to an After Party at George's with Vintage Pistol and the Phlegms. It's a pretty fun day for beer and music. Frost Fest is at the Washington County Fairgrounds. We do it outside in their big open space that they have. And tickets are on the Stubs website or you can go to Fossil Cove Brewing And we'll have links to the event and tickets there as well.”
Well, thanks so much Andrew. I appreciate you taking the time.
“Yea, of course, no problem.”
