CARROLLWOOD \u2014 Everyone just keeps coming back for seconds.<\/p>\n
And thirds, and fourths and so on.<\/p>\n
At the Taste of Carrollwood, the 2026 edition held March 1 for the third year in a row at Carrollwood Village Park, the number of attendees had grown. It was obvious. Especially to Carrollwood Area Business Association president Lee Pierson, the emcee of the event who enjoyed the dozens of vendors on hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt (was) just one of those years where you just knew it was going to pop,\u201d said Pierson, who is in his first year of a three-year tenure as CABA president. \u201cAnd I think it’s going to go over (past year\u2019s numbers). We usually have a lot of people who filter through the park because the park is free. We can’t close off the park, so people that are here visiting a park are like, \u2018what’s going on?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s when they buy a ticket \u2014 well, wristband.\u201d<\/p>\n
CABA, celebrating its 40th year of helping local businesses promote and connect in Carrollwood, sold 2,047 wristbands for $5, a price that included unlimited food samples from the dozens of restaurants on hand. There were long lines for places such as Chicken Salad Chick, doughnuts from Everglazed and slices of pizza from New York, New York Pizza.<\/p>\n
Other vendors, such as gyms and insurers, were on hand to pass out merchandise. Al though there were few interactive games, children were still able to use a cool down station, pose with Star Wars characters who were available and even enjoy a scavenger hunt.<\/p>\n
Since returning to Carrollwood at the Village Park, Pierson said the event has been well attended, even from residents outside of Carrollwood, and that parking is never an issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach year we seem to get bigger and bigger now, especially since the restart (of Taste of Carrollwood),\u201d Pierson added, referencing that the event went on hold during the height of COVID. \u201cParking has never been an issue, and the park people do a great job of parking them and keeping the park clean \u2014 not that we leave them a huge mess. \u2026 We\u2019ve never had an issue running out of parking spots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pierson wants the event to keep growing by adding additional CABA members to the nearly 400 that already exist and even expand Taste of Carrollwood.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a biergarten \u2014 serving drinks or the vendors do,\u201d Pierson said. \u201cThe people from Florida Avenue (Brewing Company) are here and checking it out, so maybe that would be the collaboration needed (for drinks), so we\u2019ll get feedback and whatever makes sense, we\u2019ll probably add it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARROLLWOOD \u2014 Everyone just keeps coming back for seconds. And thirds, and fourths and so on. At the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[86318,1408,86319,3081,3082,3078,3079,276,135,137,136,86317,17522],"class_list":["post-183239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-caba","tag-carrollwood","tag-carrollwood-area-business-association","tag-cooking","tag-cuisine","tag-food-watchlist-articles","tag-foods","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-taste-of-carrollwood","tag-western-cuisine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}