Texas Reds

12,413 Views | 84 Replies | Last: 8 yr ago by Stucco
gopitt
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Could not make it but heard that the crowds were excellent. Anyone want to offer a review?
Goose83
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AG
They still need to push back the date further back into the fall, as it's still too hot out at this time of year for this sort of thing, as 93 degree heat is not conducive to wine tasting. Yeah, it's better than when they used to hold it in the 100 degree heat of June, but, as before, still too hot out to be enjoyable in my opinion.
Stucco
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It was ok.

It could happen two weeks later to beat the heat, but the portable ACs were nice to cool down.
FlyRod
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First time I went and enjoyed it. I was there Sunday and the crowds were actually very sparse, at least early in the day. The cloud cover and breeze helped mitigate the heat a lot. Was impressed more with the craft beer tent then the wine tent, but did find a few very good TX wines I knew nothing about. Mainly went to support my buds in Hazy Ray. All in all a good time and would go back for sure.
Frio Cielo
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It was still really hot if you stayed around for a few hours.

A number of vendors were disappointed in the crowds on Sunday. Two I talked to said that Sunday was a waste of time. They also said there was a lot of inside favoritism on vendor locations. I would think that vendor placement should be largely based on seniority in the festival.

They should make it the last weekend in October or maybe the full weekend before Halloween. People are in a more festive mood and starting to look for gifs for Christmas. Also, cooler.
DBA
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Thanks for the feedback! This is just the second year for the Downtown Bryan Association to manage the festival. We had a great turnout on Saturday - far bigger crowd than last year. I'll address some of the points raised so far:

  • In the history of the festival, the date has moved around 4 or 5 times, but all during summer/early fall. Between the two cities, Texas A&M and other local/regional seasonal events, it's tough to find the "best" time for a festival. Two years ago, the City of Bryan scheduled Reds for the last weekend of September. We decided to keep that date for several reasons. Our research showed vendors/wineries plan out their year based on the major festivals. Reds was a bit of a moving target for awhile, making it hard to consistently attract the highest quality vendors. Another reason is simply marketing - you can't expect to build on a brand when folks aren't sure when the festival is held from year to year. Also, it's important to have the festival on an Aggie non-home game weekend since hotels are booked for home games.
  • Vendors were offered the opportunity to upgrade to a corner location, all of which sold out fast this year. Aside from that, vendor placement was based on application submission date. We also took care not to place vendors side by side who had similar products.
  • Sunday attendance was much lighter, except for the standing room only crowd for Ray Wylie Hubbard. We moved the festival to a Saturday/Sunday based on feedback from previous years. Thursday street closings for a Friday/Saturday festival are tough on business for downtown merchants. We solicit feedback from everyone involved, so we will be taking a close look at this for next year.
We welcome your comments! We want to continue to make Texas Reds one of the top festivals in the state of Texas.
BurnetAg
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Interesting. I didn't even realize that Texas Reds was happening this past weekend.
DBA
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That IS interesting. We advertised on KBTX, KAGS, Suddenlink, 104.7 The Mix, Aggie96, Candy 95, WTAW, Chip Howard's show, KORA, Oldies 107.3, 101.9 The Beat, 99.5 The Fox and few more. There were also ads in The Eagle, The Battalion, Maroon Weekly, Texas Highways, Texas Monthly, Texas Co-op Power and Edible Austin. We had multiple billboards in and out of town, posters and a healthy stream of posts on Facebook and Twitter. Finally, we had multiple press releases from the City of Bryan, as well as our own.
aggiemom89
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I am interested to know when I went to buy the tickets they said they could not take my credit card because the Internet was down. I told the clerk I am 12 steps from Fibertown, so I don't see how your Internet can be down. She said she didn't know but they could not take a credit card.
DBA
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aggiemom - We know we had some issues with our ticketing process. Connectivity wasn't the problem. Downtown IT head Paul Marvin did a great job of providing wireless and was on site all day to help if needed. He worked well into the night on Saturday to make sure things would run smoothly on Sunday. Trust me - the last thing we wanted were long lines at the ticket booths, so we are already tackling that problem today so next year will be better.
dfphotos
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they ever schedule that steve wariner makeup concert?
DBA
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The Steve Wariner concert was the last year the festival was managed by the city, which was 2013. In 2014, the city agreed to refund those who bought the $5 wristband, with the refund handled through us. We publicized this on our website and Facebook page. For those who contacted us, we offered them the refund or a $5 discount on a ticketed item.
Max06
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AG
We had a good time, but we still wish that we could just buy a wine glass/pint glass without getting 10 tickets. Our group of 4 certainly had no interest in 80 tickets, but we all wanted a souvenir wine & beer glass.
Ornlu
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AG
We went Saturday evening - had a good time. We're locals, but had friends from out of town come in just for the festival.
My wants for next year:
1. Distribute the tasting booths around more. Instead of all the wine being crammed under a single tent, do 4-6 tents that are 1/4 the size, spread over the whole grounds. This will not only reduce the general crowded feeling, it'll make conversations with the vendors possible at less than a full scream.
2. Sell the commemorative glasses separately from the tickets, but offer a discount if they're bought together. $15/$15/$25?
3. The discount if tix were bought early through the website was only $0.62; convenience fees are the WORST. It was totally not worth it if it rained. For a $5 discount (AFTER that ^&@%& convenience fee), I'd have probably bought early. If you guys want to encourage early purchase, steepen the discount (or ditch the fee...)

Other than that - went great.
toocool
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I agree with Ornlu totally!
AggieBarstool
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I'll add a few points:

  • Like previously mentioned, this needs to be several weeks later in the year. 95 deg. is simply too hot for an outdoor event like this.
  • There were SO FEW craft beer vendors vs. wineries. I hadn't been to Reds in a long while and was exited to learn that craft brewing was now a part.
  • It was also kind of disappointing that of the few craft breweries that were there, several were big-name brewers: Shiner, Independence Brewing (Convict Hill, anyone?), Deep Elllum, Karbach. I can get those at HEB.
  • Is there ANY way you can control crowd-flow inside the tent with the wine vendors? Maybe a lane for those standing in front of the winery and another "express" lane for people that want to get down the aisle? I was frequently frustrated by people who got their sample and just wanted to mill about.
  • Sound engineers needed to tweak the sound by the dining tent. It was FAR too loud in there for most sensible people. I just wanted to sit down and dine in quiet.

quote:
the last thing we wanted were long lines at the ticket booths
Yeah, that failed miserably. My SO and I waited in line 15 minutes for will-call pickup. There seemed to be one trained person working the booth and a "helper" who had no idea what she was doing. She didn't have any equipment to scan the QR code we had on my phone. In the end we showed her the email that served as a receipt. What was to keep us from forwarding that on to several of our friends and getting in them in for free? Alas, she gave us double what we were supposed to receive (we paid for one of each commemorative glass, two dinners, and 10 tokens). I shouldn't have to point out her error and give back the excess. I also shouldn't have had to wait in line with the same people that didn't plan ahead and wanted to buy their tickets last-minute; what's the point in buying in advance if I'm treated like someone who didn't choose to buy in advance (and don't say $$$ -- the online pricing came out to less than $1 cheaper after you factor in the online processing fee)?

While we're ranting about the lines -- SIGNAGE. For the love of god, please put up signage. It was frustrating having to stand in line only to be told we'd have to get OUT of line, get age-verified, then wait back in line. Five minutes later, people were going through our line doing the age-verification... so why did we have to get out of line then get back in line?!! We couldn't figure out where we were supposed to go and wandered around until we stumbled across a group of people waiting in a group, which luckily was the line we were looking for.

EDIT: Just saw Ornlu's post. I agree COMPLETELY!
DBA
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AggieBarstool - thanks for your comments. We've already thought of a few solutions for the ticket booth issues and will continue to work on that. I think the improvements will be noticed next year! We offered a deeper discount prior to Labor Day - all tickets for steak and wine/craft beer tastings were $20, plus the convenience fee. As someone mentioned earlier, those convenience fees are pesky. They add up when dealing with the volume of purchases for an event this large.

We will also look carefully at the suggestions for craft beer breweries and wine tent placement. The city previously had the wine tents scattered throughout the festival. Based on feedback and research from other festivals, we moved to the one large tent last year.

We've had a great deal of positive feedback from many people today, including booking agents wanting to place bands into the 2016 festival, merchants who were happy with the volume of customers, and wineries who reported record bottle sales. We know we won't make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time, but we will always keep looking for ways to improve.

techno-ag
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AG
Sandy, congrats on doing an excellent job with the transition from city control to you guys. It just keeps getting better year after year, and y'all did great this time.

I'm not sure I'd worry too much about changing the date. "Normal" temps are in the mid-80s for this time of year. Just because it hit mid-90s this year doesn't mean it will be that hot next year. Here's a graph of average low & high temps in September for our area from weatherspark.com:



Keep up the good work! Downtown Bryan is an incredible asset to the twin cities!
Tradishun
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quote:
First time I went and enjoyed it. I was there Sunday and the crowds were actually very sparse, at least early in the day. The cloud cover and breeze helped mitigate the heat a lot. Was impressed more with the craft beer tent then the wine tent, but did find a few very good TX wines I knew nothing about. Mainly went to support my buds in Hazy Ray. All in all a good time and would go back for sure.


Hazy Ray (2 Ags in band!) killed it, Fly. That was a great set.
AggieBarstool
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quote:
AggieBarstool - thanks for your comments. We've already thought of a few solutions for the ticket booth issues and will continue to work on that. I think the improvements will be noticed next year! We offered a deeper discount prior to Labor Day - all tickets for steak and wine/craft beer tastings were $20, plus the convenience fee. As someone mentioned earlier, those convenience fees are pesky. They add up when dealing with the volume of purchases for an event this large.

We will also look carefully at the suggestions for craft beer breweries and wine tent placement. The city previously had the wine tents scattered throughout the festival. Based on feedback and research from other festivals, we moved to the one large tent last year.
Cool. I didn't know tickets were cheaper before labor day. That's good to know for next year.

Just a thought -- as someone who doesn't consume local media (no radio or newspaper and very little TV), I literally had no idea Reds was coming up. It took a colleague mentioning it before I checked out tickets for myself. I don't know how (if?) you can address this market segment, but people like me exist in greater number than you perhaps are thinking. Just a thought.

It's good to know that I wasn't going crazy about tent placement. I vaguely thought Saturday that in the past, tasting tents were more spread out. To be honest, I'd be in favor of spreading it out again; the crowds getting through the Winery tent were very off-putting to me.

Just a thought -- with the beer vendors you placed them back-to-back, so the crowds sampling beers had to walk around the perimeter. Could y'all do that with the wineries, too? That would free up significant space for those of us who want to push through quickly the ability to do so.
Tradishun
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quote:
We welcome your comments! We want to continue to make Texas Reds one of the top festivals in the state of Texas.


Thanks for inviting feedback.

1. I think having it a bit later (post Columbis Day?) would help with temps.

2. Bring back Hazy Ray next year! And give them a prime-time slot! Wow, are they excellent, with great BCS/Aggie roots.

techno-ag
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AG
quote:

Just a thought -- as someone who doesn't consume local media (no radio or newspaper and very little TV), I literally had no idea Reds was coming up. It took a colleague mentioning it before I checked out tickets for myself. I don't know how (if?) you can address this market segment, but people like me exist in greater number than you perhaps are thinking. Just a thought.

For Pete's sake, AB, if y'all don't consume any local media, don't notice billboards and radio/TV/newspaper ads, can you really complain about being uninformed? Good grief.
FlyRod
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I'll add another voice to the "cooler weather would be better" chorus. September and early October, regardless of what the average temps are are often blazing hot, and that's just not conducive to wine and beer tasting. And given that it's a family event, folks with small kids are not going to be eager to tote them around in hot humid weather.
AggieBarstool
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quote:
quote:

Just a thought -- as someone who doesn't consume local media (no radio or newspaper and very little TV), I literally had no idea Reds was coming up. It took a colleague mentioning it before I checked out tickets for myself. I don't know how (if?) you can address this market segment, but people like me exist in greater number than you perhaps are thinking. Just a thought.

For Pete's sake, AB, if y'all don't consume any local media, don't notice billboards and radio/TV/newspaper ads, can you really complain about being uninformed? Good grief.
No, but at the same time, the event organizers can't complain about the potential revenue lost because they didn't advertise to a younger, more tech savvy generation that choose to avoid garbage media.
FlyRod
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Very very true, Aggiebarstool. Good call.
techno-ag
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AG
quote:
quote:
quote:

Just a thought -- as someone who doesn't consume local media (no radio or newspaper and very little TV), I literally had no idea Reds was coming up. It took a colleague mentioning it before I checked out tickets for myself. I don't know how (if?) you can address this market segment, but people like me exist in greater number than you perhaps are thinking. Just a thought.

For Pete's sake, AB, if y'all don't consume any local media, don't notice billboards and radio/TV/newspaper ads, can you really complain about being uninformed? Good grief.
No, but at the same time, the event organizers can't complain about the potential revenue lost because they didn't advertise to a younger, more tech savvy generation that choose to avoid garbage media.
Where?
BCS-Ag
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Texags
bushytailed
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AG
I understand wanting to keep the wine patrons out of the sun, but putting everyone under one tent was not a great idea. Last year the wine glass table, wine sales table, and wine vendors were in separate locations. This year everything was under the same tent. Plus, all the foot traffic was under the tent. It was a complete bottleneck. The bistro tables under the wine tent were a horrible idea. They really should go back to last year's format (patrons walking the perimeter) or have a couple wine tents with vendors more spread out like CoB had previously.

Another vote for moving this back at least a couple weeks.

It would be nice to have some tented areas where people can sit band-free.
Goose83
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AG
Have to agree with everyone about the wine tasting tents. I didn't do any tasting this year myself, as I'm developing a sulfite allergy (sigh), but walking past the wine tent it reminded of nothing so much as a giant blivet. The combination of too many vendors and tasters jammed like sardines into a dark, claustrophobic tent in 90+ degree heat is a total turnoff. As others have said, either get a bigger tent, or break it down into a number of smaller tents. The wine tasting tent(s) should be a peaceful and relaxing place to kick back and enjoy the wines, and not a wall to wall crush resembling what one would find at Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

I also agree the $25.00 tasting packages were a tad steep in price. Need to offer a couple of smaller packages at lower price points, especially if all someone wants to do is buy a souvenir mug or glass to take home with them.

And as before, in regards to the day, either move it further back into into October/November, or sometime in the Spring. I know a number of people who stopped going years ago due to the heat, so by moving it to a more suitable date I imagine you might find a lot of them will return, not to mention bringing in others who have put off going altogether because they either don't want to, or physically cannot get out in the heat.
techno-ag
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AG
quote:
Texags
We talk about it every year.
Hammerheadjim
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AG
Crowds were better than last year. Weather was fine, maybe a little warm.

Not sure if I agree with the lack of Millenial advertising. I saw it advertised all over the place including here at Texags.
ratfacemcdougal
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Scheduling against an Aggie away game will always be hit and miss, because their scheduling can change. I would agree on moving back a week or two. Just never know with weather also. Here is another issue with moving to deep into October, because of the weather, Texas has a plethora of festivals that really hit big time in October and November, and that is a lot more competition for the consumer dollar.
songstress
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I was there as a volunteer and had a lot of fun. The wine tent idea is good, as were the pub tables, but the tent needs to be wider and longer and there should be more fans or cooling units facing into the tent. People were very crowded and more space to mingle would allow for a better guest experience. Wine tasting is a social activity. I love the set up at the Mushroom Festival in Madisonville where they have a huge tent for sitting and enjoying next to the wineries.

Wine glass packages are an issue. I know the festival needs to make money but quite honestly, I have enough souvenir wine glasses and don't want/ need anymore. I have not been to Reds as a customer because I don't want to pay for a glass I don't need. Mushroom does this too and it's annoying. Give me options! If a person has a previous festival glass, that should suffice, in my opinion. Max price should be $5 for a glass if required to buy one.

From a volunteer perspective, the greatest need I observed is more TABC certified servers. There were tons of extra volunteers hanging around, but no relief for servers. I would suggest time and a half or double time credit f or TABC certified volunteers, especially considering the out of pocket $11 certification fee. This could be an incentive for members of organizations to actually meet the greatest volunteer demand that I observed for the festival and since I don't serve as a profession, this is the only thing I need that certification for. I did appreciate consistent availability of bottled water, but I would also suggest snacks in the tents for volunteers. The center was too far away and the crowds on Saturday were too much to just abandon post to go grab a snack. I volunteered for several hours after my shift ended because of the demand and I was happy to help out, but hangriness was quickly approaching.

On another level, I interacted with a lot of out of towners, particularly San Antonio. For many, this was not their first Reds festival. I thanked them for visiting our town and offered suggestions on other businesses to visit. Great job to DBA on bringing people here! I did not go around the festival because I was tired after my shift and wanted to get home for the gam, but the crowds looked good and people were having fun! I appreciate your willingness to consider feedback and look forward to seeing this festival improve! Thank you for your hard work.

JarAG2007
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AG
Multiple things here:

-Make Friday night bigger and take away Sunday. You are going to lose the good vendors and distributors because of Sunday. There isn't enough foot traffic to validate Sunday for these people paying for spots, workers, haulers, etc.

-It is never a good idea to compete with college football in a town like ours. Yes I know its Bryan, but you get traffic from College Station too.
-Stop using glass for tasting. It isn't hard to think about people consuming alcohol carrying glass on streets equals a ton of broken glass and cleanups. People were dropping them every 5 minutes then asking for new ones.

-Utilize the outside of the streets for wine and beer vendors, with a narrower long tent in the center. With this you can charge different rates for better locations to those vendors. If you are going to make the footprint so big utilize it.

-Stop spreading yourself thin on the number of stages and invest that money in quality. I am not saying the performers are bad but if you get rid of say that north stage past the cook-off area you could get two big headliners. One for a large Friday night concert and one large Saturday night concert and no more Sundays.

Again Sunday is a waste of time in regards to the event. Make Friday night longer hours and bigger. Agree to move the time of year around football and when cooler. Don't force everyone to drink under one tent. Use something other than glass mugs for tasting because drunk people drop things.
Ornlu
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AG
Oh, one more thing: The beer vendors.

I'm a bit of a craft beer/homebrew snob. Only one of the best 6 breweries in Texas was here. I didn't bother with getting the beer tasting package because the stuff I really want wasn't there. The guys to get are Peticolas, Jester King, Karbach, Community, St. Arnolds, and Lakewood (in that order).

Some of those are going to be HARD to get to the festival. Peticolas doesn't do anything except kegs to top-notch tap rooms in the Dallas area. Jester King pretty much never leaves their own tap room. St. Arnolds is so big they probably don't do festivals anymore. But if those were there, I'd bring all of my other beer friends from out of town.
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