BREAKING NEWS: Barbecue Festival postponed until 2022
With the Barbecue Wall of Fame serving as a backdrop, Stephanie S. Naset, executive director of the Barbecue Festival announced today that Lexington’s premier event will be postponed until October 22, 2002. The 38th Barbecue Festival was scheduled to take place next month on October 23.
Accompanied by Mayor Newell Clark, owners of the participating restaurants, Lexington Police Chief Robby Rummage, Lexington Fire Department officials and members of the Lexington City Council, Naset shared the news with media, those in attendance at the press conference and online viewers.
“After months of consultation with local officials, sponsors and official festival restaurants, the 2021 festival will be postponed.” said Naset. “It was a difficult decision but one we ultimately concluded was the responsible and necessary decision to make. Compounding the problem is the current exponential urge of COVID-19 cases within our community. Based on current trends, we feel it would not be in the best interest of our community to invite more than 100,00 people from across the country to converge on our city when the Delta variant is so prevalent.”
Along with concerns about COVID-19, the participating restaurants: Smokey Joe’s Barbecue, Barbecue Center, Speedy’s and Stamey’s Barbecue have all encountered difficulties that factored into the decision.
“Currently, the barbecue restaurants are facing significant labor and supply chain challenges,” explained Naset. “The restaurant owners unanimously decided they couldn’t meet the enormous challenge of preparing and serving thousands of pounds of barbecue for the festival this year. We respect that decision. They remarked, ‘With our deepest regret due to supply chain challenges, the current labor shortage and concerns with the ongoing pandemic we will not be able to participate in the festival this year. We look forward to celebrating our world famous barbecue heritage again in 2022.’”
Kaffee Cope, co-owner of Smokey Joe’s Barbecue along with her husband, Mike, shared sentiments on behalf of the restaurants.
“I want to take this opportunity to tell everyone this wasn’t an easy decision for us to make. There are so many variables where we didn’t have what we needed. We’re all suffering from lack of employees. I’ve got seven out right now in quarantine. Most of them are high school students. We couldn’t see a way that we could safely be a part of this event with everything that’s going on. We want to say we’re sorry. We do feel like we’re letting people down but safety comes first.”
During his remarks, Clark noted that the festival has a $9 million impact on the local community. Despite the festival not being held for the second year in a row, the Lexington mayor welcomed people to come visit and conveyed that “Lexington is still open and serving barbecue every day. Continue to support our restaurants and continue to go by.”
Although the fourth Saturday in October won’t be engulfed in it’s normal tradition, the Barbecue Festival is planning to host a few smaller scale events to celebrate. Details will be released in the coming weeks. Before wrapping up the press conference, Naset recognized a member of the barbecue family that passed recently due to COVID-19, Robbie Johnson. He was the stepson of Roy Boyd, co-owner of Speedy’s.
In expressing her relief that the information about the postponement was public, Naset concluded with with expressing thanks.
“On behalf of our sponsors, partners, volunteers and hundreds of people that make this festival happen each year, we want to say thank you for your understanding and continued steadfast support.”
