Grits Festival in third year after four-year hiatus

WARWICK — The National Grits Festival will be held in downtown Warwick on April 13, officials with the festival have announced.

While the annual festival took a four-year hiatus, it came back in 2017 and nearly doubled its attendance from 2017 to 2018, going from an estimated 3,000 attendees to 5,000. Organizers added a 5K run in 2018 as well and extended the festival by two hours.

The 5K will be part of the festival again this year, and the Grits Fest will keep the same hours as last year, which ended at 4 p.m. Organizers say they hope this year’s festival will be even bigger and better than before.

This year’s Grits Fest will feature a breakfast from Stripling’s (a locally owned business) at the Lions Club, a parade, a grits-eating contest, a grits cook-off competition, a corn-shelling contest, an art contest and the favorite “grits pit.”

Co-chairman of the festival committee Douglas Dean said he is happy the festival is back up and running.

“We wanted to start it again because it was extremely successful,” Dean said. “One of the main reasons people knew about Warwick was the Grits Festival.”

Warwick has less than 500 residents and is a largely rural, agricultural community, like many small communities in the southwest Georgia area. Dean said the festival focuses on celebrating and promoting that.

“Supporting rural areas and rural agriculture, that’s what the Grits Festival is supposed to promote,” Dean said.

Dean also spoke about the difficulties of agriculture as an industry and why he thinks it’s so important to recognize the state’s top industry.

“Being a farmer is extremely hard,” he said. “I represent farmers as an attorney. And it is very, very difficult to do. A lot of times people who do it, they do it because they love it. It’s not necessarily the most lucrative business in the world, but it’s people who like producing food for other people. … That’s something I definitely think is worth celebrating, and we have tractors and stuff like that that come out for the parade. We try to incorporate that into the festival.”

Last year festival organizers gave out around $3,000 in prize money in various competitions, and Dean said that should be similar this year.

“Part of that was trying to bring people out and give back to the community and give them something to come back to Warwick for, and to walk away having had a good experience,” he said.

Organizers are trying to promote their parade this year and encourage local businesses, organizations and churches to bring a float and participate. Community businesses and organizations are also encouraged to get involved with the festival by becoming a sponsor. Organizers recently revised the different sponsorship packages to make being a sponsor of the festival more affordable, particularly for local businesses.

“Keeping the local businesses involved is something that I think is very important for the longevity of the festival,” Dean said.

The bronze sponsorship package is now $150, and sponsorship packages go up to silver ($250), gold ($500), platinum ($1000), corporate ($2,500) and presenting ($5,000). Each package offers more to sponsors as they go up, but there is a limited number of platinum, corporate and presenting packages available.

Dean and other organizers of the event have also added a spot on the application for vendors to write in how many breakfasts they want, and they will have someone take the breakfast from the Lions Club to the vendors as they set up this year.

“We’re trying to be as vendor-centric and sponsor-centric as we possibly can,” he said.

A sponsorship application and full event schedule can be found at gritsfest.com. For more information, call (229) 376-4624.

Dean said he hopes the festival will continue to promote a positive image of Warwick for festivalgoers and to show them Warwick’s version of “an experience of rural America.” He said he hopes festivalgoers and vendors “walk away happy about their day and with a positive image of Warwick and the people [there].”

“That’s the most we can ask for,” he said.