Huge Thank You to all volunteers who helped make this Festival such a tremendous success.
Festival signs please remember to return them to church!
Dear Festival team, due to YOUR efforts, our dedicated and tireless volunteers – we once again pulled off an amazing Festival. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we seem to improve every year! Excellent teamwork, months of food workshops/prep, attentive planning, superb execution and a dose of perfect weather combined to create another record breaking year.
Our Treasurer, Angela Tsopelas, has already calculated an approx. topline revenue figure (thanks Angela, EJ, Gina & team!):
- Festival food/drink sales: $152,457 Sales + $6,705 Tips = $159,162 total gross sales
- Sponsors = approx. $8,500
- Giving Tree = approx. $1,625 (not counting ‘in-kind’ donations)
- Total Revenue = approx. $169,300
This compares very favorably to last year and is +13% (+$19,000) above our budgeted goal of $150,000! Another awesome result in a long string of record breaking years – and something we can all take pride in!
It will take some time to generate a Festival bottom-line profit figure, as Angela has to account for all the bills, invoices payable, etc. If you have any Festival related expenses, please get the invoices to Angela, as soon as possible, by placing in the Treasurer’s mail-slot in the Church office. Also, if you organized or know of any in-kind donations from Parishioners, community members, or businesses, can you please let one of the GFF Executive Committee know, so we can send them a personal thank you.
We’ve sold out of >98% of all the food, and 100% of the pastries, we prepared. We can all be rightfully proud of that! We have approx. 15 pans of lamb shank, and a very small amount of keftethes left-over. We’re already planning on how best to sell/donate this food, so it doesn’t go to waste.
Please mark your calendars: Our Festival feedback meeting will be held on Thurs. Aug. 22, 6 PM, in the Church conference room. We take these key learnings and improvement suggestions very seriously, and they often form the basis of our platform the following year. For e.g., the larger gyro/loukoumathes footprints, and two inside serving line concepts came out of those meetings - and I believe we would all agree, were highly beneficial to our 2024 Festival. If you are unable to make the 8/22 feedback meeting, please send your suggestions to one of the exec committee, ideally in advance of the meeting.
Please also look for an upcoming announcement on an equipment storage/clean-up volunteer day, date TBD. We will organize and store the Festival related items in the various Nicholson Hall closets. Also, please return (to Nicholson Hall) the Festival yard signs you’ve placed around the area. It’s important that we ‘de-clutter’ the local area and save the signs for future years. Thank you.
Our adoring local fanbase once again enjoyed our welcoming atmosphere, music, culture, drinks and especially food. Our kitchen staff did an outstanding job of keeping up with the food lines and everyone’s warmth and positivity truly delighted our customers. Here’s a few examples that came in over the weekend, from customer e-mail responses:
- “…as usual, the food is spectacular and the dedication of the volunteers is clearly evident. We went on Friday twice for lunch and dinner!! The evening music was so enjoyable and uplifting. As a vegetarian, I greatly appreciate all the options, and the falafel gyro was so delicious, along with the spanakopita”. Meryl L.
- “…my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed our dinners yesterday evening. We were so impressed by how well organized and how smoothly everything went. I was especially enamored of the stuffed grape leaves. I think that they are the best that I have ever had. I wonder if there’s any chance that I could get the recipe…” Ellen D.
- “This Fest was the best ever. I had gyros Friday and Saturday and meatballs, Dolmathes and Greek beer today. Met interesting people and donated to the church. It was well run and I noticed the clean-up people (black t-shirts) doing a good job…” Peter M.
- “…went yesterday. Everything was delicious!” Stacy S.
- “Truly a wonderful note! You guys help make our community what it is!” Jerry B.
- “What a great idea to email daily on what's available. The chicken gyros were delicious! As was the lamb shank dinner I picked up Friday. Thank you to all the wonderful volunteers for another outstanding event!” Wendy A.
- “…I attended lunch and dinner on Friday and then lunch yesterday. Delicious!!! Always a wonderful family event.” Kimm W.
Our entire Parish stepped up to make our Festival a rousing success! We are very proud to be a part of that effort.
Respectfully and with deep gratitude,
The Festival Executive Committee
Angela Tsopelas, Ed Connor, Gina Dussi, Jim Sperelakis
