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(Kristina Gonzales/Party at the Moontower)
Kristina Gonzalez, director of sales and operations at Party at the Moontower Event Rentals, minces no words about what the cancelation of this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival means for event vendors: "That's basically saying no one in events makes money for a full year."
<p>Party at the Moontower has outfitted VIP areas at ACL in past years and partnered with hotels for conferences. Together with South by Southwest, ACL can keep event vendors afloat through the leaner months of the year.</p><p>"Event vendors—we all function off the flux of tourism, and the two biggest times of the year when all these people come in are October, with ACL, and March, with South By," Gonzalez explains.<br/></p><p> In the wake of their cancelations, local business owners are bracing themselves for a year that has now been effectively stripped of its two peak tourism seasons. </p><p><strong>Restaurants reel from the impact of canceled festivals</strong></p><p>Many restaurant owners are feeling a similar financial burden, such as Sue Davis, owner of Austin vegan staple Counter Culture. Davis estimates that 30% of her annual business comes from tourism, and March is always her "busiest month of the year by far." She had just finished redesigning her menu and training extra staff for SXSW when the festival got canceled. </p><p>"Every South By, I'm like, 'What can we do better next year?'" Davis says. "And this year I felt like we were in a great position to just kill it, and it didn't happen."</p><p>Owning a brick-and-mortar restaurant doesn't put Davis in an enviable position right now; Counter Culture's dining room is still closed, and she's "paying rent for a building that we're using 20% of" as she pivots to takeout and delivery. </p><p>But food truck owners are also reeling from the cancelation of Austin's two premier festivals. Hope Green, owner of Emojis Grilled Cheese Bar, says her food truck does big business catering private events when corporations come to town for SXSW and ACL.</p><p>"Our SXSW events typically bring in a good $40,000 to $60,000 for us," Green explains. "So having lost that revenue, if we're doing $15,000 to $30,000 a month, we've lost like 62% of the revenue that we would've normally done by this time of the year." </p><p>That lost revenue doesn't just hurt Green. She works with homeless teens who have aged out of foster care, training them in the food truck to give them work and management experience. She usually subsidizes those programs through her festival season revenue, and consequently, she's had to pause them.</p><p>"If I just wanted to do this business by myself and just take care of myself, no problem," Green says. "But it's all of the other stuff—the things that I want my business to be about—that takes that financial engine to keep that going."</p><p><strong>Finding new streams of revenue</strong></p><p>If there is a silver lining to COVID-19 wiping out SXSW and ACL, it's that local business owners have an opportunity to evaluate what's working and implement new strategies. Green is working toward partnering with apartment complexes for dinner runs, while Davis has added a grocery section to her menu to sell excess inventory and partnered with various nonprofits to donate meals. </p><p>Party at the Moontower Rentals has pivoted to furnishing small events, like backyard parties and socially distanced weddings. That includes the ongoing Little White Chapel Pop-Up, which unites over a dozen vendors to host Vegas-style weddings at Austin's Mercury Hall. </p><p>"I think the pandemic has really made people think about the way that they do business and how planning and strategy is also just as important as doing," Gonzalez says. "You have to fall in love with the problem."</p>
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Organizers of the State Fair of Texas announced Tuesday that this year's festivities, expected to draw 2.5 million people to North Texas over three weeks in the fall, are canceled out of concern for the coronavirus.
<p>The last time the fair was canceled was during the WWII years, 1942-1945. It was canceled three times before that: during World War I (1918), and planning for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition and 1937 Pan American Exposition at Fair Park (1935 – 1937).</p><p><span></span>The 2021 State Fair of Texas is scheduled for Friday, September 24 through Sunday, October 17 in historic Fair Park in Dallas.</p><p>"We believe the spirit of the Lone Star state lies in every Texan's ability to care and look out for their neighbor and it is with this in mind, we have decided to keep our guests, staff, and partners safe and healthy during these uncertain times," the organization's <a href="https://bigtex.com/" target="_blank">website</a> says. </p><p>The announcement left open the possibility of still having the Cotton Bowl football match-up if the seasons were allowed to begin.</p><p><a href="https://bigtex.com/covid-19-update/" target="_blank">Read the entire press release here.</a></p>
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(Ismael Quintanilla III/Shutterstock.com)
Austin City Limits announced Wednesday that it will cancel its 2020 event, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, set to take place in October, as it does every year.
<p>"We would have loved to put on another memorable show this year, however, with the uncertainty surrounding the current situation in Texas, this decision is the only responsible solution," a statement on the website reads.</p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="56dbce0b3fdbd1d22430ca60970146b1" id="fe763"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-partner="rebelmouse" data-twitter-tweet-id="1278342782545997824"><div style="margin:1em 0">https://t.co/ARFzJoepTt</div> — ACL Festival (@ACL Festival)<a href="https://twitter.com/aclfestival/statuses/1278342782545997824">1593615644.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Festival organizers vowed to return next year to celebrate its 20th anniversary.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We will return to Zilker Park on October 1-3 and October 8-10, 2021 to celebrate our 20th Anniversary. We encourage fans who have already purchased tickets to hold on to them to lock in access to next year's festival at 2019 prices. Refunds will be made available for fans who purchased directly through the festival and cannot attend next year's dates. All current ticket holders will receive an email from Front Gate Tickets shortly with information on both options."</p><p><em><span></span>This story is developing and will be updated.</em></p>
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(erika8213/Adobe)
The 30th anniversary of Austin's Pride parade and festival will have to wait another year. The organization announced that both have been postponed until August 2021, according to an Instagram post.
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</div></blockquote></div><p>"The Austin Pride board has wanted nothing more than to be able to provide a safe event space for the LGBTQIA+ community to celebrate who we are in August. Sadly, this year we will not be able to do that," the organization said in a statement on its website.</p><p>The organization wrote that it had hoped, when the stay-at-home orders began in March, that the parade and festival were far enough away to be safe, but that recent developments in the spread of coronavirus made it clear that holding the celebration would be unsafe.</p><p>"This is not the news we'd hoped to bring you," the statement said. "While we are saddened that August will look different for us this year, and while we mourn that we will not be able to come together, we are reminded that Austin Pride began 30 years ago in another pandemic, one that has disproportionately affected the LGBTQIA+ community, especially amongst people of color."</p>
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