A new comedy and food festival, backed by Pepsi and OCVibe, launched in Anaheim this past weekend to drive visitation during a slow weekend in the city.<\/p>\n
Visit Anaheim launched \u201cStand Up, Chow Down: An Anaheim Experience\u201d to fill a gap in the city\u2019s packed convention calendar, which is expected to generate nearly 600,000 hotel room nights and $1.7 billion in economic impact in 2026.<\/p>\n
Despite the city\u2019s busy schedule, Visit Anaheim said it found a lack of activity during the first weekend of April, prompting the organization to find an event to fill the gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a need for us to really amplify and extend people\u2019s understanding of how they can extend their visit when they\u2019re here in the destination,\u201d Chief Marketing Officer Scott Oklin told the Business Journal.<\/p>\n
Last year, the tourism group decided to create a new festival in hopes of launching an annual tentpole event for the city. Visit Anaheim worked with Doug DeLuca, a producer of the \u201cJimmy Kimmel Show,\u201d to create \u201cStand Up, Chow Down: An Anaheim Experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organization co-owns the festival with live events organizer Don\u2019t Tell Comedy and online cooking demonstrator Kittch, both of which also helped curate the weekend\u2019s comedy shows and culinary partners.<\/p>\n
It took place April 3-4 at the Anaheim Packing District with actor and comedian Adam Ray headlining at Marrakesh on a sold-out Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is hopefully the first of many forays into this space,\u201d Oklin said.<\/p>\n
The Sponsors<\/p>\n
Pepsi invested $150,000 for the festival\u2019s first year and OCVibe, the $4 billion mixed-use development under construction at the Honda Center, became a sponsor with a $25,000 investment.<\/p>\n
Yelp and Diageo, the London-based owner of Guinness and Crown Royal with $20 billion in annual sales, were also sponsors.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re gravitating towards the potential of an all-new annual event \u201cand getting in on the ground level,\u201d Oklin said. The long-term goal is to have sponsors span multiple industries, he added.<\/p>\n
Attendees could choose from 12 comedy shows starring comedians such as Craig Conant, seen on Comedy Central, and Rosebud Baker, who\u2019s worked on SNL and HBO shows, held at venues like Monkish Brewing, with local food trucks parked nearby.<\/p>\n
Some shows featured a lineup of secret performers at undisclosed locations per Don\u2019t Tell Comedy\u2019s event strategy of sending the venue address to ticket holders on the day of.<\/p>\n
Tickets ranged from $30 to $50 and were sold per show, with all purchases including discounts to various Anaheim Packing House vendors. Total inventory was limited to just over 1,000 tickets across all events, according to Visit Anaheim.<\/p>\n
After this year, the organization aims to expand the festival\u2019s footprint across the city through additional shows and larger venues.<\/p>\n
Visit Anaheim also plans to launch more events related to sports, wine and music, which could come online starting in 2027.<\/p>\n
Overall, the tourism group anticipates 30 million visitors in Anaheim by 2028, a milestone for the city and four years earlier than expected, according to Chief Executive Mike Waterman.<\/p>\n
Tailwinds are events such as the World Cup this summer and the Summer Olympics in 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing more and more that travel trends are being designed around trips that have an experience attached to them,\u201d Oklin said. \u201cExtending that length of stay is ultimately going to increase the economic impact that the city is able to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new comedy and food festival, backed by Pepsi and OCVibe, launched in Anaheim this past weekend to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-254250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}