Fork & Cork Festival

A new food festival is hoping to make its way into people’s hearts this weekend.

Chris Mickle, Kristian Neill and Ian France, the organizers of Beaverfest are venturing into the culinary side of things with the launch of their Fork & Cork Festival, taking place July 6-8, 2012 on the Riverfront Festival Plaza in downtown Windsor.

“It wasn’t a leap”, says Chris. “It was an addition to our festival family. We have always wanted to do a community and family oriented festival to give back to the community. We feel it is our social responsibility.”

The festival will be putting the emphasis on local, with the restaurants, wineries and entertainment all coming from the region. With not even 2 months to organize the festival, the group worked extremely hard to ensure the leadup to the event went as seamless as possible and Chris is excited to see how quickly and positive the community is reacting to the event.

“It’s very refreshing to say the least”, he says. “The community loves the fact that it is truly a local festival from the food to the wineries, to the beverages and all of the local entertainment. As well as the fact that we made this festival free to attend.”

Chris is estimating that the first time festival could see  upwards to 7000 people a day attend the festival, especially with an entire kids zone on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, complete with bouncy castles, magicians, face painting, an arcade, stilt walkers and more.

Many WindsorEats members will be taking part in the event including:

“We’re really looking forward to the weekend”, Chris says. “Its been a goal of our for 5 years to make a weekend like this happen for Windsor. Short time or not, I can’t wait for Windsor’s Fork and Cork!”

The festival gates are open to the public:

  • Friday, July 6 from 5:00pm to 11:00pm
  • Saturday, July 7 11:00am to 11:00pm
  • Sunday, July 8 12:00pm to 8:00pm