Exclusive: Bite Me, a food culture festival, announced for 2024 debut in Asheville
ASHEVILLE - Asheville is no stranger to festivals, evidenced by the myriad events coming this year with themes ranging from beer and cider to honey, and in celebration of music, art and diverse cultures. Yet, a collective of local food, beverage and media professionals see room for another festival to showcase Asheville’s culinary and craft communities.
This summer, Jefferson Ellison, an Asheville native and owner of JD Ellison & Company communications agency, and event planning committee members Jennifer Rodriguez (Asheville Guide), Sarah Fiori (Asheville Crafted Edge) and Melinda Hanley (pastry chef) will introduce a new food culture festival series: Bite Me.
Bite Me is scheduled for Aug. 14-18 in various locations across the city, including restaurants and event venues.
Ellison said it’s more than a food festival, calling it a food culture festival that focuses “on the vibe of the people of Asheville who like to go out and eat.”
The organizers chose a five-day series to give attendees more opportunities to attend events that fit their schedules.
“It’s too hard to do something in one day that tells a full story and gives access to different people,” Ellison said. “If we do it over the course of weekdays and a weekend, we have a lot more time to give people what they want.”
Bite Me at a glance
The tongue-in-cheek name, Bite Me, was derived from a ChatGPT search for a name for a food festival. It’s also a response to those who initially doubted Ellison when he shared the idea of a new food culture festival.
“It is technically on brand, it is about food,” Ellison said. “There’s something nice about having this dual-purpose name that also explains the point you engage with your meal and is a stance on why we are doing something. It also gets people talking.”
Bite Me will feature local and national food and beverage industry professionals with events to include panel discussions, seated dinners, tastings, late-night after parties, vendor markets and a Sunday cookout to close the festival.
“It’s the best part of a festival and it’s choose your own journey,” Ellison said.
James Beard Award-nominated chefs Ashleigh Shanti and Cleophus Hethington, Luis Martinez, Lay Alston from Soul and Wheel mobile restaurant in New York, Vivian restaurant and Not Another Supper Club, a pop-up supper club, are confirmed for dinners.
Danielle and Gabrielle Davenport, owners of Books & More (BEM), a New York bookstore specializing in literature about Black foodways and cookbooks, will host a cocktail party.
The main stage will be at the YMI Cultural Center, the Sunday cookout will be hosted at the Martin Luther King Jr. Park downtown and the East End/Valley Street neighborhood with other events in venues across the city to be announced.
Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College's culinary department will host a cooking competition with three categories, including novice, advanced and winner-takes-all.
Tickets for Bite Me will go live on April 24 at bitemeavl.com.
Ticket costs
Bite Me’s organizers will offer free and ticketed events that allow attendees to decide how much they want to spend and how they want to spend their time.
“If you want to be involved in the vibes but don’t necessarily want to spend the money you can come out with everyone and be a part of it,” Ellison said.
Weekend and day passes and single-event tickets will be sold.
A $149 ticket will provide full access to programs including cooking classes, panels and late-night events. The vendor market and Sunday cookout will have free admission.
Guests attending seated dinners will pay the participating restaurant directly with proceeds going to the restaurant and special guest chef and tips to the restaurant’s staff. Ellison said it's to allow the restaurant to profit, for the diners to decide how much they spend, and for event organizers to control the cost of festival tickets without compromising the chefs, restaurants or the meal.
“As a person who loves food festivals, I’m happy getting a cheaper ticket to go to the celebration part of it,” Ellison said. “Sometimes I want to go out and sometimes I want to eat at home, change my outfit then meet you at the after-party.”
Bite Me’s motivation and aspirations
Ellison, whose experience includes interning at New York Fashion Week as a North Carolina State University student, tapped into his years of event planning, marketing and networking to found Bite Me.
In 2018, he established JD Ellison & Company ― formerly Jawbreaking Creative ― specializing in communications, strategy, marketing and creative production for individuals and lifestyle brands, consumer goods and nonprofits. In 2023, the company moved into an office on Eagle Street in the historically Black downtown neighborhood, The Block.
He’s managed chefs including Shanti, Hethington and J Chong.
He’s also worked as the agency of record at the LEAF Global Arts Festival and as senior brand marketing manager at East Fork Pottery.
“I am a local who lives in the food scene,” Ellison said.
In 2021, Ellison served as the agency of record for Chow Chow, a food and culture festival that debuted in 2019 before the nonprofit and festival shut down earlier this year. Its untimely ending was a catalyst for Bite Me's planning committee members to implement the new, unaffiliated food culture festival to support the community, he said.
Ellison said the idea is to let Bite Me take shape based on support and funding instead of attempting to force the event into a standard festival mold.
“People were saying, ‘If Chow Chow can’t happen, this can’t happen.’ No, food festivals across the country have had a problem with this model,” Ellison said. “It is not the people, it’s the model. I can’t speak for Chow Chow or anything that happened or why that closed down but the people who were a part of Chow Chow are not bad people because Chow Chow failed.”
Gathering support
JD Ellison & Company is managing many festival aspects in-house, like marketing and event production.
“It reduces the cost of us putting this on, which makes it easier for us to say, ‘Hey, we can make sure everyone involved in this is getting paid fairly,’” Ellison said.
Early sponsors to commit monetary and in-kind support include East Fork Pottery, Wicked Weed Brewing and the Asheville Downtown Association, which will offer assistance, like digital marketing, volunteers, venue use, and production equipment, such as tables, chairs and tents. The ADA is providing counsel to the planning committee, too, he said.
Ellison said Bite Me’s festival organizers are raising money and gathering resources before booking guests and events.
“If we don’t have the money for it, we won’t do it,” he said.
Ellison said festival committee members intended to split the remaining proceeds if the event makes a profit.
Ellison said he hopes to encourage others to use available resources to do something big in the community.
“Our goal in life is to make sure there is a pathway or that we keep trying and failing forward," he said. "If this is a bust, OK, but it’s not a bust because we didn’t try.”
Bite Me
Where: Various locations, Asheville.
When: Aug. 14-18.
Info: Tickets for Bite Me will go live on April 24 at bitemeavl.com. For more, follow on Instagram @bitemeavl.
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Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Bite Me food culture festival to premiere in Asheville: What to know
