For Vendors, Garlic Festival is a Success

For food lovers courageous enough to brave the sweltering summer heat and miles of gridlocked traffic, the Gilroy Garlic Festival was the ideal three-day weekend getaway.

But for the festival's 110 independent arts and crafts merchants and 63 food vendors, the festival presented a rare opportunity to sell their hand-crafted merchandise or gourmet cuisine to an audience that exceeded 100,000.

"Its been a pretty good festival already," said Ray Wood, owner of Brighten Your Life Creations. Wood and his son Zack did not spend the weekend watching celebrity chefs or jazz bands perform.

They sold their handcrafted wind spinners from a corner booth on the Ranch Side of the festival. "I make my living like this," Wood said, sternly. "This is my contribution to the family budget."

The Wood's were lucky this year. It appeared difficult for many people to overlook the eye-catching wind spinners at the corner booth as they strolled through the arts and crafts section. Many stopped for several minutes, captivated by the optical allusion created when the wind spinners spin. "Depending on which way they're spinning," Zach Wood said, "the sphere looks like it's travelling up or down the coil."   

And as of Saturday afternoon, Wood's once part-time enterprise was buzzing with customers. "Business has been really well so far," he said, smiling. "Folks love our work."

Positive feedback was common among many of the merchants at the festival, including first-time Garlic Festival vendor Tracy "Tee" Hood, owner of The Jerky Hut.

"This experience has beat my expectations," said Hood, handing out samples of his jerky. “There’s only one other show that I might have done better on a Friday," Hood said. "And that was a sportsman show.”

The Jerky Hut specializing in 25 flavors of beef and turkey jerky. And although Hood openly admits that his jerky is probably more expensive than others, he said it doesn't bother him. "I don’t care because I think my jerky is better," he said. "In the end people going to pay for what they think is good product.”

But being a first-year vendor has its woes. Near the end of the festival on Saturday, The Jerky Hut booth had plenty of customers. The only thing Hood's four-man team was lacking, was the product. "We brought more than 300 pounds," he said. "I'm going to sell out."

Running out of a product is something that Alex Larson, 33-year Garlic Festival veteran and co-owner of The Garlic Shoppe in Gilroy has learned to prepare for in his three-decade stint at the festival.

"I did the very first garlic French fries at the very first Garlic Festival in 1979," said Larson, recalling his first Garlic Festival. "I was 17 years old and I used my grandmother’s recipe for garlic French fries," he said. Over the years Larson's watched the festival evolve into the “very well, oiled machine” that it is today, he said.

The Garlic Shoppe boasts the title of "the oldest, and first garlic shop of its kind in the world,” Larson said. The shop was founded in 1985 by Jon Zondra Rapazzini, the name (Rapazzini) that the booth displays in tribute to their founder.

As one of the original vendors at the inaugural Garlic Festival in 1979, Larson enjoys a loyal base of repeat customers each year. "They know what to expect and if we change our menu," he said.

“Our top sellers would probably be the garlic stuffed olives, garlic blue cheese butter and Dude Dust has just absolutely been blowing-out,” Larson said. Garlic Dude Dust is a low-sodium, all-purpose seasoning that goes great on anything Larson said. “Eggs in the morning, steak – use it as a dry-rub, or mix it with a little bit of brown sugar and put it on ribs," he said. "It’s awesome. Incredible.”

Behind the scenes, many Garlic Festival food vendors have perfected the most primitive form of exchange: bartering. “We go to the back of the booth and trade products,” Larson said.

Larson negotiated an arrangement with Moon River Corn Company he said, where in exchanged for some product the corn on the cob vendor uses Garlic Dude Dust on their corn.     

But for one merchant in particular, the Garlic Festival has a more personal meaning. Susan Nemanic, creator of Mellow Mud Pottery and 18 year Garlic Festival merchant, said she returns each year to carry on the memory of her husband and son who passed away about five years ago. "We all worked in the business together," Nemanic said. "I kept the business going to kind of keep them going in a way,"  she said.

Mellow Mud Pottery also began as part-time hobby but eventually blossomed into a lucrative passion. "I fell in love with making pottery," Nemanic said. Every piece of pottery Nemanic designs and makes herself out of high-fired stoneware clay.

In her 18 years at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, Nemanic said she's held on to friendships that extend across family generations. And although Nemanic would like to retire she said her customers give her momentum. "It's really great to see people who support you over and over again each year," she said. "They give me a reason to go on."