This year’s Woodford Folk Festival will be a foodie’s paradise, with an array of food vendors featuring a diverse menu of both local and international cuisine.
The festival, now in its 31st year, will showcase 15 specialty bars and 66 carefully selected food venues, with a special emphasis on local producers.
Partnerships with local, small-scale growers and providers help keep local economies healthy, and the short distance between farm and festival ensures patrons are consuming the freshest fruits and vegetables at a lower impact.
Delight your taste buds with homemade Mexican, curries and samosas, pizza, pasta, burgers, falafels, paella, Thai, Japanese, breaky bowls, juice and coffee or treat yourself to a Byron Bay Organic Doughnut, gourmet ice-cream or crepes. Hand chosen to cater for gluten free, vegan, raw and vegetarian, the variety is everything a food-obsessed festivalgoer could want.
Some steadfast favourites include Spaghetti Junction from Maleny, Claude’s Food of Eumundi and Peddle Power Juice from Byron Bay.
Giancarlo Molinaro, proprietor of Spaghetti Junction and Maleny local, has been serving up fresh, hand-made pasta to Woodford patrons for 28 years. The Spaghetti Junction team takes special care to ensure they are producing food made from top-quality Sunshine Coast ingredients.
“We have many local products, but the bio-dynamic beef we use in our sauces, meat balls and pizza is certainly a favourite, also our own locally roasted organic/fair trade coffee beans blend and the locally made gelato – best in the world!” He said.
The partnerships the festival holds with sponsors such as Jack Daniels and Coopers are key to providing patrons with exciting and varied refreshments.
“The companies who generously sponsor the festival year after year are integral to satisfying the eclectic pallets of festival patrons,” said Deputy General Manager Kim Pengelly.
Organisers have whipped up an enticing cocktail menu, with drinks such as the Lynchburg Lemonade, Watermelon Margarita, Peach and Raspberry Cooler and Woodford Sunrise set to quench the thirst of patrons.
The options are endless, from cider and beer to sake and Chambord, vodka and whiskey and wine and unique concoctions. Each bar is individually themed with its own signature drinks and cocktails, so there is always something interesting to indulge in.
“We can proudly say that Woodford has something for everyone,” said Kim Pengelly.
This year the festival is also introducing reusable cups to be used instead of standard plastic cups. This is anticipated to reduce the plastic waste of approximately 270,000 disposable cups used throughout the festival.
“We’ve created a new festival department charged with washing those cups for re-use – definitely preferable to throwing them into the recycling,” said Pengelly.
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