As usual, people going to Jazz Fest should bring an appetite. This year, though, they can leave the cash behind. They should also be prepared for a raft of changes in the famously steady-running food options at the fest.
Jazz Fest food is an integral part of the draw and the experience, turning the Fair Grounds into a giant food festival within a music festival. The vendors themselves have become part of the culture and traditions that many people build around the fest.
That means even minute changes are tracked by hungry aficionados. This year brings a multitude of them, and perhaps some foreshadowing of more to come.
Baked in are higher costs for food and staffing, by now universally recognized across the hospitality sector. There is a population of vendors who are beloved and long-serving, but also getting up there in years and making decisions about their future. And, overarching it all, a big operational change as Jazz Fest goes cashless.
This move is not unusual, and actually is now the mainstream for big events. But at Jazz Fest it represents a major change for the dyed in the wool processes that make all that fantastic food happen.
In interviews, some food vendors told me they plan to just roll with it; others said they’re looking at this year as a time to assess what they’ll do in the future.
I hope festival goers will roll with it too, recognizing that change doesn’t have to mean the end of something, especially not when approached with an open mind, flexibility and the goal to have a great time and support each other. You don’t necessarily need folding money to do that.
After all, due to the pandemic we already got to experience what life is like without our Jazz Fest food rituals – twice, in fact. We also saw the lengths to which New Orleans people would go to get their fix and the relief and reunion at finding most of them back last year.
That’s just the way New Orleans people dive into the things that they love and food is on the main stage of that obsession.
