Guest Editorial : Avocado Festival benefits our community in many ways

The Annual Avocado Festival benefits the community of Fallbrook in many more ways than people realize. It celebrates our agricultural heritage while providing an opportunity for entertainment and camaraderie; it brings large numbers of visitors to our town who will one day return to shop, to sightsee, and spend some time here; it provides significant economic benefits to our local businesses and community groups; and it generates enormous exposure of our community, both locally and regionally.

The festival’s celebration of Fallbrook’s heritage as an agricultural community is most visible at the Fallbrook Historical Museum and the Gem and Mineral Museum. But we also see our identity on display at the Del Rey Avocado Packing House tour, the Fallbrook Airport exhibits, and the extensive avocado groves visible to all festival-goers as they drive through our rural community.

People come to Fallbrook for this event from all over the United States. The day-of-event zip code research shows 38% of the attendees live outside of San Diego County. Attendees came from twelve different states, including states as far away as Massachusetts, Washington, and Kentucky; from 21 different Riverside and San Bernardino communities; 16 different Los Angeles County communities; and eight different Orange County communities. Sixty-two percent of the attendees came from 28 different San Diego County communities.

And people do come in huge numbers. The Fallbrook Avocado Festival has achieved 70,000 average day-of-event attendance for the last seven years in a row. The 70,000 figure is the estimate of people at the Main Street venue. Add to that number those at the off-site attractions.

The economic benefit of festival day, estimated at $1,750,000 in sales, is another traditional method of measuring the success of the day. Thirty of Fallbrook’s downtown merchants opened their businesses on Sunday to welcome customers. Many local businesses (without Main Street storefronts) operated booths to attract potential clients.

In addition, the positive image of Fallbrook is spread throughout the region in the pre-festival advertising. Advertisements with the festival’s logo appeared in over 300 television ads that ran on Time Warner Cable channels in Murrieta, Temecula, Carlsbad, and Fallbrook. Radio stations Soft Rock KyXy 96.5 from San Diego, and KFROG 92.9 gave air to the event. Print media advertisements ran in numerous publications. In the month of April (2008), the Chamber’s Web site had 8,000 visitors, viewing 51,000 pages of information. The Avocado Festival page was viewed 4,395 times; 1,277 viewed the shuttle map; and 700 visited both the press release and tourism pages.

Other promotional opportunities were created by the arrival of Chef Yujiro Masuada who flew in from Japan to participate in a morning show guest appearance on Fox from San Diego on the Saturday before the festival. KSON radio did a live broadcast from Fallbrook Café on the Friday before the festival. Special editions of the Village News and North County Times were published and widely distributed at the festival.

We all hope you benefit now and in the future from the positive impact of the Fallbrook Avocado Festival on our community.