John Dillivan (center), of Pekadill’s Restaurant and Catering served food at the ROTHBURY festival with employees Sandra Malone (left) and Zac Anderson (right).
The cancellation of the ROTHBURY Music Festival is leaving more than the potential concert goers scrambling for Fourth of July and summer plans.
Local business are expected to feel the affects as well.
For the last two summers many business in Oceana and Muskegon counties have seen tremendous economic benefits from the festival.
The surge of people and expendable dollars into the community has been a welcome sight to business owners, who are sad to see the festival announce its cancellation for 2010.
Amy VanLoon, executive director of the White Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, said, “It is a significant loss and not having a nationally known event will have an economic impact.”
“We’re not going to have the money coming in,” said Chuck Morgan, of Morgan’s Kountry Kitchen in Rothbury. “And it’s business we’re not going to have.”
Morgan said that the restaurant was busy from open till noon, when festival-goers returned to Double JJ for the start of the day’s music and events.
Businesses are going to have to find creative ways to counter the dashed hopes they had for this summer’s ROTHBURY.
John Dillivan, of Pekadill’s Restaurant and Catering in Whitehall, said the event was a huge windfall for his business, but a needed one.
Pekadill’s operated a 20’ x 20’ tent on-site for ROTHBURY and saw tremendous amounts of customers over the four-day festival.
Preparation for the event took extra work and dollars, said Dillivan, but his business saw their July sales double over the previous year’s with the addition of the ROTHBURY festival, even with their limited menu at the event.
“We’re not going to make it up, gone is gone,” said Dillivan. “There’s not a lot of options, we are going to be trying ways to be leaner.”
Dillivan described how there would be secondary damage from the ROTHBURY fallout. He said he spoke with his food distributor, about the reduced orders he would be placing this year.
“We were getting a truck delivery every day,” added the Pekadill’s owner. “Plus, we won’t be hiring people to help us work the event.”
Not all businesses are going to be dramatically hurt by the cancellation, but some will still miss the additional business traffic.
“It was fun to help out and see all the people,” said David Rypma, speaking about lock-out service Don Rypma Chevrolet provided. “We didn’t make a lot of money, but we will miss the added traffic.”
The cancellation comes as a shock to many business owners who had planned for a boost in sales this July.
“It was a shock. We had a verbal agreement to come back,” said Dillivan. “I didn’t see this coming. An employee told me ‘your not going to believe what’s on Facebook’.”
Morgan’s Kountry Kitchen also expressed shock in the cancellation, but was confident they would handle the situation.
“It was very surprising and disappointing,” said VanLoon. “But I have no doubt the fourth will still be busy and we want to do what we can to help Double JJ.”
Not all businesses wanted to speak about the event cancellation and subsequent affects. Rothbury Hardware owners said they didn’t want to comment on the situation.
Regardless of stance or affect, the economic boost that ROTHBURY provided is not returning this year.
“We just got to wait and see,” added Morgan. “It’s going to hurt, but we don’t know how much.”
There is no easy way to deal with the loss, said Dillivan, “we have to look at the glass half-full, and want to believe it will come back next year, and just get through 2010.”
