Last drinks for Beer & BBQ as festival industry woes continue
Organisers of Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival say the 10th festival this June will be their last in its current form, as the cost-of-living crisis bites.
When Beer & BBQ Festival was created by co-founders Aaron Sandow and Gareth Lewis in 2015, it was off the back of larger, mainstream music festivals going bust.
“We created Beer & BBQ on the back of Big Day Out, Soundwave, Park Life, all those events stopping,” Aaron says.
The festival landscape in the last two decades has been cyclical, with a period of boom and bust that sees the scale of events blow out of control, leading to major losses and festival cancellations.
Gareth says he thinks the last festival bust period around 2010 was due to oversaturation and “attributed to not respecting the punters”
“I think this time around, it feels a little less like over saturation and a little more like a correction in style, but also it’s really cost of living related,” Gareth says.
In 2024, Groovin’ the Moo, Vintage Vibes and Harvest Rock were all cancelled, with only Harvest Rock rumoured to return this year.
In October, Five Four Entertainment director Craig Lock told a parliamentary committee his festival Spin Off is “probably done” because of the state of the music industry.
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Beer & BBQ emphasises food and booze as much as it does the music lineup, and the economic challenges to the brewing and hospitality industries were a factor in their decision to make this year’s festival the last of its kind.
“10 years ago, when we started this thing, that was right at the kind of epicentre of when the craft beer movement was exploding,” Gareth says.
Gareth says Covid gave a false sense of security to brewers, who were seeing increases in people buying alcohol to drink at home, and for festivals, which saw an “initial sugar-hit of demand in 2022” after lockdowns lifted.
South Australian Big Shed Brewing narrowly emerged from voluntary administration. At the same time, interstate brewers that have worked with Beer & BBQ, like Fox Friday, entered voluntary administration in April, following Victorian brewer Molly Rose appointing liquidators.
“The fact at the moment is that there’s less of them because it’s a hard way to make money and the problems in the hospitality and festival industry aren’t dissimilar to beer,” Gareth says.
“It’s really distressing, and we know a lot of those people, and it’s almost a perfect storm.
“It’s not necessarily their fault, but they were a big part of why we started the festival, so it feels right at the moment to park what it is now.
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“It was always there to support them and we always wanted them to make a couple of bucks at the end of the weekend and put their beers in the hands of the people that have never tried their beer before.”
This year will be the last of Beer & BBQ’s multi-day festival at the Adelaide Showgrounds.
Aaron and Gareth say festivals and event management is what they do, so after resting Beer & BBQ, they’re looking forward to planning future events that are better suited to the landscape, like regional shows, boutique shows or even a summer or camping festival.
“It’s what we do for a living, so we’re going to be back in some way, and we want the brand to live on,” Gareth says.
The organisers say the decision to rest the festival, and potentially reshape the brand to bring it back in the future, is because they can’t keep passing the cost of operating onto the punters.
“If we were to raise the ticket prices to completely cover the costs that have increased over the last couple of years, then that’d probably price us completely out of the market,” Gareth says.
“We wouldn’t get the attendance that would make it any stretch worth it, we would end up in a situation where we’d be forced to cancel the event because of it,” Aaron adds.
“We fully understand and appreciate that it’s an expensive weekend for someone to attend and we want to keep the barriers of entry as low as possible, we’ve always wanted to do that so in our heads, the ticket price is really reasonable for what’s involved in it.”
Gareth and Aaron encourage punters to come along and celebrate the last Beer & BBQ with them on the long weekend from June 6–8.
The announcement that this year’s Beer & BBQ will be the last comes after the duo, also behind General Admission Entertainment, announced Future Sounds Festival, headlined by Big Noter at Unibar in June.