City plans 'Beak Week'
By Matt Caulder
Published in News on March 12, 2014 1:46 PM
A new festival is coming to Goldsboro in September to celebrate Wayne County's poultry industry.
The festival, "Beak Week," is a play on Bike Week in Myrtle Beach and is expected to bring more people into the community, city officials say.
The festival is in the early stages of planning, but preliminary plans have the festival as a week-long event beginning Sunday, Sept. 7, and continuing until that Saturday night, Goldsboro public information officer Kim Best said.
"This will give Goldsboro a fun, quirky signature festival that will draw people to the area," Mrs. Best said. "We have been brainstorming about what we wanted to focus in on and the poultry industry kept coming up to the top."
The original idea focused on catfish, but poultry rose to the top.
The festival will feature a concert to benefit the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce, chicken- and turkey-themed contests and a run at either the longest or largest chicken dance on record, Mrs. Best said.
"Of course we have to have a chicken dance contest," she said. "That has to happen. We have people who are looking into the longest and largest dances on record."
Other ideas were tossed around for the name such as "Cluckfest" or the "Strut and Cluckfest," but "Beak Week" won out, Mrs. Best said.
"The birds are coming to Wayne County," she said. "It's all about bringing people to the area."
Mrs. Best hopes to have local businesses involved in the festival with dishes featuring chicken and hopes to have a competition for the signature festival sandwich among restaurants.
"There really are limitless ideas for what we can do right now," she said. "We are so early in the planning stages we just have so much we can do."
On the first day of the festival, Mrs. Best hopes to have a tour group go see area chicken coops and also hopes to have a bicycle ride to see these same locations as well.
The working title for the ride is the "tour de coop."
Other ideas in the works are a gobbling contest to see who has the best turkey call.
Children friendly events will be available as well as vendor booths up and down the festival.
"We are trying to create something from scratch so we know there will be rough spots," Mrs. Best said. "We are doing the first year on John Street because of the Streetscape and we know it will be smaller in the beginning. We are hoping that whatever mistakes we make going into it are done on a smaller scale."
Much of the city's guidance and direction is coming from the success of the North Carolina Pickle Festival in Mount Olive, she said.
Anyone with ideas for the festival is asked to email Mark Wilson with Goldsboro Parks and Recreation at mwilson@goldsboronc.gov.