Farm Fresh Retires Annual Extravaganza Fundraiser
Aug. 18–After 25 years, the Farm Fresh Extravaganza has folded up its food booths for the last time.
In October, the Farm Fresh supermarket chain hosted its final Extravaganza, an annual three-day event featuring food vendors and activities to raise money for local charities. This year, the retailer has shifted its charitable efforts to new events that organizers hope will generate more public interest at a lower cost.
The Extravaganza, hosted for the past several years at the Hampton Coliseum, had grown tired, said Susan Mayo, spokeswoman for Farm Fresh, based in Virginia Beach.
“I always feel like every event has a life cycle,” Mayo said. “And unless you can change something or make it different, it becomes the same old same old.”
In place of the Extravaganza, Farm Fresh has planned two fundraisers for October. The Ultimate Farm Fresh Tailgate Gala is scheduled for Oct. 21 at the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in Portsmouth. Tickets for the event — less formal than a typical black-tie affair, Mayo said — will cost $125 per person or $200 per couple. It will feature Farm Fresh-catered food, cooking demonstrations, a “funny money” casino and the museum’s interactive exhibits.
Also, between Oct. 14 and 31, Farm Fresh will host a series of Hometown Harvest events at several stores. Vendors will provide food samples, community groups will set up booths, and local celebrities will bag groceries. Guests such as Art Ginsburg — television chef Mr. Food — and an actor from the soap opera “Guiding Light” also will visit. Percentages of the sales of featured items will go to charity.
The Farm Fresh Extravaganza dated to 1979, when it started with about 25 vendor booths as the Farm Fresh Cancer Control Food Show and benefited the American Cancer Society . It grew to as many as 150 vendors, attracting about 20,000 attendees last year, including those who volunteered and ran booths, Mayo said.
In recent years, attendees typically paid an entry fee of $5 to $7 and could pick up bags of vegetables, fruit, bread and other groceries and make voluntary donations . The food companies gave away samples and coupons. Soap opera stars and costumed characters made appearances. Families could entertain children with face painting and games .
The October event drew its share of regulars but had failed recently to attract many newcomers. Attendance remained flat over the past couple of years, Mayo said.
In addition, mergers in the food industry have left a smaller universe of vendors to sponsor booths, Mayo said. Sponsorships, she added, ranged from $2,000 to $20,000 depending on the level of participation.
In early fall 2004, Farm Fresh gathered some of its key vendor sponsors and asked what they liked or disliked about the Extravaganza. Unanimously, the group expressed a desire to try something new, Mayo said.
The sponsors said they preferred in-store events, where they could more directly contact consumers.
“We could make this easy on ourselves. We could just write you a check,” Mayo said the vendors told her.
But the events give them a chance to showcase their products in a personal way. Food manufacturers, such as General Mills Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc., want to get involved in the local community, no matter where they are based, said Henry Hailstock, director of diversity and community relations for the Food Marketing Institute, a research organization for the supermarket industry.
Retailers also see a chance to do more than just write a check to support a charity, Hailstock said.
“They want others to get in the spirit and to also contribute and to be part of something that’s helping the community,” he said.
The Extravaganza raised $140,000 last year and cost Farm Fresh more than $200,000, Mayo said. The funds helped feed the coffers of the Farm Fresh Charitable Foundation, the retailer’s fundraising arm, for distribution to a number of regional organizations.
Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters is one of the primary Farm Fresh beneficiaries, receiving $874,199 from the company this year. The foundation provided $125,000, and the rest came from the Round Up fundraiser in March, when grocery shoppers could round up their payments to the nearest dollar at the cash register and donate the difference.
Farm Fresh is CHKD’s largest corporate supporter, said George Stinnett, CHKD’s spokesman. Ron Dennis, the retailer’s president and chief operating officer, is on the hospital’s Children’s Health Foundation board, which oversees the use of donations.
The hospital has no concerns about the loss of the Extravaganza if Farm Fresh officials prefer to change their approach, Stinnett said.
“We are very supportive of any fundraising activity that Farm Fresh sees fit to do,” he said.
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