Comments on: Burien’s Strawberry Festival To Get “Wild,” Go Green & Move To Town Square

By: Burien Parks

Burien Parks — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:20:53 +0000

The entertainment schedule for this weekend’s WILD Strawberry Festival is packed! All the fun details at http://bit.ly/aH9cDE

By: jess

jess — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:37:03 +0000

Perhaps their whole mission is to keep the â€œarts festivalâ€ artsy and not filled with companies trying to sell people new windows and the like, but I believe $750 is too high for a 10X10 commercial street fair booth. Especially considering the only businesses that can purchase a space must be, â€œone that sells or has a service that is sustainable, energy efficient, or has a health and wellness focus.â€ The Vashon strawberry festival only charges $250 for a commercial booth and also offers a $100 business information only booth.

The Burien festival should give local business (perhaps ones located in the 33rd & 34th legislative districts) a discount on the commercial booth fee, because local=sustainable. Even the food vendors have a relatively low fee ($400), and they are the only sellers I have ever seen at the festival with lines of paying customers. To give the city some credit they do offer low cost booth spaces for all non brick and mortar type sellers such as crafts vendors (hand made $170 or imported $200), farmerâ€™s market type sellers ($35), non profit ($25), street vendor, ($140.00).

By: Coverofnight

Coverofnight — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:55:07 +0000

To Leslie: That blows me away; but after thinking about it, I guess it doesn’t surprise me. It seems like another instance of regulatory controls that put business profitability as the lowest priority. You’d think that they would consider booth rates based on factors such as sole proprietor/corporation, or annual sales, or number of employees, etc. For the small businessperson, $ 750 might easily wipe out their annual marketing budget. It’d be interesting to know how many sales various businesses generate at these booths/festivals. I’ve always wondered because every time I attend one, there are a LOT of lookers; doesn’t seem like many buyers. I doubt Burien will re-think this setup. If they’re presented a check that helps the City to meet employee payroll and benefits, they won’t care of the negative impact to struggling businesses…….they never have, why start now?

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:27:08 +0000

That disgusts me to no end. Can one even plan on re-cooping that fee with sales at the festival? I doubt it.

By: Leslie Kasper

Leslie Kasper — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:40:04 +0000

Well, as a local business owner I was excited to be able to have a booth and be a part of the festival this year. When I went online to get the application I saw that a business booth was $750!!! Non-profit and informational booths were only $25. So, since we were not going to be selling anything — just handing out free-bee’s and information — I decided to contact the to person listed on the application to find out if we had to fork out all that money. First off, did anyone else realized that the city hired a festival organization company to set all this up?! How much does that cost? So I chatted with the contact person in Issaquah where this company is and she stated that any business, whether selling or not, had to pay the business rate. Street vendors (like craftsman) may not need to if not set up as a business. She also said it seemed reasonable for business promotion and many are very interested. What!!! I can get a lot of ads for $750 to more people and more exposure than a couple days at a local event! Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Strawberry Festival, but I wonder how many local businesses (most of which are small and/or family owned) are going to be able to afford that. Especially when the politician next to me gets his/her booth for $25 as they “not-for-profit”! Think Burien might need to rethink this for next year!