Bite Me reimagines the food festival

Jefferson Ellison is tired of the notion that only certain groups of individuals can succeed at planning and hosting large-scale events in Asheville — and that when and if they fail, it’s time to scrap those concepts entirely.

“I think a lot of people in the city feel like if white people can’t do it, nobody can. Or if rich people can’t do it, nobody can. And I just think that’s bullsh*t,” he says. “As a young, queer, Black person who’s from Asheville, I have a visceral reaction to that.”

Looking to prove those naysayers wrong, the founder and owner of brand-building agency JD Ellison & Company developed Bite Me, a five-day food festival that runs throughout the city, Wednesday, Aug. 14-Sunday, Aug. 18. Offerings include fresh twists on the usual meals, panel discussions and conversations that tend to dominate such events, as well as a community market and week-concluding cookout featuring a la carte access.

While Ellison’s intense response to the aforementioned dismissive comments proved key to inspiring him to take action, he notes that it was just one part of a perfect storm of motivation earlier this year.

In February, the board of directors for the Chow Chow Food + Culture Festival — an ambitious multiday event that debuted in 2019 and returned in various annual forms after restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation in 2020 — announced its permanent shutdown, citing financial obstacles. Considering the amount of planning typically involved in food festivals, Ellison felt confident that no one else in the Asheville area would produce such an event in 2024. But the odds of an outside group taking advantage of the situation seemed disturbingly high.

“You know somebody from f*cking Florida is going to come in here and bring another food festival,” he recalls thinking.

Sensing a chance to keep such an event locally controlled, Ellison was further spurred by a desire for his company to prove that it can handle productions of this magnitude. He and his employees then decided to give Bite Me a go, while acknowledging that Chow Chow’s demise could be a sign that the climate may not be ideal for another big Asheville food festival.

“I don’t know that now is a great time,” Ellison says. “Probably, this is the worst time, which also makes it the best time to try something new. That’s sort of my understanding of how business works: Opportunities usually show up during the worst moments in an industry.”

The people’s festival

To plan Bite Me, Ellison recruited Jennifer Rodriguez, founder of food and lifestyle website Asheville Guide; pastry chef Melinda Hanley; and Sarah Fiori, business administrator at Asheville Crafted Edge, a local provider of handmade kitchen tools.

“We’re all friends,” he says. “If this was a reality TV show, I’d be the nucleus because it’s all my individual friends.”

The planning committee met at Ellison’s office and used the whiteboards lining the walls to jot down what aspects of foodcentric events each of them enjoys. Once they whittled down the areas of interest, the quartet split up and put their strengths to work.

For example, Fiori is organizing the cooking competition on Friday, Aug. 16, which she describes as “a heavy lift” but one that she hopes will become a cornerstone of Bite Me for years to come. Developed in partnership with chef Stephen Hertz of host A-B Tech, the face-off features chefs Nick Abbott, Rakim Gaines, Ryan Kline and Suji May from the school’s acclaimed culinary department, battling over the course of two rounds, followed by a final head-to-head showdown with a $1,000 prize on the line.

“I am not involved,” Ellison says. “I know nothing. That’s not my skill set. I’m just going to show up and clean a pot.”

He is, however, using his plentiful connections to bring notable stars from his life to the festival. Among them are chef/author/entrepreneur Hawa Hassan and historian/writer Cynthia Greenlee — both James Beard Award winners who will be in conversation Thursday, Aug. 15, at the YMI Cultural Center. Ellison notes that the setting runs counter to scenes at many food festivals in which interesting, important figures are on a stage in August in the sun, surrounded by vendor tents that distract from the speakers.

“I’m really excited to be able to sit in a room with nothing else going on and hear from people that I don’t hear from often,” he says.

While Ellison feels optimistic about the variety of events, he thinks the Friday and Saturday after-parties will rank among Bite Me’s defining moments. In his words, “Asheville is a party,” and he feels that entry points for younger people have been missing from some of the other local events.

“That was the biggest thing: making sure that there were some cheap early morning options and really late night options,” he says.

Complex situation

If it all sounds like a lot — it is. And that’s intentional.

“The only way to have a community event is if it is everything to everyone, because everyone is different,” Ellison says. “To make it accessible, you have to make it complicated. Because I don’t know what [attendees] are going to [choose].”

In turn, Bite Me offers full festival and day passes, plus individually ticketed events including the cooking competition. Admission is free to the community market on Saturday, Aug. 17, at Rabbit Rabbit, and The Big Ass Cook Out on Sunday, Aug. 18, at Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Vendors will sell items at both events. Otherwise, thanks to modest funding from sponsors, Ellison & Co. are able to foot the bill for certain activities upfront.

“We’re paying chefs to do dinners at restaurants where the restaurants keep the money [from sales]. But we’re using somebody else’s money to do that,” Ellison says. “We are literally robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s not a model; it’s a negotiation of priorities.”

All-access passes cost just over $150, and though Ellison feels they’re worth closer to $500, he’s confident that amount would prove wildly prohibitive. Yet he continues to get pushback from the community about the price.

“Every single person who’s been involved with a food festival in Asheville has told me the tickets are too cheap, and every single person who has not bought a ticket, who wants to come, has said they’re too expensive,” he says. “That’s what kills food festivals. People are just operating from different standpoints.”

The planning committee’s goal for the inaugural Bite Me is for no one to go broke in the process of hosting the event. But there are larger philosophical, cultural and societal issues at stake as well.

According to Ellison, “If we’re able to pull off the festival without investors and we’re able to do something that feels good to chefs and good to business owners and good to people that’s also really fun, then that means that it wasn’t the city [holding us back]. It wasn’t the economy. It was people’s willingness to ask to do our things and ask different questions.”

He and his collaborators have other metrics for success as well: bars that seem achievable regardless of how things play out.

“We’re just here for a good time,” Ellison says. “And there’s a million ways to be involved, and whatever works for you works. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s cool, too — but it’s not because you didn’t have a path.”

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