Hello and this summer Thin Man Brewery is
hosting their first ever ever beer festival.
The weirdly wonderful beer festival is
happening Saturday July 22nd at Front
Park and they're hoping to offer a unique
beer festival experience like no other.
And here to talk more about the plans,
Thin Man's owner Mike Schetzel and Marketing
Manager and Taproom Manager Cameron Frank.
It's so great to see you guys weird
and wonderful as our speed around here,
so this works out very well. We love that.
When you talked about your plans,
you compared it to Shelton Fest,
which is known as one of the best
beer festivals in the world,
so you're definitely not messing around.
What do you have in mind for this?
Well, the Shelton Fest
really kind of show what Buffalo is
willing to support in a beer fest,
and as the Man has grown through
the years and made a lot of
friends throughout the industry,
we thought the Man could host something
similar with the high end breweries
from around Europe and US and.
After, you know, kind of throwing
the idea around for a couple years,
we finally jumped on it and called
some friends from Nashville that
have a business that run Beer
Fest all around the country,
got them on board and then we finally set
a date and we're pretty much ready to go.
You've had such a busy year.
You did the renovation,
you've had a lot going on.
You know, what made you say we got to
jump on this and do this this year?
It's just something
we especially can, it goes a lot.
Now we go to.
Fests all over the East Coast,
down in Florida, Georgia, wherever.
And you know, it's a great weekend
for the beer people to get together
and talk shop and hang out.
And we just kind of felt it
was our turn to be the host.
And that is such a thing in the
beer community too. There's such
a collaboration with breweries.
Yeah, it's like, it's competitive,
but it's cordial at the same time.
You know, like obviously you
want to sell as much of your
own beer as possible, but like.
When you join up with somebody from,
you know, maybe we join
over somebody from Atlanta,
cuz we're selling beer in Atlanta and
it helps get our name around down there.
And then we do the same for them if
they're selling beer up this way.
So it works for both of us and then
it's just a good time to get together
and share ideas and talk shop.
And Cameron, I want to ask about
you something that's kind of
separate from from the festival.
You're hosting a craft,
a graphic design contest.
You're looking for local artists.
What is this for?
What's it all about?
Yeah, so the Allentown Art Fest is next week,
which is always a staple event in the
Elmwood Village in the Allentown area.
And we've never really done
anything surrounding that event.
And we kind of wanted to give some local
artists the opportunity to, you know,
show what they got and and work with us and.
Basically how it's going to work is whoever
wins the the the contest will have an
opportunity to work with us and put their
design on one of our upcoming beers.
And we'll collaborate throughout
the entire process on the name,
the style of the beer,
and we'll also have their their
artwork displayed in our tap room
for a prolonged period of time.
Is there something specific you're
looking for or you're just like,
let's just see what you got? We
just want to see what they got.
Yeah, go crazy.
How do people get involved in this?
So you can actually head to our
Instagram page where you hit our
link tree and once you click on that,
it will link you to a Dropbox link.
And through that you
have everything you need.
And that's such a thing too.
I feel like everywhere you go
or you look at a lot of times,
it's the label. You're just like,
what's that all about? That's cool.
So it's a great collaboration there.
Exactly. So what's next?
If people want to get involved with
the beer festival, what's next?
I'll let you take that. Yeah, TBD.
We're going to start dialing in
volunteer opportunities entertainment
for the day of we're going to be,
you know, we're going to have
an announcement cadence that
will make sense promotionally.
So we we're working on a lot on the
back end here to make sure it's
going to be a successful event and
we want to make sure that everyone
remembers weirdly Wonderful Fest as
something they like to do again. So
absolutely the name alone is
like exciting and I'm excited
just for someone to be here when
Anthony Bourdain came to Buffalo.
And one of his quotes about Buffalo is
it's like a weirdly wonderful place.
So we kind of jumped on that.
We made a beer a year or two back
with you know, and I just like
name I thought was really great.
And the label that our Peter that made,
you know, I thought was a great thing
and then we're throwing names around.
We just thought it was like a
good way to promote Buffalo and
everyone loves Anthony Bourdain and.
So it's kind of a good mix for us.
Well, I love that and I hope you'll
come back and keep us posted.
And of course we're looking
forward to to July. Absolutely.
Thank you both and we got more
to come here on most Buffalo.