M. Brody

Big crowds showed up for the Eat Real Festival in Oakland.

​Some 70,000 people showed up for last weekend's Eat Real Festival, according to the event's communications director. Susan Coss said the busiest day was Saturday, which had the longest program of the three-day dual celebration of street food and sustainable food systems. "Thankfully the space was large enough to accommodate so many people so it didn't feel oppressively crowded," Coss told SFoodie.

The biggest surprise to organizers? The popularity of Saturday's Butchery Contest, which pitted three teams against each other in a high-speed hack-off. "There were thousands of people on the main lawn watching," Coss said.

Organizers plan to sit down in the coming weeks to talk about plans for next year's festival. Coss said she expects to announce next year's dates sometime in October.

Meanwhile, La Cocina director Caleb Zigas said the San Francisco Street Food Festival on August 22 raised approximately $40,000 for the Mission District nonprofit. Crowd estimates are difficult, but Zigas said police estimated 6,000-7,000 attendees per hour for the all-day festival that clogged a blocked-off stretch of Folsom. That's far more than the 5,000 total attendees Zigas was expecting before the event. "That's the reason we only got one block in the first place," he said, adding that he was "legitimately amazed" that so many people turned out for the festival. "It was an incredible boon for all the program participants and all the informal vendors."

The S.F. Street Food event was criticized for long lines and wait times for food. Zigas acknowledged that, while the criticism stung, he hoped to learn from it. "The majority of it was well taken," he said. Pretty much everybody said, We hope you do better next year."

Zigas said the $40,000 raised from food sales and the silent auction will help support general programming for the small-business incubator, which, like other nonprofits, has struggled with funding in the current climate.

Tags:

street food