The exterior of Pizza Ponte is located on a bustling block with other restaurants in the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., seen on Feb. 24, 2025.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
When it first started in 2009, Oakland’s Taste of Temescal was a small neighborhood food crawl, with ticket sales benefiting local schools and nonprofits like the Women’s Cancer Resource Center of Berkeley. Seventeen years later, the event, which showcases some of the city’s most highly acclaimed restaurants, has expanded to include nearly 50 different businesses, with a trolley ferrying ticket holders down Telegraph Avenue.
But perhaps the biggest change is that the event no longer benefits local schools. Instead, proceeds from the $60 tickets now go to the Telegraph Temescal District Association, the nonprofit business improvement district that runs the event — a fact of which multiple local businesses say they were not aware until recently.
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Tory Wentworth, the owner of popular ice cream shop Curbside Creamery, has participated in Taste of Temescal for over a decade. But when he noticed that something was different about the event that took place on April 29 this year, he took to Instagram to share.
“We won’t be participating in Taste of Temescal going forward. In fact, I regret participating this year, and I want to explain why,” the nine-slide post from Curbside began, which now has over 3,000 likes.
Wentworth told SFGATE that while businesses like Curbside lose money on the samples they hand out to ticket holders at the event, he was always happy to participate, since the money went toward a charitable cause he believed in.
When Taste of Temescal returned in 2025 after a hiatus, he said in the Instagram post Wednesday, he noticed that no volunteers came by the creamery’s booth to help like they had in previous years. When he used the signup form to ask for a volunteer’s help this year, and emailed to complain about passes being oversold, he said no one responded.
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“That’s when I got a sinking feeling, realizing that I had been trusting that this was the event I thought I knew without looking closer,” he wrote in the Instagram post.
This year, Wentworth said, Curbside had only been prepared for the suggested 400 samples, and employees were left to deal with hundreds of disappointed pass holders after they ran out early (Daniel Swafford, executive director of the Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement District, told SFGATE that it sold approximately 600 tickets this year, as the organization didn’t expect every ticket holder to make it to every booth).
Temescal Alley, where Curbside Creamery is located, on Monday, July 24, 2017, in Oakland, Calif.
S.F Chronicle/Getty Images
Sensing something was different, Wentworth looked back at previous emails — and noticed that the fundraiser now benefited the business district, rather than local schools like it usually had. He said he felt like he’d been tricked for not “reading the fine print.”
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“I don’t think there’s any way they didn’t know that if they had come to us individually and been like, ‘Hey, would you still donate all this if it’s going to the BID instead of the schools? ’ We would be like, ‘No,’” Wentworth told SFGATE by phone Wednesday.
Swafford told SFGATE that while Taste of Temescal no longer benefits local schools, proceeds from the event now fund free family-friendly events like the Annual Temescal Street Fair and Halloween Trick or Treat, as well as neighborhood beautification projects and safety initiatives. The final Taste of Temescal event to benefit schools was in 2022. Swafford started his role as administrative director in 2024.
“There was a long gap in having the Taste, starting because of the pandemic,” Swafford said. “And rekindling the school involvement was also very difficult.”
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When the event returned from its hiatus in 2025, he said, the organization clearly communicated that Taste of Temescal now benefited the business district.
“This is an opportunity to put money where the district really is responsible for putting the focus of our charitable work in the community and support of the small businesses,” he said. “That’s been communicated clearly from the very beginning, in all of the messages.”
Wentworth never saw it. In a comment on his post, the Temescal District wrote, “We regret that you didn’t feel fully informed about the event’s intention and fundraising goals.” The reply gave details of supported events, and added, “In 2025, using feedback from many district businesses, the Temescal board wanted an event that better showcased our district and its wonderful small businesses while helping mitigate the pandemic’s negative effects. “
An email obtained by SFGATE inviting merchants to participant in the 2025 Taste of Temescal event said it supported the “Temescal Street Fair, 40th Street Block Party, Halloween, the District public safety program and more,” while an email inviting merchants to participate in the 2026 event obtained by SFGATE said “Proceeds benefit The Telegraph Temescal District Association as we work to keep the district thriving.” Event pages for both events contained similar disclosures.
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However, for businesses like Curbside that had known the event as a fundraiser for schools for over a decade, that update managed to slip right by them. Tana Howard, the owner of Halloween-themed bar the Avenue, also told SFGATE that she wasn’t aware until now that the Taste of Temescal no longer benefited schools. The bar has been participating in the food crawl since around 2010.
The Avenue, a Halloween-themed bar in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland, Calif.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate.com
“We will not participate in the event again unless it is a charity event; unless it supports Oakland public schools like it used to,” Howard told SFGATE by phone Thursday. “And we’re disappointed that it hasn’t been. Because at that point, when it’s not a charity event, we’re just giving away beer.”
Other merchants that participated in the 2026 Taste of Temescal, including FOB Kitchen, Temescal Brewing and Taqueria La Venganza, also shared with SFGATE that they had not been aware of the change until seeing Wentworth’s Instagram post. “Shame on @temescaloakland this is why we never participate,” read a comment from Temescal restaurant Burdell on the post.
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“I wasn’t aware, I thought it went to school[s] like it always has for years,” a representative of FOB Kitchen told SFGATE via email Thursday.
Temescal Brewing owner Brandon Börgel also told SFGATE that he wasn’t aware that Taste of Temescal now benefited the business improvement district until seeing Curbside Creamery’s post.
“It is disappointing, because hosting the event for such a large crowd requires a pretty big donation of beer and staff on our part,” he wrote in an email. “We’re stoked to do it as long as it goes to a good cause, but we agree the proceeds should not go to the BID.”
Howard said the Avenue spent $1,400 on the Taste of Temescal this year; Wentworth estimated Curbside Creamery spent around $1,000.
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Wentworth said that since so many business owners were confused, he believes the business district should have been more up-front about the change.
“Honestly, they should have just made an entirely new event,” he said. “At the very least, when I went to that sign-up form, there should have been a huge banner that was like, ‘Just so you know, we had a structural change and this event is no longer a school benefit.’”