Over the course of three decades, the city’s Garlic Festival has
pumped hundreds of thousands in charitable dollars into food
pantries, scholarship programs, and a host of other causes.
Gilroy – Over the course of three decades, the city’s Garlic Festival has pumped hundreds of thousands in charitable dollars into food pantries, scholarship programs, and a host of other causes.
But while many groups look forward to the annual injection of cash as a way to round out their revenues, one organization – the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce – has come to depend on festival earnings as its lifeblood.
The local business association brings in between $150,000 and $180,000 annually through its monopoly on beer sales at the Garlic Festival, according to chamber director Susan Valenta.
“It’s our primary fundraiser;” she said. “We put all of our energy into that three-day event.”
The annual revenues from the July festival support more than 50 percent of the chamber’s roughly $200,000 in annual operating expenses, while dues from its 700-plus members make up the difference, according to Valenta.
The funds pay for a number of annual expenses, including the chamber’s own administrative costs, its scholarship fund for Gilroy High School students, and an annual $30,000 contribution to the nonprofit Gilroy Economic Development Corporation.
“We’ve been able to create a lot of community partnerships to address needs in the community,” Valenta said.
The chamber’s monopoly on festival beer sales dates back to the early days of the event in the late ’70s, according to Joann Kessler, assistant director of the Garlic Festival Association.
“It was set up that way because our founder, Rudy Malone, wanted the chamber to play a big part in the festival and to have an income that could sustain them and the work they do,” Kessler said.
To that end, the organizations signed a contract that gives the chamber exclusive rights to distribute beer at the event. The organizations are now in the middle of a contract that automatically renews every five years, unless one of the organizations requests otherwise. In turn, the chamber grants a major beer distributor exclusive rights to beer sales. Currently, Coors has a two-year contract with the chamber.
While some may see the group’s monopoly on beer sales as a cash cow, organizers are quick to point out that the beer concession has its own set of headaches.
“It takes a tremendous amount of manpower to do it,” said Tim Day, president of the chamber’s board of directors. The three beer tents, complete with identification check-points, are staffed over three days by roughly 400 volunteers.
Over the years, the work involved with the beer concession has increased while the profits have grown smaller, according to Valenta. Many Gilroyans recall the rowdier days of the festival when beer flowed more freely. In 1986, for instance, the chamber tore through 2,000 kegs of beer. This year, the chamber went through just 400 kegs.
The downturn in consumption and profit resulted from the business association’s efforts to crack down on underage drinking, free hand-outs, and the number of beers that can be purchased at any one time.
The chamber took the lead again this year in upgrading safety measures by teaming up with other alcohol distributors to purchase identification-card readers that can detect sophisticated knock-offs.
The chamber was joined in the effort by the handful of other groups that sell alcohol at the festival, including the Gilroy Foundation and Theater Angels Arts League (which operate wine spritzer booths) and the Gilroy Rotary Club (which has a wine tent).
Valenta said any losses in profit resulting from tighter controls are a small price to pay “to keep in line with the goal of being a family-oriented event.”
Organizers say the chamber’s exclusive rights to beer sales is no accident, but one of the legacy’s of the Garlic Festival founders.
Jeff Martin, a former festival association president and long-time volunteer, could see no reason to change the formula that has brought the chamber and the festival so much success: “It’s one of those things where if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it.”
