TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
Dear Columbia Beer Lovers,
We are preparing for the fifth World Beer Festival – Columbia and we want to straighten out a few things with our fans.
We were not very pleased with our execution of the fourth World Beer Festival – Columbia. Actually, we were somewhat concerned. There was a major structural issue within the South Carolina beer industry that affected over half of the beers that we anticipated presenting. We felt the problems would be resolved by the opening of our festival. We were wrong, dead wrong.
Although we scrambled to make good on our commitment to our customers, we fell short of our own standards, as well as the standards our customers expect. Even before hearing from our customers we knew we had made a mistake. We appreciate all of the feedback we received after our event last year and we listened to your concerns. Since then we have restructured our entire events department and we can’t wait to show you what our new team can do. Their experience and new ideas have already had a dramatic, positive effect on both the World Beer Festival – Raleigh and World Beer Festival – Durham.
This year’s Raleigh event included innovative changes in the footprint, creating improved traffic flow. The recent World Beer Festival – Durham included enhanced layout adjustments and the implementation of our Brewer Support Program that positively affected the quality and quantity of beer presented to our customers. With these two innovations, our new festival staff was able to increase the available space for our customers, tightly monitor our beer inventory, and provide a more satisfactory and educational beer experience.
The new and improved events team is made up of serious beer lovers. Chris, who oversees all of our events, co-founded one of the oldest brewpubs in the state and sits on the board of one of the more well established distributing breweries in NC. Our beer recruiter, Leigh, is a well-respected home brewer and attended close to a dozen World Beer Festivals and volunteered at more than half before coming on staff. Erin, head of operations, has run several farmers markets and, along with attending many World Beer Festivals, is committed to the community backbone of our events. Brandi, longtime events coordinator for the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, is taking care of vendor relations. She served Palm at her wedding.
This crew is excited to bring our new model to Columbia and win back your loyalty and trust with a festival that meets our expectations, and more importantly, yours.
Please come out and see the improved World Beer Festival – Columbia, January 19th, 2013 at the Columbia Convention Center.
Cheers,
Daniel Bradford
President, All About Beer Magazine
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World Beer Festival – Columbia 2013
January 19th – Columbia Convention Center
Afternoon Session: 12-4pm
Evening Session: 6-10pm
Subscriber Ticket Pre-Sale starts on Thursday, November 8th
General Public Ticket Sales start Thursday, November 15th
General Admission: $40
VIP: $85
2012 Festival Beer Guide!
We are working on next years’ 2013 Beer Guide (event program) with listing of the beers, the bands, and the food vendors, plus maps to guide your festival journey. Please reach out to Brandi LaDue at brandi@allaboutbeer.com if you would like to advertise in our Beer Guide.
