Enjoyed the weekend. Preferred the beer tent set up - vendors facing outward. The wine tent was claustrophobic on Saturday. Would like to see wine tent done the same way, maybe two of them for easier access. We solved the problem by visiting beer on Saturday, wine on Sunday when less crowded.

Enjoyed the vendors and made art purchases and arranged for a future custom purchase, enjoyed the music, ate a meal in a downtown restaurant, visited downtown shops, visited the farmers market. My teen was bored to death, except for watching Daniel Gonzales, please have him again next year. I would have shopped more downtown, but I was surprised how many downtown businesses closed. Foot traffic is still business.

Imagine the placement in the calendar is difficult - home games, First Friday, BV Fair, Messina Hof Harvetfest, all competing for fall weekends. This was definitely better than June, however.

Plan on attending again, after not attending for many years.

I love wine, but after years of attending and getting another souvenir glass I don't need, I decided to skip the wine tasting this year. $25 for a glass and ten tastes is overpriced. Instead, we just bought tickets and bought canned beer and enjoyed the music. Let people bring their own cups, but offer the souvenir. Don't force people to buy them.

The one stage way out on the dusty lot was a bit far away from the rest of the festival. I felt bad for the acts out there, all of whom seemed pretty talented. On Sunday, few people ventured down to that empty end to listen in the blazing sun.

All the musicians we heard were terrific. Keep up the talent!

In regards to the convenience fees.

If you are going to offer a discount for buying in advance, the either EAT the convenience fee or just price it into the cost so it isn't seen.

if you are going to offer a $5 discount, then the price should be $20 flat cost to the person... you eat the $1.50 convenience fee and chalk it up to the cost of doing business on the internet. essentially you plan on only making 18.50 on the advance option.

Buying online should save you needing to having someone staffed to actually handle the transaction and issuing the tickets which should make up for the fees you may have to pay for credit card processing.

People should be able to print their tickets at home and have them scanned in when they arrive in a separate line than the people buying their tickets at the location.

techno - thank you so much, but I can't take all the credit. I have a fantastic events manager, Amanda, who puts in long hours researching and attending festivals to learn best practices. I could say a lot more about her, but I don't want anyone trying to hire her away from me! The third person of our team is Jessie, who started as a graphic design intern with us, and after graduating from A&M last fall, we hired her to be an assistant of all things DBA. We had two interns who put in long hours last weekend, as well. Our small staff of 3 people couldn't pull this off without many volunteers and the continued support of the DBA Board and the City of Bryan.
Responding to some of the comments:

• The time of year is probably not going to change for the near future, so we will look at providing more covered seating and cooling stations.
• Plastic vs glass is something we can look at, although I only remember a small number of calls for broken glass cleanup - fewer than 6.
• In addition to the traditional advertising I mentioned, we had quite a bit of digital marketing, including "follow" ads which are displayed based on zip codes and interests.
• We are meeting with our music booking agent today to discuss strategy for future festivals. I agree - there were quality bands with small audiences, so we need to fix that.

We appreciate the feedback on this forum. Much of what has been said is on our radar as well.

Thanks for listening DBA - We'll be back next year too.

There are still Texas Reds parking signs (accessible parking, vendor parking) up on / near Tabor. Will somebody be taking those down?

Signs were removed about the time you posted. Thanks!

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105,000 Aggies will sit in the broiling sun in early September for hours to watch a football game against a Division 2 opponent yet get upset that it's too hot under a covered tent with cooling units to taste wine.
That's interesting to me and comes off as just whining.

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Yes, when you spend that kind of money on season tickets I most defiantly will sit thru the heat. I don't drink wine or beer so I had planned on attending for the vendors and a steak. Since we don't watch or listen to any local stations, I must have just tuned it all out. Figures.

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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).

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My short list would be Karbach, Southern Star (in Conroe and Aggie owned), No Label, Lone Pint and maybe Rahr too.

From a scheduling and weather stand point what's wrong with having this in the spring? No football, no crazy heat...seems like a win win.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Where?

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TexAgs. Reddit. Posters/flyers across campus. TAMU listservs. Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram (that's just a guess, I don't use the last two and barely use Facebook).

Had a great time. Good food, good music, good crowd.

A few hiccups here and there and I do agree with a few of the suggestions about the ticket lines etc but
all in all, great event.

Nah. If you missed it on radio and TV and billboards, TexAgs etc., you'd have missed it there too. You're just not paying attention.

From my experience, it's mainly the southies who don't "consume" local media. Their loss. I guess they are too removed from the rest of B/CS to try and find out what's going on around town. I saw lots of young people in their 20s at the festival who must have found out about it somehow.

We've lived in B/CS for almost twelve years and this is the first time we went. We also took my dad and his girlfriend who were in town from Fort Worth for the weekend.

Overall, we really had a great time. We got there around 1:00, used the free shuttle from Blinn and didn't have any trouble finding anything (other than the friends we were meeting, ha!). We had a little bit of trouble with check-in, mostly due to the iPads having trouble processing payments which held up the line for those of us who downloaded the tickets to our phones. We were able to sit down in the shade at Proudest Monkey to have a quick snack and by the time we were done there, it had cooled off enough to walk around and visit booths.

My only real complaint was the layout of the wine tent. It was difficult to get around and spend more than the two minutes to fill up your glass and hand over your ticket, so that was disappointing. But, my husband and my dad both had a great time trying beer and were both thankful for the college football games (since we aren't Aggies) playing in a few tents.

I also wanted to say thank you to the staff. We had a small issue with my dad's beer glass and ended up talking to several very kind people who were able to fix the problem for us at no additional charge. Every single person we encountered from event staff to the vendors were helpful, kind and knew where to direct us. Even the girls working the ID checkpoint were friendly (even to those who were surprised they needed to bring an ID with them?)!

Thank you to all involved! We're looking forward to coming back next year!

4lilmonkeys - Thank you for your comments! I helped someone with a replacement pint glass behind the Palace. Was that you?

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From my experience, it's mainly the southies who don't "consume" local media. Their loss. I guess they are too removed from the rest of B/CS to try and find out what's going on around town. I saw lots of young people in their 20s at the festival who must have found out about it somehow.

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WTF is a "southie"? Did you just make this a Bryan vs. CS thing?

^ Having a conversation with yourself?

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Your smugness just doesn't stop, does it?

Barstool has a legitimate point; I've heard from quite a few folks who felt there was less advertising this year. There is also an uptick in other things going on so more advertising would certainly help.

That said, and again, it was a great couple days and kudos to the organizers.

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DBA posted " 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."

Looks like advertising was plentiful and varied across all forms of media.Even the tech-savvy millennials had the chance to encounter, or ignore, the advertising.

If the date was chosen late enough for them to know that we had an away game last weekend, why didn't they choose two weeks from now when they knew we would have a bye week (and it would be much cooler)?

Count, we can't wait until A&M announces the football schedule to plan a festival this large. A&M and Arkansas have a contract to play at AT&T Stadium through 2024. Unless that changes, we know that weekend will be an away game for the near future. Planning for Reds 2016 has started. We have already received calls from bands wanting to secure a place in the lineup for next year, and wineries and other vendors are putting Sept. 24-25 on their calendars.

Here's an interesting anecdote regarding outdoor activities and hot weather. Other than First Friday, July is a slow month for downtown event planning because summer and hot sidewalks don't really invite a lot of foot traffic. We have two popular wine tasting events - Sip & Shop in the spring and a Wine & Wassail Walk to kick off the Christmas shopping season. These are events held inside downtown stores. Ticket buyers get a special glass and walk from store to store to sample various wines and hopefully, do a little shopping while inside. We decided to hold a similar event with craft beer in July. Cheers to Craft Beer was held on the last Saturday in July, a day when the temp was somewhere in the high 90's. Not only did we sell out of tickets, we probably could have sold many more if we had enough glassware. There are plenty of places to step inside during Texas Reds, as well as the covered tents and cooling fans. So, long story to say that if people are interested in an event, the temperature doesn't necessarily matter.

Nice to see downtown Bryan reinventing itself. Bigger, better, cleaner, growing. More shops opening all the time along with lofts, apartments, etc. Nice job! Enjoy strolling the streets of a vibrant downtown on a weekend evening.

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Nice to see downtown Bryan reinventing itself. Bigger, better, cleaner, growing. More shops opening all the time along with lofts, apartments, etc. Nice job! Enjoy strolling the streets of a vibrant downtown on a weekend evening.

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Count, we can't wait until A&M announces the football schedule to plan a festival this large. A&M and Arkansas have a contract to play at AT&T Stadium through 2024. Unless that changes, we know that weekend will be an away game for the near future. Planning for Reds 2016 has started. We have already received calls from bands wanting to secure a place in the lineup for next year, and wineries and other vendors are putting Sept. 24-25 on their calendars.

Here's an interesting anecdote regarding outdoor activities and hot weather. Other than First Friday, July is a slow month for downtown event planning because summer and hot sidewalks don't really invite a lot of foot traffic. We have two popular wine tasting events - Sip & Shop in the spring and a Wine & Wassail Walk to kick off the Christmas shopping season. These are events held inside downtown stores. Ticket buyers get a special glass and walk from store to store to sample various wines and hopefully, do a little shopping while inside. We decided to hold a similar event with craft beer in July. Cheers to Craft Beer was held on the last Saturday in July, a day when the temp was somewhere in the high 90's. Not only did we sell out of tickets, we probably could have sold many more if we had enough glassware. There are plenty of places to step inside during Texas Reds, as well as the covered tents and cooling fans. So, long story to say that if people are interested in an event, the temperature doesn't necessarily matter.

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I wasn't complaining, I was just curious! I didn't realize that the A&M/Ark game was always on a set date. That makes sense.

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Count, we can't wait until A&M announces the football schedule to plan a festival this large. A&M and Arkansas have a contract to play at AT&T Stadium through 2024. Unless that changes, we know that weekend will be an away game for the near future. Planning for Reds 2016 has started. We have already received calls from bands wanting to secure a place in the lineup for next year, and wineries and other vendors are putting Sept. 24-25 on their calendars.

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A&M is scheduled to play at Notre Dame Sept 27, 2025 so you last wknd in Sept works for the next 10 festivals.

An outdoor festival is a huge undertaking to plan and produce. The one thing that people are complaining about the most (the heat) is really a poor reason to move this outdoor event later in the year. As you move deeper into fall you have a much higher possibility for foul weather. Rain and high winds would be a reason to cancel an event like this. Nobody wants to sink 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars into an event and watch it get rained out. So the reality is, they pick a date that: has an away game, is not likely to suffer from extreme weather, and does not compete with other festivals. July and early August would be a better bet, but the extreme heat would keep most people away. September is right in the middle of Hurricane season. It's already a gamble.

The promoters would much rather take a 10% loss on ticket sales due to heat then take a complete loss due to a huge rain.

Festival planning is hard.

Festival planning is indeed hard. But it seems there is a more certain chance of hot weather in September than foul weather later on. And various posters made good points; wine and beer tasting isn't as nice in hot weather, and hot weather drives people into the tents to avoid the sun where it gets, well, even hotter.

But yeah it's tough call. First time for me, and I and my friends really enjoyed it overall.

I agree with fewer stages for the bands. Some had only a handful of people watching, and that's unfortunate.

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From a scheduling and weather stand point what's wrong with having this in the spring? No football, no crazy heat...seems like a win win.

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I assume it's hard to schedule against other conflicts going on (Easter, Parents Weekend, Graduations, etc).

More importantly, I would love to see the event be Friday/Saturday. I understand that the businesses might be afraid of losing some customers due to street closures, but the vast majority of the stores didn't even bother opening their doors on Sunday during the festival.

It seems odd that a business would be afraid of a possible loss of customers not being able to make it to their shop on a Thursday, but they weren't willing to stay open on Sunday for guaranteed customers with people in town for Reds.