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An 87-year-old tradition in Humboldt, Tennessee.

It's our state's largest and longest-running festival.

Hello, I'm Peter Noll.

On this edition of Tennessee is Talking, the topic is this year's West Tennessee Strawberry Festival.

75,000 attendees, 9 blocks, over 20 events that are sure to entertain the entire family.

Let the conversation begin.

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West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

Thanks for joining the discussion here on Tennessee is Talking.

Hello, I'm Peter Noll.

The very first strawberry festivals were designed as a way to market our community, strawberries, and all of West Tennessee during a very challenging economy.

Here to tell us more is Beth Culpepper.

Beth is the managing director of the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival.

Thank you for joining us.

Absolutely.

It's that time of the year ag.. Tell us how this festival became the largest, longest-running festival.

Back in 1930, when the strawberry crop was at its peak, a group of businessmen, local businessmen, got together to see how they could market that product, that crop, locally, more locally, internationally.

They came up with what we know today as the festival.

It first started off as a two- or three-day event, and then it grew to become five days and then seven days.

Originally, the local businesses that were a part of the industry, your packaging, your refrigeration, all those industries that were there locally in Humboldt at that time, had just a convention where they all would set out what they did at their business for other people to come in and see how we did things in Humboldt with our strawberries, how we packaged it, how we refrigerated it, and got it across the country so that other people could enjoy West Tennessee strawberries.

Wow.

87 years is such a long time.

There's so many festivals that died, that interest was lost, that no one wanted to come or no one wanted to organize anymore.

Sure.

How does the West Te..

It's really a testament to people who live in our community, who have grown up in Humboldt, whose families have really just dug in and made it a part of their lives.

They've volunteered, and they've carried the festival on their back many a times when it was slow or when times were rough, any situations like that.

It's really about the volunteers who put this festival on, and that's how we've been able to celebrate our 87th year this year.

You work out of the Humboldt Chamber of Commerce's office, but you mentioned volunteers.

It's really the volunteers that do this.

-Yes.

I'm the only mainstay, if you will.

Everyone else rotates through.

We have a president and a general chairman who are chosen, who are a little bit the face of the festival, going out and doing media and really getting out in front of the community and promoting our festival.

Then we also have a whole team of volunteers who are our committee chairmen, and they are actually the ones who take their individual events and make it happen that week.

Who's this year's festival president?

Our president this year is Mitzi Privett, and her general chairman is Danny Wade.

The general chairman is like a president in training so that there's the succession plan.

Correct.

Yes.

They don't come in.. "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing."

They've seen and been training all year.

-Yes.

It's a two-year term, we like to say, and you are a little bit of an understudy to the president doing different tasks that they need help on or just really being in there as a partner to help them with whatever they need to get done during that year.

Then you'll rotate up into being the president, and then you'll choose a general chairman to succeed you.

Is it a big competition to become these positions?

The current general chairman will bring a selection of candidates to our Humboldt Chamber of Commerce board and present those people.

They'll talk about how this person brings what they bring or could bring to the festival, what will make them an asset.

We really push people that have volunteered and have given their times and their efforts and their talents to the festival as a way to recognize them for their hard work.

It's just a snapshot of how that process works.

What is the events that you do every year that you don't mess with?

These are ones that have been going on for decades, and you can't change the tradition of them.

Sure.

I would say number one would .. We're never going to touch the parades.

You have the Grand Parade on the Friday of the festival.

Then the Thursday is the-.

The Junior Floats Parade.

Junior Floats.

That's unique in that ther..

Correct.

We say it's the largest non-motorized parade that we know of.

Everything has to be pulled, pushed.

You can ride in it.

You can walk.

You can ride a bike, but no motors.

That's a tradition that's been since the start.

Yes.

As long as I can remember or that I'm aware of.

Yes, Thursday is the Junior Floats, and then Friday is, we call it the granddaddy of them all, the Grand Floats Parade.

What about the pageants?

The pageants seem to be always big, and they happen the week of, correct?

Yes.

We host six pageants that week, and they begin on Thursday.

We'll crown two new queens Thursday, two new queens Friday, and two new queens on Saturday, who will reign over the following year's festival.

For our viewers outside who don't understand the pageants of the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival, you have two different separate pageants.

Then you have various age groups.

You have one for inside Gibson County?

-Yes.

-Okay.

Explain that to us.

We have territorial pageants.

We have four of those pageants.

Those pageants, you have to win a qualifying pageant in order to participate in our pageants and compete for those titles.

A qualifying pageant, just some quick information on that, is a pageant that is held in West Tennessee inside our state lines on this side of the river.

It has to be won in a certain time frame of the calendar year, and there's some other small rules about that.

Then we also have our two hostess pageants, our junior hostess princess and our hostess princess.

Those are for young ladies that are from Gibson County?

-Correct.

There's some specific zip codes and some specific areas where you can live in order to participate in those pageants, regardless of-where you go to school.

If you live in those areas, then you are eligible.

Is it very competitive?

Oh, they all are.

All six of them are very highly sought-after titles.

Everybody wants those.

Those pageants all happen at the high school?

Yes, at the Humboldt High School Gymnasium.

Again, they start Thursday that week.

They do two Thursday, two Friday, and two Saturday.

Wow.

I had to drop off a binder for Betty Langley, who hosts the Channel 11 Parade Program of the Grand Parade.

Former president.

Former president.

The parking lot was-.

Packed.

packed.

It took me about 20 minutes just to get through the parking lot.

Yes.

It's a major production.

We start setting up, actually, for the pageant on the Saturday before.

Building the stage, doing the backdrop, the draping, all the lighting we have to hang.

Humboldt High School and Humboldt City Schools are so generous to us to allow us to use their facilities.

Basically, we tie up that place for over a week.

It is a major production.

Then the court of the pageant, they tour the town and serve as ambassadors, correct?

They do.

They will serve that whole year, again, as a face of the festival, participating in other parades like Soybean and Fish Fry and the Teapot Festival.

We all go and participate in those parades and take our float, and the girls represent us doing that.

There's some other various appearances that they make on our behalf during the year.

We do a service project every year with them.

This year, we're going to be doing some stuff for the Carl Perkins Center, partnering with them, doing a little service project to help their kiddos that they have.

They're giving back to the community.

Yes.

Tell us about-we're at num.. Oh, we do have a new event this year.

We haven't really put anything out about it yet, but maybe by the time this airs, breaking news.

This is a Tennessee is Talking exclusive.

Yes.

We're going to roll out a new event called the Berry..

This event was born out of, years ago, we had a recipe contest.

It was a mainstay, but it's, after COVID and things, people got picky about eating things and different things like that.

We try to revamp and see what can we put in this time slot that would serve that purpose.

After a lot of conversation, back and forth, different ideas, we've come up on this Berry Drink Showdown.

What we've done is we've partnered with three nonprofits in Humboldt.

The Humboldt Boys and Girls Club, the Carl Perkins Center, and our Helping Hand facility.

These groups are going to create a specific berry, strawberry themed and flavored drink where they will create-- Non-alcoholic?

Of course, non-alcoholic, so all the.. Everyone will be able to come and sample it, and they'll get to vote on which one they prefer, which one wins.

Sonic of Humboldt has partnered with us as well to help sponsor this event and give money to these organizations.

You'll get a ticket to vote.

Sonic will be on hand serving full-size drinks of some of their festival themed flavors that they'll feature that week.

There'll be an opportunity for people to donate to those nonprofits.

That is happening what day?

That will be on Tuesday night.

That's correct.

Tuesday night, I think.

It begins at 5:30.

At?

In the downtow.. there on the corner of Central and Main.

You'll see it.

There'll be a big Sonic .. Berry will be out there.

Sonic will have their mascot on hand, too, to have some fun with our berry.

That is the newest event that we'll roll out this year.

We hope that it's a fan favorite.

How do you keep it fresh?

Several years ago, you started Berry Idol, a singing competition.

There always seems to be something fresh and new.

What's the secret to finding those events?

We have a lot of conversations, and there are a lot of ideas that never reach anything past the drawing board.

I think we really just try to listen to our visitors and look at what we do have, what time frames we have available, and are we actually able to pull this off amongst the other 30 events that we have going on?

We just look at what people want, and what they want, in particular, in regard to this event, is they want to try strawberry things.

They want more strawberry things, and so a way to create that for people was just this little berry drink flavoring opportunity.

We'll see how it goes.

You mentioned that Sonic will have some festival themed drinks.

Yes.

That's one thing th.. this festival is all the local businesses in Humboldt and Gibson County try and participate.

Maybe having berry items on a restaurant menu, berry-flavored drinks, berry items at gift shops.

Tell us about that.

Our local businesses and community really buy into that week.

We just all say, "This is our week."

It's like when Christmas has its time or Halloween, we know that this is the time where we push strawberry stuff.

You'll find local businesses, retail stores, they've gone all out with everything strawberry they could find.

Like you mentioned, the restaurants sometimes have a special menu with different items they'll feature.

I really try to encourage our concessions vendors to feature something strawberry-related.

Do a tweak on a normal menu item, but make it fit strawberry festival because people really want that.

That's why they've come.

I've heard that people that collect strawberries come to Humboldt to get strawberry themed items.

Yes.

Where else would you go, right?

We're always shopping for strawberry stuff.

Anytime you see anything, like, "Ooh, let's grab that," or, "Let's do that, order that, make that."

We all try to do merchandise and have specific shirts or themed merchandise for the week, and it sells like hotcakes.

Do you track how many people are coming and what is popular, what days are the big ones?

Yes, sure.

We partner with Tennessee Tech and Placer.ai to get some data for us, being able to track who comes, how we've gotten those people here.

Last year we were so excited to see our numbers after the conclusion of festival and learned that we had a over 160% increase in visits for that week.

We had a 600% increase in our attendance for our parades on Thursday and Friday.

From the previous year?

Correct, yes.

We attribute that to some efforts that we've taken for some outside advertising, getting in some different markets other than just here in our tight little West Tennessee area, like learning that people outside of that, they want to come too.

If they've never heard about it, let's try to educate them and get them here, too.

We had some incredible numbers last year with attendance and economic impact.

What is the economic impact to Humboldt and Gibson County?

Last year's festival had an over $6 million impact to Gibson County by itself.

Wow.

You just think about all the people.. for the parades, and they've got to get gas, or they need to run to Walmart or something like that.

And the food.

They're eating, and their kids nee.. and so they're spending that money at our businesses.

We specifically saw an over $800,000 income to just our city, like taxes and sales tax, that revenue that we can directly tie to our businesses that are seeing that come through their doors.

When you talk to people that have just moved to West Tennessee and that number is growing every week because people are discovering what a great place this is to live, and they've never heard of the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival, how would you explain the festival to them?

If you come to Humboldt during September, a normal time, it's hard to imagine 100,00 people there.

Sure.

We're less than 8,000 people in Humboldt.

When you're talking 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 people that come into the town just for the parades, that's an amazing number of people.

You're right.

There's so many new ..

The best way to describe it is just, it's just a big homecoming.

It's an opportunity for you to come be a part of our home.

You're new to the area, and I really feel like we do a great job of being welcoming and warming to people, helping them out and telling them where to go, what you should go do.

"Here's something fun you should try."

Our local community really accepts that responsibility and really helps all of our new neighbors out.

Now, if people want to find out the schedule of events, because it's the first full week in May, correct?

Correct, yes.

Always.

It starts on?

Sunday, May the 4th this year, through Saturday, May the 10th is how it runs this year.

You have events every day, something going on all the time.

-Every day.

There's over 30 events now.

You not only have the website.

What is that website again?

Strawberryfestivaltn.com or it's festival time.

You also have an app.

We do have an app.

It's free download.

Apple or Android users, it's free to you.

What do you search for?

West Tennessee Strawberry Festival.

You'll see Berry as the icon.

He's the face of that app.

His face is what you would search for.

How old is the app?

That's very high-tech because we are celebrating all the festivals as many as we can here at Channel 11.

I don't think any other of them have an app.

I believe this is our fourth year with the app.

We do a little bit every year, growing that.

There's still a lot of untapped technology out with that, that we haven't used.

I've used it in past years.

If you open it up at the festival, it will give you a map like, oh, I want to go to this event happening right now.

Where is it?

How can I get there?

It gives me a map on how I get there.

The map is on there.

You have a list of concessions vendors or the carnival times.

Those are probably the two most popular pages on the app is to find that information out.

It has everything, schedule of events, locations.

It even has the weather, what the weather is going to be like that day.

Specifically, what's going on that particular day that you've opened your app up to look at it, like what's happening at the festival that day.

You mentioned vendors, carnivals, not that it's my favorite thing, but it's always about the food.

-Oh, yes.

-It's always about the food.

Always.

What are you.. We have a couple new vendors.

Most all of them are your mainstays, your crowd favorites, Country Cabin, who's your ice cream favorite.

He's always there.

We have a new Kraft Burger person coming.

Do you test these out before?

I don't test them out, but I really do some research on other festivals that they've been at.

I want to see what their trailer looks like.

I want to see what their menu items look like.

This isn't just anyone pull up with your trailer and start hawking your food.

No.

You research them and ma.. and high quality and unique and are a good mix for the strawberry customer.

-Yes, definitely.

We want to make .. that we're not having everyone doesn't sell corn dogs or funnel cakes.

We've got plenty of those, and they're all amazing, but you mentioned food.

That is the main part of what we are, is food.

People know us for our food trucks and our different vendors that we have.

When do they start showing up?

They can start moving in and being open the Friday prior, so May the 2nd is when they can be in town.

You'll see them start trickling in and see traffic start building up during that weekend.

A lot of us local people or people that are involved in the festival have to try to eat at those places during that time because we're so busy during the week we don't have an opportunity to.

They're there for the whole week.

What's nice compared to back in the old days where you had to have cash, a lot of them are accepting debit or credit cards now.

Oh, yes.

Venmo, you can Venmo, you can cash app.

Yes, they take most all forms of payment, so no excuse.

What's your favorite food?

Ooh, my favorite food, gosh, I like a lot of things.

I do enjoy the pretzels from the pretzel vendor, Heavenly Soft Pretzels, and I have to have a milkshake at least one time.

It's a secret menu item.

I get him to concoct something for me.

What's that secret item?

It's technically not on the menu, but it's an Oreo mil..

He'll take the Oreo ice cream sandwich cookie and crumble it up for me and put it in a milkshake form, so sometimes it's my only meal that I get.

Do you require the vendors to offer a strawberry-type item or topping or flavor to the menu?

We don't require it, but when I am searching people out, I do try to see if they could possibly offer something that, if their menu is not compatible, like a burger person, for instance, they're not necessarily going to feature something strawberry, but they do things like a strawberry barbecue glaze or something like that on an item.

Most of them all have something to feature that is strawberry, or they'll come up with something original just for the week.

Now, the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival is Tennessee's largest, longest-running festival.

There's other strawberry festivals in other cities.

Do you go to them?

Do you compete?

Do you say, "I saw this at thei.. we should do this."?

Yes.

There is another one.

Portland has a strawberry festival.

It's actually during some of the same time as ours.

Theirs is just a weekend festival.

Portland, Oregon.

No, Portland, Tennessee.

I'm sorry.

Portland, Tennessee, okay.

Yes, Portland.

They have theirs during our time.

Cullman, Alabama, has one.

I actually met with them several years ago, and they picked our brain.

They relaunched and have done some rebranding.

Theirs is just a two-day weekend, too, but unfortunately, it's too close to ours that I would have the opportunity to go sneak down there and see what they're about.

Of course, Plant City, Florida, is probably nationally the largest one based off of the crowds that they enjoy.

Have you been to that one?

I have not, but I have really.. every year, it seems like, or the Plant City is close to Tampa.

The Chamber needs to send you there for competitive reasons.

I know.

Research.

Yes.

I do follow their social media and .. what they do and what could translate into maybe something that would work for us.

They are a big outfit, for sure.

If people watching want to find out about all of this year's strawberry festival schedules, events, be involved in these things, applications, where can they go?

Everything can be found on our website, strawberryfestivaltn.com, and that has everything.

Registration forms.

You can email us questions.

There's a Frequently Asked Questions section on there.

It has the carnival times.

There's a way to send us a message that if you'd like to volunteer and help us out in any way, there's access to do that on the website, too.

-Lots of ways to get involved.

Communicate, yes, and be involved.

How does the festival pay for all this stuff?

You're your own non-profit organization separate from the Chamber, from the city.

How do you guys pay for all this?

We obviously solicit sponsorships every year.

From local businesses and area businesses?

Yes.

We're so fortunate and blessed that our businesses still see us as an entity that they want to sponsor and help promote.

This year, BR Supply is our title sponsor.

They'll be our presenters at the Grand Flats Parade.

They go all over-.

Have locations all over.

but they're headquartered in-.

-In Humboldt, right.

--in Humboldt.

-On Main Street.

-Yes.

We are so blessed by them.

Tyson Foods and Parham Heating, Cooling, and Electric, they are our platinum sponsors this year.

Then we have close to 100 other sponsors, level of sponsors.

Most, vast majority are locally owned Humboldt busin.. but we do enjoy some that are broader, West Tennessee, BlueOval, BlueOval City, BlueOval SK, that have partnered with us regionally to come in and sponsor as well.

If a viewer out there watching right now or streaming hasn't been to the Strawberry Festival in Humboldt for a few years, and, "Oh, I used to go all the time, haven't been, " why should they go this year?

Ooh, you should come this year because the Gibson County Mass Band is going to have their every five-year performance again at the Grand Floats Parade.

That is a huge highlight for us.

It is five of our local Gibson County High School marching bands that come together to form about a 350 piece marching band.

-I saw it last time, five years ago.

It's incredible.

It's incredible.

Yes.

They will march on Friday for the Grand Floats Parade.

If nothing else, you want to come to the Grand Floats Parade.

People have to back up.

Yes.

It's massive.

You can see them.

They're practicing days ahead of time.

-They come and practice.

Yes.

-It's all the bands together.

-All five bands.

-It's incredible.

Yes.

That's one highlight this year.

We've added extra nights of music.

All of our music is free.

There's six nights now of music that you can come and enjoy.

That's one thing.

Of course, the carnival and t.. and the pageants and the food and the horse show and the car show and the 5K, 10K.

We could just go on through the whole list, but really any night and day would be a great-- First full week in May, Humboldt, Tennessee, starting May-.

4th.

4th.

May the 4th.

May the 4th be with you.

-It'll be with us.

-Beth Culpepper.

Thank you.

[laughs] Managing Director of Tennessee's .. longest-running festival in Humboldt.

Yes.

Thank you for joining us here on Tennes..

Thank you for having me.

We are out of time, unfortunately.

Thank you for coming.

If you want to watch this episode again or share it with a friend or family member, it can be streamed anytime on the PBS app along with local Channel 11 programs.

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Remember to keep the conversation going by following WLJT on social media.

Until next time, I'm Peter Noll.

Keep on talking, Tennessee.

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