Sweeten Your Weekend Under Billings Skypoint With Strawberry Fest
It's back and as big as ever! The 32nd Annual Strawberry Festival is taking over Downtown Billings, under Skypoint, this Saturday!
What is Strawberry Festival?
This long-time cherished community event is Billings's largest street festival and kicks off the summer event season. In the heart of urban Billings, experience rich diversity in arts and crafts, the scents of food-truck fare from French Crepes, and noodle bowls, to BBQ, over 90 merchants, and live street entertainment.
Where are the strawberries?
According to the Downtown Billings Alliance:
Despite its name, the Strawberry Festival is and has always been a vendor street fair with arts and craft and food vendors alike. The Strawberry Festival happened in early June for the festival’s first 28 years. Eventually, our hard working Downtown Billings team grew tired of the inconsistent June weather literally raining or even snowing on the day’s fun and moved the festival to early July. The new early July date offered more consistent weather, larger crowds, and allowed the Strawberry Festival and HarvestFest to bookend the farmer’s market season in downtown Billings.
Strawberries are not a common Montana crop and while some growers do produce them, our organization struggles to find consistent product year to year. In turn, the DBA has tried various ways over the last 32 years to incorporate the festival’s namesake into the event. The late Ziggy Ziegler, a founder of the Downtown Billings Association, wandered the festival in a large rubber strawberry costume for decades. For over ten years there was a group of chefs and cooks who grouped up to craft a sixty-foot strawberry shortcake on-site to be sold by the slice in the afternoon as a fundraiser. However, in a post COVID era the giant shortcake is a thing of the past. Each year over fifty percent of the festival’s vendors have incorporated some sort of strawberry theme into their menu or products offered that day while many of the downtown brick and mortar restaurants, sweet shops, bakeries, bars, and breweries have strawberry themed menus for the downtown visitors to enjoy.
Who can participate?
The Strawberry Festival is open to all ages, providing entertainment and more for all! This event draws a huge crowd from all over the region and is supported by many amazing local sponsors.
When and Where?
This Saturday, at 10 AM under Skypoint in Downtown Billings! It's FREE, so get out and enjoy the Strawberry Festival!
Click the button below for the official map for the Strawberry Festival.
What are your thoughts?
Will you be attending Strawberry Festival? Who do you hope to see there? Let us know on App Chat or on Facebook!