The Moorestown Business Association invites residents to Autumn in Moorestown on Main Street on Saturday.
Crafts, Cruise & Brews – a fall street festival – will include crafts, more than 100 vendors, local breweries, live music, family friendly activities and an antique and classic car show.
“If the weather is there for us, it should be a perfect, great day,” said event co-chair Craig Dennin.
Autumn in Moorestown starts at 9 a.m. and will be held rain or shine. Dennin noted how the association is gearing the festival toward the arts.
“That’s what we want its strong point to be, art related,” he explained. “That’s why we ask that all the vendors that come, even if they’re not true artisans in the sense of making pottery and paintings and things of that nature, what you do make has to be handmade by you.”
The business association hears from vendors ahead of the event as early as summer.
“ … We review everybody’s paperwork, and when they get that thumbs up – you’re good to go – they all reply, ‘Fantastic,’ ‘I can’t wait,’ ‘I’ve been looking forward to this all year,’’ he added. “Vendors love it, they really do. We’ve really brought it to a level where it’s been a great day for everybody and (it’s) the type of thing where I’m not quite sure what we could add to it at this point.”
With so much going on throughout the day, Dennin doesn’t see the need to change anything.
“If you combine all of it (music, food, a car show, kids activities) into a day, and then the 8,000-plus people on the street, you’ve got a full, packed day where you really don’t need to try to add or change anything,” he noted.
The event requires a lot of planning, including orchestrating the fire department to be there, scheduling times for entertainment, figuring out where to place vendors and orchestrating the car show. The business association starts figuring things out in the beginning of the year, but seeing people having fun is when Dennin feels like the hard work pays off.
“Just seeing people walk in the streets, enjoying everything and each other and having a good time, that’s when you know it paid off,” he enthused. “Afterwards we do get quite a few accolades, whether it be emails or Facebook posts …
“The accolades are wonderful because everybody says it’s fantastic.”
There’s several moments when Dennin and other members of the association can feel the success in the air, and he says it’s a good feeling for all involved.
“It brings everybody together, the businesses and the residents,” he pointed out. “That’s the whole thing, getting everybody under the same umbrella so to speak. The residents get to walk up and down the streets and get to see some of the businesses that are out there and talk to them …
“It serves a lot of purposes, it really does,’ Dennin added, ‘but the biggest one is just to get out there and have a good time.”
For more information, visit https://moorestownbusiness.com or the association’s Facebook page.
