The Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival is an annual festival in
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines () is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, ...
. Founded by members of the Iowa Bacon Board, the festival sold 200 tickets to the first festival in 2008. Today, the bacon celebration has grown to host approximately 14,000 bacon-lovers in all.
Ticket holders can compete in a bacon-eating contest, listen to lectures about bacon, and sample bacon from vendors. Festival organizers have extended the celebration internationally through the Blue Ribbon Bacon Tour.
Description
For the price of an admission ticket, each attendee has been entitled to a T-shirt, a choice of bacon samples, and a
koozie
A koozie ( ) ( US) or stubby holder ( Australian) is a fabric or foam sleeve that is designed to thermally insulate a beverage container, like a can or bottle.
Name, origin, and trademark dispute
The name "Koozie", with a capital "K", is a ...
(an insulation-wrapping for a canned beverage, like beer or
soda pop
A soft drink (see § Terminology for other names) is a drink that usually contains water (often carbonated), a sweetener, and a natural and/or artificial flavoring. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a sugar ...
). The Festival also has featured lectures about bacon, a bacon-eating contest, and
live performances by entertainers.
In 2012, a major change was made from the "all you can eat" bacon, which was included in the ticket price from years earlier, to a pay as you eat price structure. Justification for the added cost was to reduce lines for bacon goods vendors bring in and cook. Vendor Bacon items run $3 to $8 a piece on top of the ticket price.
History
The Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival was founded in 2008 by Brooks Reynolds, an Iowa
realtor, on
National Pig Day, 1 March 2008.
The Festival attracted 200 people in 2008 and 300 in 2009. The 2010 Festival sold all 600 tickets in 30 minutes: That year, the Festival served roughly 30 thousand bacon-strips (that is, about 50 strips per person); the bacon's total weight was , that is, per person. The next year, in 2011, the Festival sold all 1,500 tickets in 4 minutes.
Themes
State of Bacon film
In 2013, the Iowa Bacon Board in conjunction with Digital Cuvée, a production company founded by
Jason Cook, set out to make a film entitled
State of Bacon utilizing the festival as the centerpiece of the story. In the style of Christopher Guest or Sasha Cohen, the film is a mockumentary, utilizing actors to interact in the real world, as a mash-up style to tell each storyline, and overall transport viewers to the wild and crazy world of Bacon Wonderland.
Tour
After having worked at the Festival, some of its entertainers formed the Blue Ribbon Bacon Tour. One of the Tour's regular participants,
Heather Lauer
''Bacon: A Love Story, A Salty Survey of Everybody's Favorite Meat'' is a 2009 non-fiction book about bacon, written by American writer Heather Lauer. It describes curing and cooking bacon, gives over 20 bacon recipes, and analyzes the impact of ...
, appeared on the 2009 Tour's stop in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
; there, for thirty dollars, participants could compete in a bacon-eating contest and (without additional cost) taste bacon-samples from vendors. Before joining this Tour, Lauer had written the book, ''
Bacon: A love story''.
References
External links
Photo Gallery of 2009 festivalVideo highlights of 2010 festival
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Bacon
Food and drink festivals in the United States
Tourist attractions in Des Moines, Iowa
Festivals in Iowa