Taste Of The Beach

OBX Taste of the Beach 2013   #obxtasteofthebeach

Outer Banks, NC – With the continued and explosive growth of social media, mobile apps and websites, the OBX Taste of the Beach has tried diligently to not only keep current, but to strategize on how event goers can use these forums to share experiences during Taste of the Beach 2013 (www.obxtasteofthebeach.com) event with their friends and family.

 “We’ve been using Facebook for years, and been able to take advantage of its platform to really enhance our guest list, create overall awareness, and easily highlight events,” says Marketing Manager for the Outer Banks Restaurant Association, and OBXTOB event coordinator, Audrey Webster. “Facebook has been very good to us, but we also see the benefit of wandering out into these other popular realms. Through the use of the popular “Hashtag” we have found a way.”

 Webster has even incorporated prizes for the use of a hashtag or # symbol on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. In the case of the OBX Taste of the Beach, they are asking folks to use the hashtag (#obxtasteofthebeach). “We are going to be watching this and after the 4 day event is over, we will award prizes for the Best “Food”, Best “Drink” and Best “Fun” photos or tweet”, states Webster.

 About the OBX Taste of the Beach:

The Outer Banks Taste of the Beach is a four day food and wine festival on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Held annually over St. Patrick’s Day Weekend, this years’ festival will take place March 14-17^th. Voted one the “Top seafood and wine festivals in the country” by Coastal Living Magazine, the long weekend boasts over 70 events hosted by restaurants as well as the first ever Wells Fargo Outer Banks BBQ Showdown. The four day festivities end with the OBX Banks Grand Tasting Showcase where over two dozen Outer Banks restaurants are featured serving the finest of their cuisine to compete for the 4^th Annual TOBY Awards. Several hotel and cottage rental companies like Premier Accommodations Sponsor, Resort Realty, have created accommodation packages that include tickets to some events. All event, accommodation and festival information can be found at www.obxtasteofthebeach.com

 For more information on the 2013 Taste of The Beach visit www.obxtasteofthebeach.com or contact Audrey Webster, at 252.207.5092 or via email at audreywebster@earthlink.net.

MARCH 14-17, 2013

Outer Banks, NC – The 2013 Outer Banks Taste of The Beach Weekend, March 14-17, 2013, will be here soon and all events are planned and ready for ticket purchase now. 

With over 70 individual events from Corolla to Manteo, the festival will feature wine tastings, cooking classes, multi-course dinners, tapas crawls, brewery tastings and tours, wine and beer pairing dinners, showdowns, throwdowns, cookoffs and more.  All exciting and creative combinations of culinary delights and fun activities on the Outer Banks, culminating with the OBX Bank Grand Tasting on Sunday, March 17^th at Pamlico Jack’s Restaurant, located on the Roanoke Sound waterfront in Nags Head,North Carolina.

“The finale event of Taste of the Beach, the ‘OBX Bank Grand Tasting’ is always the hottest ticket in town.  We have two times that guests can choose from to sample dishes in a less crowded atmosphere.  From 4:30pm to 6:30pm or from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, over 30 of the best restaurants and beverages providers come together under one roof to give you the experience of a lifetime,” explains Ben Sproul, President of the Outer Banks Restaurant Association. “Restaurants will be competing for the 4th Annual TOBY Awards, Best Booth, Best in Show, Best Outer Banks Catch, and the two top awards, the Chef’s Award and People’s Choice Awards. We will also be featuring a self guided wine tasting during the event and local breweries like the Full Moon Brewery in Manteo will be making their Grand Tasting debut. Lots of great inventive food and wine and beer to enjoy this year more than ever.”

The 2013 Taste of The Beach Weekend allows visiting and local foodies a chance to create a 4-day personalized itinerary of diverse culinary experiences and fun activities. Events began posting online in December and all events are now up online at www.obxtasteofthebeach.com. Tickets can be purchased as late as 12 hours before an event and some events will also have additional ticket sales at the door.  And, for the fourth year, and by design, this event coincides with St. Patrick’s Day and promises to provide so many opportunities for more fun on the Outer Banks. “We’ve got St. Patty’s brunches, lunches, dinners and parties,” says OBRA Marketing manager Audrey Webster.  “The annual Kelly’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday the 17^th, the largest of its kind in North Carolina and the longest running – in its 24^th year, cannot be missed as free fun for everyone. There’s also a car show by the First Flight Cruisers going on this same weekend, which is really cool. It makes for the perfect reason to plan a trip to the Outer Banks for a weekend filled with FOOD DRINK and FUN.” Says Audrey

“I’m especially excited about our newest group event this year, the Wells Fargo Outer Banks BBQ Showdown,” says Audrey Webster. “This is a first time event of this kind for us and it will be a major competition with more than a dozen of the Outer Banks’ best barbecue competing for prize money and of course bragging rights to who has the best barbecue on the Outer Banks!  It’s an outside event in the parking lot of Southern Shores Marketplace inKitty Hawkand we’re bringing in an amazing band, ‘Molasses Creek’, to play. They are a national folk and bluegrass band whose hometown happens to be nearbyOcracokeIsland. We are also having a free photo booth there so folks can take home a fun momento of the event. I am particularly excited about this one, but in all honesty there are so many other brand new events that I think will also be a lot of fun.”

“Ortega’z is doing a chili roasting class and brunch on Sunday morning, Beachside Bistro has a four course cooking class on Thursday and Friday mornings, Bad Bean Baja Grill is doing an Ale pairing five course dinner called ‘The Pork and The Stone’. Cravings in Duck is doing two pairing dinners, one wine and one beer along with a new event called ‘Sweet Jazz’ which features live music and desserts. I can’t even begin to name all the inventive new events planned for this year. I wish I could clone myself and go to every one of them!”

“I will say, there are a lot more events happening on Thursday, the first day of the festival. More than a few that are ONLY happening on Thursday so I really encourage people to plan on arriving Thursday and get to as many events as possible. We’ve even got a healthy cooking makeover class that theOuterBanksHospitalis sponsoring. Their dietician is remaking Outer Banks classic foods but with a healthy and delicious calorie and fat reducing recipe. That’s a Thursday only event, and reason enough to be here on day one if you askme.” says Audrey. “And of course we will start it all off with our free TOB13 Kickoff Party at the Brewing Station on Thursday night. Lots of raffles and giveaways, and we post all the available events up on the big wall so folks can order tickets to what’s still available. We are also having live music from “Whiskey Creek” – a cool country-rock band made up of active Coast Guard members out ofElizabethCity.

About 30 years ago the Taste of the Beach event was born by a few restaurateurs who got together to create an event to showcase their Chef’s and cuisine to the local residents during the “off season”. Since about 1983, when this event began, it has grown to become the longest standing annual event on the Outer Banks. In 2008, the restaurant association, with the desire to expand the format, hired a local marketing firm and together they have broadened the single evening event to become a 4-day weekend with now over 70 events and happenings at local restaurants and venues.  Last year gross ticket sales were over $115k and this year’s sales, currently underway, are already exceeding that pace by upwards of 40%. The vast amount of revenue goes right back to the restaurants, and OBRA relies almost solely on earnings from it’s Grand Tasting event to fund marketing and advertising efforts for the entire association and efforts year-round, including their Culinary Scholarship fund. Each year funds are provided for the Outer Banks Culinary Scholarship Fund, in which they provide tuition assistance to qualified local students enrolling in culinary sciences, culinary arts, and culinary skills classes and degree programs. Application for that scholarship is available now on their website www.obxtasteofthebeach.com.

The Outer Banks Restaurant Association represents over 100 area business and restaurants and works diligently to further their mission of advocating the Outer Banks as a premier destination for fresh, inventive, regionally purveyed cuisine featuring highly talented Chefs and entrepreneurial business owners.  The organization is highly respected and holds a voting seat on the Dare County Board of Tourism as well as the newly formed Outer Banks Seafood Festival Board of Directors.

Resort Realty, Sun realty, several Hotels, Inns, and Cottage Rental Companies are offering special Taste of The Beach weekend rates and event ticket packages over the 4-day event weekend March 14-17, 2013.  Their offers and website links are also featured on www.obxtasteofthebeach.com Accommodations page now.

For more information on the 2013 Taste of The Beach visit www.obxtasteofthebeach.com or contact Audrey Webster, at 252.207.5092 or via email at audreywebster@earthlink.net.

You’ve been waiting patiently all year and it’s almost here…events for the Outer Banks Taste of The Beach 2012 will begin being added and go on sale December 10, 2011.

Many more events will be added between December 10 and January 20 so plan on checking back often.  ALL events will be up on site by February 14, 2012 so you can rest assured to plan your culinary weekend adventure by then.

It’s such an exciting time and we are working with our member restaurants to coordinate and invent some new and exciting events (and these things take time) but we will be rest assured to post your favorites as soon as we can.

Look for new sessions and time arrangements for the Grand Tasting Expo this year…we’ve address some logistics and we think we’ve come up with a great solution that will alleviate crowding and also provide an opportunity for folks who plan on travelling home Sunday evening to be able to still attend and enjoy.

To easily be kept up to date, join our facebook page…just search outer banks taste of the beach and we will come right up.  Notice of new event postings will be posted to our wall and, if you allow push notifications, you will be sure not to miss a new event as it opens for ticket sales.

Outer Banks, NC (April 8, 2011) – Any festival, gathering, or event is worthy of coverage in the newspaper, but some stories really catch fire, preceding their print-wrap up by way of animated chatter around the water cooler on Monday morning and a blur of postings and comments on the various social network. So here’s the skinny on one of the most talked about topics of the week. The Outer Banks Restaurant Association’s (OBRA) 2011 Outer Banks Taste of The Beach Weekend shattered even their own high expectations by increasing tickets sales 30% over the previous year’s event. The weekend-long food fest, featuring 75 separate events from Wine Tastings and Tapas Crawls to Cooking Classes and Oyster Roasts, was first expanded to a long weekend format in 2008.

Ben Sproul, President of The Outer Banks Restaurant Association put it this way, “I always knew the idea was a good one, but the breadth and creativity of the events, and the enthusiasm and genuine excitement coming from our member restaurants, has really been what has made Taste into something incredible. Four days of fresh, engaging events has been a fantastic way to showcase to the world what many of us have known all along; we’ve got some amazing chefs around here!”

On street corners and post offices, coffee shops and lunch spots, and all over the internet from news sites, to blogs, to Facebook, it was hard to avoid talk of Taste of The Beach this week on the Outer Banks. Owners were sharing their thrill seeing a healthy bump in business during a traditionally quiet month and about how easy it has been to get involved. And guests, locals and visitors alike, were raving about incredible experiences and the tasty discoveries they had made.

Perhaps most importantly, professional writers and food critics are lauding the quality, creativity, and warm hospitality our event has brought to the fore. Quinn Capps, organizer and marketing director for the weekend long event, coordinated media visits, radio interviews, television interviews, and interviews from a variety of regional news organizations and magazines interested in covering the event. “The interest in this years Taste of The Beach Weekend by the media has been phenomenal,” said Capps. “I had Ben traveling all over for TV, radio, and blogger interviews and our Facebook fans and Twitter followers have more than doubled. Social media has had a great impact on creating awareness of not only the Taste of The Beach, but The Outer Banks overall. In addition to our buys in print, radio and TV advertising, this year we posted more ads on Facebook and Google with impressive results,” concluded Capps.

The OBRA received a Tourism Assistance Grant (TAG) from the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau for a fourth (and final) year to help promote the event outside of the area. “The Visitors Bureau is extremely proud of its involvement with Taste of the Beach. To see how the event has grown in such a relatively short amount of time is impressive and a real tribute to the hard work of the Restaurant Association. Of course, it helps when that hard work is served up with tasty treats”, said Lee Nettles, managing director, Outer Banks Visitors Bureau.

“I want to commend the Board of Directors over at the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau for their unwavering support of our expansion of this event over the last four years. The Tourism Assistance Grant program has been immensely successful as an incubator in this case, helping us create a solid shoulder season attraction that will serve to bolster the non-peak portion of our economy long into the future”, said Ben Sproul.

A portion of the proceeds from the Taste of The Beach will benefit the Outer Banks Restaurant Association Culinary Scholarship Fund. This scholarship, created as part of the Taste Of The Beach expansion into a weekend long affair in 2008, aims to reinvest in the local food-service industry by offering financial assistance and networking opportunities to area students interested in pursuing any type of culinary education. With the success of this year’s event, the Association is excited about being able to award this Culinary Scholarship to potential culinary students. The application is available online at www.obxtasteofthebeach.com.

The 2012 Outer Banks Taste of The Beach Weekend is already scheduled for March 15 – 18, 2012. Continue to visit the website for updates, photos, videos and more. You may also become a fan of the Outer Banks Taste of The Beach on Facebook. Simply click through on the web site.