Taste of Downtown tickets sold out in 2017

Tickets for the 2017 Taste of Downtown sold out, Advocates to End Domestic Violence (AEDV) Executive Director Lisa Lee said Tuesday, making this year one of the most successful yet for the local non-profit dedicated to ending domestic abuse crimes in Northern Nevada.

Lee said an agreement with participating restaurants capped ticket sales at 2,000 this year.

Between online and in-person pre-sales as well as day of sales, she said every last one of the available tickets had sold.

The number represents three hundred more ticket sales in 2017 than the year before when 1,700 tickets were sold for the 2016 event.

Lee said last year's Taste of Downtown was affected by construction along North Carson Street during the corridor improvement project.

"Last year was a challenge and a struggle financially," she said.

But that's all in the past with the success of the 2017 Taste of Downtown now in the books.

About 80 percent of tickets this year were pre-sold either online or at brick-and-mortar locations around Carson City, Lee said. The remaining 20 percent were purchased Saturday at the event.

Lee said she attributes the high pre-sales to an assertive campaign to get the word out in advance of the weekend food festival.

"After receiving much interest to our website from people out of the area, we made fliers and placed them in local hotels two days before the event," she said.

Worth noting is the number of out-of-town ticketholders at the 2017 Taste of Downtown, Lee said, indicating that AEDV's efforts to reach area visitors in advance had paid off.

"At least 20 percent of the people buying tickets on Saturday showed out of town ID," she said.

Lee said that the Carson City Chamber of Commerce, one of the physical locations where tickets were purchased, had reported a high number of first-time ticket holders.

"Ronni (Hannaman) from the Chamber said she was surprised how many people buying tickets were first timers," she said, "having never attended the Taste."

Hannaman, executive director of the Carson City Chamber of Commerce, concurred that the level of interest in the Taste of Downtown appeared to climb this year among first-time ticket buyers.

"We have a lot of new residents who were first-timers and we had to explain the process," she said. "I love telling new folks, because they are so enthusiastic about this city and all that is going on. They are out discovering."

Lee said the boost in first-time ticket buyers is significant for AEDV's signature annual fundraising benefit, because their attendance means word of the event is spreading.

This is good news both for AEDV and Carson City, she said, because there appears to be a growing interest among visitors to the Nevada state capital.

"I ran into two couples that had driven down from Reno to do the Taste and had gotten rooms at the Plaza so they could enjoy themselves and just walk back to their rooms," Lee recalled. "The first couple buying tickets on Saturday were from Hawthorne and staying in Carson for a long weekend away. They noticed the flyer at the reception desk, canceled their dinner reservations and purchased two Taste tickets instead."

Better still is the number of first-timers who will end up returning the next year, she said.

"I ran into them later in the evening coming out of the Wine Tasting, and they were thrilled, stating they planned to come to Carson for the Taste next year," Lee said.

Growth in ticket sales told only part of this year's success story for the Taste of Downtown. Not only were there more people at the 2017 Taste than in years past, but more restaurants participated this year, too.

"We went from 37 restaurants last year to 40 restaurants this year," Lee said. "The downtown renovations added more available power sources, which were a huge help with where vendors could be placed."

She said about two-thirds of this year's restaurant participants were not located downtown, and they had to establish a space with access to power sources.

The new downtown design, she said, helped to make the 2017 Taste of Downtown more vendor friendly.

Keeping the restaurant vendors happy is a large part of what goes into making the Taste of Downtown the success it has become for AEDV over the past 24 years.

"We reimburse restaurants per taste with volunteers working in two shifts at each door counting," she said. "The average ticket holder ate at roughly 13 restaurants."

A number of non-restaurant businesses stepped up in 2017 to provide space for additional Taste of Downtown venues, too, helping to further boost participation and sales revenue.

"Adams Hub provided their conference room for the Total Wine and More tasting with 600 Taste-goers purchasing the additional ticket for $5 and enjoying five different wines," Lee said. "This was the first time we have offered the wine tasting feature, and it was a huge success."

Lee said AEDV ended up selling three times the number of wine-tasting tickets it had sought.

"We had originally hoped to sell 200 tickets and were surprised when we sold 600," she said.

Final revenue numbers will not be available for at least a couple more weeks, Lee said, because AEDV still needs to pay out to the participating restaurants, live entertainment and outstanding bills yet to be paid.