Turnout was bigger than expected for this weekend's Taste of Minnesota food and music festival in downtown Minneapolis.
"We went up about 20% from last year," says Taste of Minnesota ambassador Teke O'Reilly. "We are recording, looks like 70,000 is the official number, for Saturday and 54,000 the official number for Sunday. And I was there throughout both days. And what I can say is that traffic flow was absolutely perfectly suited to the to the new footprint."
O'Reilly says the entire two days went off without a hitch and there were no public safety issues at all.
"Checked in with Minneapolis Police throughout the event and they were smiling and laughing," O'Reilly explained. "They were giving me very candid reports and they said this is one of the most well-behaved crowds they've ever had and things were very relaxed. We have no reported incidents whatsoever."
He says they'll take a little break and then get planning on next year's festival, though he says the location of it has yet to be determined.
"Could be anywhere," he says. "I've been told just keep an open mind because, you know, there's always mighty St. Paul where it used to be. And I know a lot of folks came up to me during the weekend said, 'are you going to come back to St. Paul?' And the short answer is, I just don't know. We don't know until we make those decisions later this year."
The original Taste of Minnesota started in the early 1980s at the State Capitol in St. Paul. It was always a free event, and eventually became one of the state’s largest gatherings. It moved to Harriet Island in 2003.
The resurrected festival has been in Downtown Minneapolis the last two years, but for many years it was held in St. Paul until money issues forced changes in 2010. It briefly came back in 2014 but flooding in St. Paul forced the event to leave and it moved to Waconia in 2014 and 2015. It wasn’t as successful and was on hiatus until 2023 when it returned in Minneapolis.
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