Food Is the Front Door: How Hungry for History Brings Museums, Historic Sites, and Restaurants Together in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley

Heritage Tourism Conversations, Episode 5 · Recorded live on Zoom, October 13, 2026

Renee Bayliss of the Winchester-Frederick County Convention & Visitors Bureau and Rick Kriebel of the Newtown History Center joined Heidi Schlag to talk about Hungry for History, a roughly ten-day food and history event held the week before Labor Day in Virginia's Northern Shenandoah Valley. Now in its fourth year, it brings museums, historic sites, and restaurants across the region together around one theme. Renee and Rick share how it started, how they recruit and schedule partners, how they work within health codes, and why food opens the door to lesser-known stories.

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About the Guests

Renee Bayliss works with the Winchester-Frederick County Convention & Visitors Bureau in Winchester, Virginia, where she has spent about 15 years managing the website and much of the bureau's marketing. Born and raised in the area, she knows the region's museums, historic sites, and restaurants well and coordinates the partners behind Hungry for History.

Rick Kriebel has worked for eight years at the Newtown History Center in Stephens City, Virginia, about 8 to 10 miles south of Winchester. With a staff of two, he does a little of everything, and he brought the original idea for Hungry for History to the CVB after hearing about food programming at ALHFAM conferences.

What We Talked About

Food gives every site a way in. Farming is central to the Valley's identity, from its reputation as the "breadbasket of the Confederacy" to the Apple Blossom Festival, and everyone eats. That flexibility lets sites that aren't food sites take part: Stonewall Jackson's Headquarters explores Jackson's eccentric diet and Civil War rations, the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum offers kids' programs on agriculture and Indigenous foodways, and the Patsy Cline House serves black walnut cake from a family recipe.

Start from relationships you already have. Hungry for History grew out of a regional Civil War weekend that faded after the Sesquicentennial, so the CVB kept the same partners and marketing approach and changed the theme. Renee invites more than 15 sites with a rough outline, holds brainstorming meetings so each one can participate in a way that fits, and uses a shared spreadsheet so no day is overloaded or empty. Lapsed partners stay on the list in case they want to come back.

Make it easy for restaurants to say yes. Restaurants are the hardest partners to pin down, so Renee recruits ones already engaged in the community or with a historic angle, like a historic building, traditional dishes, or local ingredients. She offers flexible ways to take part, such as a special menu, a pickle-making class, or a themed dinner. The Wayside Inn, for example, serves Virginia ham and peanut soup.

Plan around health codes, collections, and insurance. Rick can't serve food cooked over an open fire, but baked goods and beverages are fine, and full meals need an inspected commercial kitchen, so Tavern Night starts around 7 p.m. after people have eaten dinner. Porches, tents, and partner venues keep food away from collections. Heidi recommended checking your state liquor board before serving alcohol, and each site carries its own insurance, so ask your carrier about riders for large crowds or tents.

Small museums gain a lot. The Newtown History Center has two staff and a budget that mostly goes to building restoration, and Hungry for History accounts for a significant share of its 500 to 600 annual visitors. In 2026, Tavern Night drew more than 70 people to a neighboring farm's barn for period games, Civil War-era music, historic cake recipes, and cider. The programs also show the community that the museum is active.

Untold stories draw crowds, and growth takes time. Native American and African American history programs were among the most popular offerings, and food opened the door to them. Renee found that real-time reels performed best on social media, and both agreed it takes a few years before people put an event like this on their calendars. Rick's bigger hope is that people who enjoy the Valley's food traditions come to value the farmland and historic places that make them possible.

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Full Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

Heidi Schlag: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to my next Heritage Tourism Conversation. Today, I'm joined by Renee Bayliss and Rick Kriebel, both from the Winchester, Virginia area. And they're joining us to discuss the Hungry for History event they've been doing for 4 years in the Shenandoah Valley. They're using food as a way to bring visitors to their region to visit multiple sites across the region in a unique collaboration. when I recorded this conversation last week, I forgot to hit record during my introduction. So, today, I'm here just to set up the intros, and in a minute, we are going to transition to the conversation, which cuts in as Renee's beginning to introduce herself. I hope you enjoy this conversation. It was really rich and thought-provoking.

Renee Bayliss: I work with the Winchester Frederick County Convention and Visitors Bureau, and I've been here about 15 years. I'm born and raised here, so I know the area pretty well. And, so my role here is mostly marketing-related things. I manage our website, I do help promote events of all kinds around our area. And, I create our visitor guide, I design that, I have a graphic design background, and, I also do some other fun stuff, like coordinating walking tours and trolley tours. I manage a trolley that we have. Things like that, so…

Heidi Schlag: Great. And Rick, same question for you.

Rick Kriebel: Well, for the last, 8 years now, I've worked at the Newtown History Center, which is in the town of Stephens City, about 8 or 10 miles south of Winchester. And we've got two staff. I'm the junior staff member, so it's basically everything that the boss doesn't do. That includes public programs. I've written a number of the tours that We've rented Renee's trolley for. I handle our social media, I handle the paperwork for our collections. Make sure our buildings are in good working order, etc.

Heidi Schlag: Great. And Renee, would you just tell us a little bit about where you are in Virginia for the folks who aren't from the area and what makes that region unique?

Renee Bayliss: Sure. So, Winchester is at the top of Virginia, in the northern part of Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, which is a really scenic area. We have the Shenandoah National Park nearby. It's just a really beautiful area, and we have a lot of Civil War history here. We have, kind of an apple history. We were a big apple-producing region. And we still have the Apple Blossom Festival here, and then we're also known for being the hometown of Patsy Cline, the country music singer. So that's another thing that's… special about us. And we have a pedestrian mall here in Old Town Winchester, that's another of our top attractions. We have an area that's closed to traffic where people can just stroll and shop and eat outdoors.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. Yeah, it's a really fun area to visit. So let's dig in a little bit to this Hungry for History idea that you guys have been doing, and I think that you just finished your fourth year, is that… Correct. Yeah. So, Rick, do you, I know this idea sort of, was born from you, so can you talk a little bit about how you got the idea, and how you started, on the path to bringing it to the Winchester area?

Rick Kriebel: Yes, so… There's a predecessor for this that I believe has made a slight resurgence. But it was our Civil War weekend. Or for a while, a number of Civil War sites in the area would all have programs that they would coordinate over the course of a weekend, so that a tourist could go from one to the other to the other, and Basically make it there. A theme for, like, a weekend getaway? And they would space them out so you'd have time to go from one to another. We participated in that because, given our size, we don't have an awful lot of Resources for an advertising budget. So being able to partner with these other organizations is a big help. Now, we couldn't really match the battlefields in terms of what we were able to offer with that. But also, after the war's 150th, it looks like the interest in that kind of burned out, and the Civil War, we can eventually fade it away. So then at the same time, I'm a regular member of ALHFAM, the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. Basically, places that have farm museums, historic reenactments, costume interpretation, hearth cooking, all that sort of thing. All over the US and Canada, and some international as well. So at those conferences, I was hearing a lot about how different sites were having successful programs related to food, and the connection between farming and history and current events with regards to food security, the environment, etc. So that got me really inspired, most especially with Nash Farm outside Dallas. Where they're even able to make programs that were able to generate revenue. And food is a very flexible, open-source topic, right? I mean, everyone eats. All those Civil War sites? I certainly fit in, because that was a part of the war. And this area in particular has a very strong agricultural tradition. I don't simply mean, like, oh, before development came here, there were farms. I mean that farming is a very deeply embedded part of the identity. That when this was part of the Confederacy, it was called the breadbasket of the Confederacy. The afterwards, probably one of the biggest single events every year, is the Apple Blossom Festival to celebrate how the apple trees are starting to We'll produce fruit for the season. So, it really seems like it would be a salient one that could cover a lot of bases here.

Heidi Schlag: So, you had this, this idea, what, what steps did you take to sort of get it off the ground?

Rick Kriebel: Well, first, I just brainstormed a bunch of different historic sites and other museums that could possibly participate. And I made up a little spreadsheet of them. And then I contacted Renee Because I knew that the Convention and Visitors Bureau is very open to working with partner organizations, even little ones like ours. So, I said, hey, I've got this idea, what do you make of it? And then I feel a little bad because it seems that she's ended up doing most of the work for my idea.

Renee Bayliss: It was a good idea.

Renee Bayliss: [laughs] Well, it wasn't too much of a lift, because I had already helped with the Civil War weekend, and so it was similar partners, and I was doing the marketing for that event. They had kind of pulled me in to help do some of their marketing, creating their posters and programs and stuff for that, so I was like, sure, we can do that, we'll just shift, you know, and make it a different topic. And, it's a really good way to get those historic sites together on a regular basis and communicating, too.

Heidi Schlag: So, what… what were the steps that you took then after, you know, you and Rick had this meeting? How… how did you go about getting partners on board, spreading the word, that type of thing?

Renee Bayliss: Sure. So, like he said, we kind of identified the ones that we thought… I mean, we cast a wide net and put, like. at least 15 different sites that we thought might be able to participate, and you know, sent them out kind of a little rough outline of what we thought the event could be, but to come meet us and set up a time, and we all got together, and we had this just big brainstorming session for to kind of put it on the sites, too. It was their event, really. We wanted them to be able to contribute in the way that made the most sense for their museum, or historic site, or whatever it might be. And, we got a lot of cool ideas out of… out of the first couple meetings, and it was… it was really… they were really enthusiastic. We had a lot of… a lot of sites show up, and… and they seemed like they were really intrigued by doing something different.

Heidi Schlag: So I think that it could be overwhelming for people who are embarking on doing something that's community-wide, because you're used to operating in your own system, and where you have, you know, sort of control of your resources in the event. And so when you are collaborating together, that that might seem scary, but were people receptive to the idea? It sounds like they were. Did you have anybody who didn't feel like they wanted to participate? Were you able to change their minds?

Renee Bayliss: We had a couple that seemed very enthusiastic in the beginning, but then I… and they had some… ideas and things like that, but I think that… What happened was they maybe just didn't have the time, didn't have the bandwidth to actually participate then later on. probably should reach back out to them to see… you know, I usually keep the same group on the list, like, I still hold out hope that maybe, you know, one year they'll participate, and the other year they say we're too busy, can't do it. But yeah, we've had… a pretty good set of people every year that now that they've done it once, they know they can do it, and it's not too much of a burden on their staff or their volunteers to participate.

Heidi Schlag: Great. So Rick, can you tell us about the programming that your museum is offering? Because you've done some cool things with your piece of it.

Rick Kriebel: Yeah, so we have 3 separate programs to take place for, although one of them is… Most of the work is done by a partner. So the first one is. In one of our exhibit buildings, we have an early 20th century store. And a lot of the products are for sale there. were food-related, either ready-made food, or things that help with agriculture, things that help with cooking, or preservation, etc. So… I put together a, a field trip for students. Where they could go through and basically treat it like a scavenger hunt, where I broke this idea of industrializing food. into a number of categories, and wrote a quick one-minute summary at, like, a 4th grade level. To just say, here's what it means to preserve food. Here's the kind of things a farmer needs. And then… The students were free to go throughout the store looking for artifacts related to it. And then when they see something, they say, oh, look at this, and we can go talk about it. Once it looks like their interest or attention span is starting to flag a little bit, I bring up the next one. And that gives them an idea of how industrialization has changed the way we eat. Then, there is a winery about 3 miles to the west of us. that is in… Oh, building's a little over 220 years old. And I reached out to them and said, would you like me to do a history of the winery? They said yes, and it ended up working out very well, because most of the sources I saw actually are food-related. You know, between restaurants that previous owners ran, or… you know, the idea of Southern hospitality at that site during the 19th century. And I made a program about that, where I go to the winery. And I give a history of it while folks are able to go there, purchase wine and food, and sit there and listen. And then, we have a… Sort of homestead farm immediately south of town. Where you can actually see it from the front porch of the museum. and they wanted to get involved in the event, and I said. You know, if I'm all about partnerships, it would be silly not to include them, right?

Heidi Schlag: Absolutely.

Rick Kriebel: So Their Barn is a great event space. And we use it as an opportunity to create an annual tavern night.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about the Tavern Night, because I think it sounds like a great deal of fun.

Rick Kriebel: Well, it is. So, I bring in… various games that people would have played in that era, you know, I've got dominoes I got from, I believe, Townsends, so made of bone. I've got… Shut the box. I've got the Game of the Goose. The Game of Graces. I set those up so folks can play them if they want. They bring in a band that specializes in Civil War era music. And they've got vendors who can make cake recipes that, say, Dolley Madison made, or they can… Bring in vendors who have historic cider recipes. And that way, people can just have a very enjoyable evening with the ambiance. And the band, basically, their program provides a history of the Civil War through music. So there's still educational elements. But in a lot of ways, it's fun and entertainment.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. Well, yeah, and what the travel research is showing is that people really want to have sort of unique experiences, and so… That Tavern Night is allowing people to experience history in a fun and accessible way, which I think is, you know, part of what is making it so, so popular. So, I guess either of you can answer this. I know that, there are some other really creative ideas that some of the other sites are doing. Renee, you had talked about the Patsy Cline House. As a great example of how a, sort of more modern 20th century site is participating. So, do you want to talk about what the Patsy Cline House is doing?

Renee Bayliss: Sure. So, they've kind of alternated between a couple different programs that they've done. One of them is, they use one of Patsy's family recipes to make this black walnut cake, and it's from a walnut tree. They collect the nuts from the tree and make her walnut cake with, you know, the family recipe. And then they sell that at their block party event that they have, you know, that kind of is a fundraiser for them. It's part of the other activities that people can partake of that day. And then the other thing they did is, other years they have, like, a soda pop tasting, because, Patsy used to work as a soda jerk. So they have… you can kind of taste different sodas and. It's just something fun that they do on their event that they already have planned that weekend.

Heidi Schlag: So. I… you made a good point I sort of want to point out, is that some of these organizations, when this event started, had other things going on, and were… might have been a little resistant to… to, joining this effort. So how did you guys… I know you… we talked about this during our prep call. How did you sort of, work with them and help them to find ways to be included?

Renee Bayliss: Right, so, it was really in our original meetings with the sites that they Kind of hashed out what they already have going on every year, what they do annually, if they have a fundraiser, if they have a festival, if they have some program they always put on. So that we could find a window of time that would make sense for everybody to be easier, that you're not adding this new program that's gonna be hard for you to put on, or it's during, you know, a time when you're already got this exhibit going on, or something like that. So, we kind of bookended it with, the first weekend. One of our plantation, Belle Grove Plantation, has a wine festival every year. And so they've kind of worked in like historic chefs and a chef's market and things like that that do demonstrations as part of their event. And then the other one is the Patsy Cline Labor Day weekend, which is, like, over her birthday weekend, and they have that every year, so they just kind of worked it into the thing they were already doing. And, I think it's… it kind of makes a good way to have things at the beginning, at the end, and kind of sprinkled out throughout the whole event.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, I just shared, in the chat the link to the. the page where they have this past year's event listing, and it happens usually the week right before Labor Day, so they just, finished it up, but you could put it on your calendars for next year. Rick, could you tell us some of the other types of events, both, history-related and not, that, the various participating sites have brought to Hungry for History.

Rick Kriebel: Yeah, so I've been really impressed and happy with how creative some of them have been. Up. early on, even though I invited the Civil War groups, I was a little afraid that You know, it might feel like it's pushing them out of the way, but they were very enthusiastic. The one that really blew me away was Stonewall Jackson's headquarters, where the first year they just presented on the fact that Jackson was frankly eccentric and ate some very strange things. So it was a lecture about Stonewall Jackson and the foods he ate. Since then, they've also had a compare and contrast between what an officer's diet would have been during the war versus an enlisted man's. And because the headquarters is fundamentally a Victorian home, fairly nice one. They, I believe, also offered a program about what that would be like on a civilian level. You know, what the people living there would have typically eaten. We also have, in the neighboring county, Clarke County, their historical association has a fully operational food grade grist mill. So you can go there. This Saturday, if you want, and you could buy, you know, flour or cornmeal that was ground there. And they were a major factor in setting the date, because The mill isn't really operational during the colder months, so that kind of shut that out, because we wanted something that big to be involved. But they've not just had milling demonstrations, they've had a forum on the importance of cider, for example. We've had a children's museum in the area, the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum. That does, like… child's level agricultural lessons. Either about some of the Indigenous folks who live in this area, and their agricultural methods, or just growing apples, because again, that is a major part of the culture here. And they're able to provide that. And then you have Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, the biggest one in the area. Their gardener has gotten into this, where They'll set up a little exhibit within the garden that time of year, showing, hey, this plant can be used for this type of food, or that plant can be. Things that we wouldn't normally think of. But that people in pre-industrial societies were associating these particular plants with food. On top of that, this year, they had a workshop about making sourdough, so…

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, I love. how food… food is sort of the universal language, right? Where everybody eats, everybody shares meals, you know, has their favorite foods, has their family food traditions, and… You just listed a number of ways that sites that aren't specific to food were able to incorporate that into their programming. Rick, you had mentioned on our prep call a porch program. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Rick Kriebel: Yes, so nobody has done a porch program here, per se.

Heidi Schlag: Okay.

Rick Kriebel: But… we were talking about the limitations we can have if you have a site like where I am. our buildings are basically all dedicated to exhibits, right? So if you have a food program, one of the first things you want is food. And… You know, we could possibly bring in baked goods, and then… Have to vacuum the collection storage space immediately after. But at ALHFAM this year, that conference I went to. One of the sessions I attended was about using a porch of a historic building for a program. Because porches were often a communal space, they were often spaces that had food on them. So, I mean, you could have tea time on the porch, you could have You know, sort of an evening dinner on a porch, especially since it's… tends to happen end of August, beginning of September, so the weather's typically warm. That's gonna be a very pleasant event. And that just shows some of the flexibility here, where if you're looking at it and saying, I can't really have food inside any of my spaces, you have outdoor space, potentially. It could be a porch, it could be a nice field where you could set up a tent. You have partner organizations, you know, like, I go to the winery, and… It's a historic building, but obviously they can have… Food and even red wine regularly there. And that draws a crowd that helps them generate a little revenue, helps me get our mission out more, and everyone goes away happy.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. Yeah, that's part of what I love about these collaborative events, is that you're all, by marketing together, and we'll talk more about the marketing in a minute, but you're just exposing each other to each other's audiences, so people might be learning about New things that they didn't know existed and. just having richer and more meaningful experiences while they're in the destination. And the research on heritage and cultural tourists shows that that those types of tourists do like to do multiple things, so they're very inclined to go to a museum, to a restaurant, to a winery. That is how they like to travel, so you guys are, I think. Really playing in into the the tourists that. And the preferences that those tourists have. So let's talk a little bit about the restaurants, because obviously you can't talk about food and beverage without restaurants. So, I know if you've had some tie-ins with local eateries, could, whoever wants to take that one. I'd love to talk about that.

Renee Bayliss: Sure, I can talk about that. The restaurants, if you work with restaurants at all, like we do at the CVB, they are one of the trickiest industries to kind of pin down on things, because they're so busy. They're, like, busy, busy, busy, and their mission is to make food, not necessarily have, you know, out of the box… they're serving people all day. So you kinda gotta… get the partners that are already in the community doing things, already participating, you know, already really good partners, that helps. And then also ones that, kind of have some kind of historic… aspect to them. Either they might be in a historic building, or maybe they serve more traditional food, or they use local ingredients, things like that. So that's how we've gotten, the restaurants on board that we do have, and… and they are kind of solid. The ones that we've been using have been the same ones. Mostly every year. And they provide a variety of different ways to participate, too. We don't say, here's how you need to participate. just kind of give them, hey, you could do a special menu, and you can offer it, you know, as long as you want. It could be just one day, it could be the whole time during the event, or, you know, if you wanted to offer a special event. One of them did a class, even, because they make their own pickles, so they said, we'll do a pickle-making class, and then people can sign up for it, and that's another way for them to make some revenue. One of them did… they were already planning a bourbon tasting dinner. So they participated this year by doing that and kind of weaving in that. They serve like new, they call it new Appalachian cuisine. So it is kind of historic food with a modern twist.

Heidi Schlag: Mmhm.

Renee Bayliss: And, it really went with their mission. So, we have a few like that. We also have the Wayside Inn that has Clem's Kitchen, and they're, like, one of the oldest operating inns in the country. So, it just fits with what they are, and people just love seeing them offer more historic food, offering things like, you know, Virginia ham, and peanut soup, and going back to their roots.

Heidi Schlag: I love that. If anybody has questions for Rick or Renee, feel free to pop them in the chat, and we will, get those answered, but I want to turn a little bit to… the marketing of this. So, Renee, can you talk about the support that you and your office provides this event?

Renee Bayliss: Sure. So, I feel like working with historic sites, that's one thing that might be a challenge for them. They don't always have a person that's able to do marketing, they're busy, like. doing their programs, or, you know, like, dealing with their collections, and maybe boring stuff behind the scenes, but they're not out there marketing, every day. So… that's kind of where we stepped in to do the marketing. I create posters and programs, little bag stuffers that they can put in, like, gift shop baggies when people come in. We do go on a radio show. We have, like, a tourism radio show that we do every month, and so we dedicate one of those episodes to… to this event. We do work it into our advertising as much as we can. We run some newspaper, regional newspaper ads. And then I put out a press release. So, it helps to have, our organization behind it, kind of giving it a lift. That, some of the things that we put out. Are more easily seen than maybe just one small site. getting the word out. We… we also, like, co-host all of the events on, with all the sites on Facebook, so that.

Heidi Schlag: Okay.

Renee Bayliss: So that it gets more visibility. We pay for some paid social media ads, we try to do some reels or Facebook posts. Things like that. So, I would say that's probably, from the perspective of the historic sites, the marketing is the challenge. You need someone who can help you with that part.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, absolutely. And Rick, do you want to talk about that from your seat?

Rick Kriebel: Yes, I mean, I have a background in museums, I learned a little bit about marketing, but really, I am way out of my depth, right? So… I really appreciate that help and lift. We make some of our own Facebook events. And again, we'll make sure that we include the Tourism Bureau as a As a co-host, I'll take pictures during the events, post on the social media. Oh. One good partner who you wouldn't necessarily expect is Civil War Trails. If you have a partnership with them. Part of the deal is that any event you have on Facebook, whether or not it's civil war related. You can make them a co-host and reach their audience as well.

Heidi Schlag: Great.

Rick Kriebel: Definitely take advantage of that. We also have posters and brochures where The first couple years, I'll just… throwing those out to anywhere I could think of that drew a lot of people, right? And you can actually see one of the posters behind Renee on her door.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah.

Renee Bayliss: So.

Rick Kriebel: So that has. the big logo that got designed by somebody in the National Park Service. It has a list of all the different participating partners, and I think the last couple years, we've had ones that have QR codes on them as well, so you can then go to the link and see all the events. So initially, I'm throwing those out all over the place, and I start to think. That would, I mean, that would easily eat up two Mondays for me, right?

Heidi Schlag: Sure.

Rick Kriebel: Where do I focus this more? And I'm still trying to figure that out. Where are the most effective places to advertise are? And where do I put up a poster as opposed to handing out brochures, for example? So, you know, that often takes… feedback from community partners, where if you're in history for a living. you're probably already looking for the kind of small businesses and other places that have this sense of community. Just knowing who they are, and… knowing how effectively their audience is going to reach. There's a new mercantile store sort of coffee shop and antique store hybrid. That has been a phenomenal. place to put these brochures, because people take those right up. They love it there. We also have… Some other establishments that are good members of the community. But just the people they're drawing in aren't as interested in this, right? It took experience to figure that out.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. Yeah, like, That's so much of a marketer's job, right, is figuring out who your audience is and how to get in front of them. Umm. So. Renee, can you… I mean, I know that you at least have some web stats, some social media stats that sort of point to the popularity of this event, and, talk about that and how it's grown over the past 4 years?

Renee Bayliss: Yeah, so, I know that we've been trying to increase what we've been doing on social media, because We haven't been… It's an easier way to reach people that are, you know, out of the area, and like you said, target them with specific interests and things like that, so we have seen really good response from some of the reels that we posted about, you know, I posted one of our colonial dancing event and said, you know, here it is, it's going on now. Like, some of that promotion was really great, and there were, you know, people went crazy over it, because they can see it happening right then and there, and it just looks fun and exciting. And. let's see, I'm trying to think what some of the other ones were. I mean, just the amount of people that we get that are interested in sharing the event, too. We've seen increase quite a bit since we started the event. I know early on, even some of the participating sites were saying, like, we're not seeing enough of it out there. But it takes a few years to get these events going, to get people to kind of get it on their radar, know that it's gonna happen again next year, look forward to it, and they say, well, we missed it, you know, we look for it next year, and I think it's really starting to get something they're familiar with.

Heidi Schlag: And then, Rick, from your point of view, I know you, you mentioned you don't have much of a marketing budget, and I know that this event accounts for a pretty significant portion of your annual visitation.

Rick Kriebel: Yeah. So, if you count people who come through our front door. And people who come to our events, either on or off-site, and people who stop by our tables when we go to someone else's events. On a good year, but a predictable one, one that's not outstanding. We can expect 500 to 600 people. I mean, this year's Tavern Night, we had over 70. We had about a dozen at the winery lecture. And we had… Probably about 20 students go through the school program. So when you put all those together. That adds up to a pretty significant Portion of our visitors for the year. And when I first came here, we were struggling with programs. And it… what has some ramifications to the community, where Fundamentally, what we have are two staff, a fixed budget that's mostly based on an endowment. and about a dozen historic buildings in various states of restoration, rehabilitation, etc. That means most all of our resources go into fixing up these buildings, but also finding contractors, waiting for it. Members of the community would say, what are you guys doing? And programs show that we're doing things, right? Right. You know, even if the buildings look like they're still getting fixed up because they are and we're not.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, it's a long process.

Rick Kriebel: It really is, more than folks outside of historic preservation realize. It's not like a regular construction project, with the kind of specialists you need and the kind of resources and materials you do. So… That's all been… something that I appreciate on that end, that we're able to show that we're not just sitting there Boarding things up, acting weird. We're able to show that we have a presence in the community, that we want to be part of the community, and we can contribute to it.

Heidi Schlag: Well, and I think that's so important. I'm glad you brought up your historic buildings, because, that… that's something I think about a lot, is that… If… we want people to understand that these buildings need to be preserved. They're significant to what makes the destination unique, and I do think that people just don't understand how long, you know, raising money for a preservation project, and going through all of the clearances, and actually restoring that building to a usable state, how long that can take, and how expensive it can be. So. These types of programs, that's sort of a side benefit, I would say, is that, you know, we're helping people to experience everything, all of the history and culture that makes the Winchester and the Shenandoah Valley area unique, and hopefully that that will translate into more interest in Helping preserve these buildings and preserving. the traditions, the food traditions, Appalachian traditions. Umm. I had a question, and it flew right out of my head. Oh, so, Renee, I know you and I, when we did our pre-call, we were sort of debating how much of this event is driving out-of-town traffic versus, just having locals visit your site. So, can you speak to that a little bit?

Renee Bayliss: Right, yeah. We collect… Visitor counts from all of the events and compile those to see how many people we have coming, but most of our, you know, data collection on where the visitors are coming from is, you know, just anecdotal asking people here and there at the sites, you know, where are they from, or maybe they're share that with us, but we haven't really set in place any way to that we're sitting there writing down, okay. Okay, where are you from? Of course, that's what we do that at the visitor center, you know, oh, hi, where are you from? But it's a little more challenging when you go to some event like this at a winery and they're like, can you tell us where you're from? Do we want to write all that down? And we had some people this year, I know, at our program at the visitor center that were from, you know, a young couple from the DC area, you know, and you think, oh. Oh, that's unexpected. You know, they were city people, a young couple, you know, coming to a history event. Oh, that's great. And I know we had another couple that came into the visitor's center that was from Florida, I believe, and they were looking for… a certain kind of music event they wanted, and we sent them out to the tavern night, you know, that that was going on, and I saw them there, they came! That's crazy. So, it was exciting that we had something that fit what they were looking to do. I think in the future, since you bring this up, like, we probably should do something where we can kind of gather more details on where they're from, and maybe a survey, you know, how'd you enjoy the event? And reward them somehow for returning that. You know, it's always, like, we want to collect the data on where people are coming from, but it's a challenge.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, I know that that's… that's tricky on a regular event, and then an event where folks are actually moving around throughout a… A region, you're… it's hard to know.

Renee Bayliss: Right.

Heidi Schlag: People are going to, to two.

Renee Bayliss: 200 people coming to a festival or something. It's like.

Heidi Schlag: Right.

Renee Bayliss: And we do… we did have the ability to kind of collect cell phone, you know, location data from people, but that's gotten really restricted, especially even more recently, on what data you can collect on.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, really.

Renee Bayliss: From with their… yeah. Yeah, so…

Heidi Schlag: That's interesting. If there's any questions, I haven't seen any pop up, but please, pop any questions you might have into the chat. I did want to just underline that you guys… it sounded like this year made an effort to space out the times of the events a little bit. so that people would have more time to go to multiple sites. So, do you… can you just speak a little bit to how that process worked, and if you… if you saw any success with it?

Renee Bayliss: So I think that we kind of determined that in the beginning, that we, one of the things the sites need to do when they meet up to plan every year is to figure out what day is your program gonna be, you know. We put up a spreadsheet and say, put the date of your program in here, so that, you know, somebody's not planning too much on the same day, it's spread out. We do have some times where having programs going on at the same time can complement each other, too. So, you know, my… we have a historic site actually across the street from us here at the Visitor Center, and sometimes they have something in the morning, and we'll have something in the afternoon, and people can go to both. But we don't want everything on one weekend and nothing in the middle, or it doesn't feel like it's a long event. Right. We want something going on. Some of the events go on through the course of the whole thing. There might be a self-guided garden tour, or, something like that, where the people can do it any time. And it's kind of similar to what we did with Civil War Weekend, so we kind of carried that over.

Heidi Schlag: Great. So we have, Marilyn asking… Do you, as the event organizers, do you need any special insurance? Do either of you know?

Renee Bayliss: have never done that… that I know of. Any of the sites would have their own.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, that would be my.

Renee Bayliss: responsibility for each of their sites, and I guess that would depend on what kind of event they're hosting, too.

Rick Kriebel: What makes me think of more is… When there's food involved, obviously there's health codes, right, that come into play? And figuring out that as a sort of limitation on what you can do as a program. For example. one thing that'd be really cool at one of the Civil War battlefields would be to see how the soldiers cooked, right? And that's over an open hearth, or not even hearth, just campfire. The public probably can't eat that without a citation happening.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, I know when I hearth cook.

Renee Bayliss: Yeah.

Heidi Schlag: I can't… we can't give it to anybody.

Renee Bayliss: We established that early on and so we got the partnerships with some of these caterers that would bring food. food to the site, you know, as long as it was either prepackaged or, you know, created in a commercial kitchen, then we were fine. So that's another reason why we have to partner with people so much. But like you said, yeah, you can't serve somebody something you cooked yourself unless it was a real kitchen, not just a fire.

Rick Kriebel: So, for our tavern night, that factors in more, and the farm… Takes on more of this planning because they are also an event space, so they're more familiar with this, and they have partners, someone they trust. But basically. Baked goods are… Fine. Beverages are fine. You know, if we have, like, a full cooked meal. That would be a place where there'd start to be some trouble. Because they don't have a, you know, independently inspected commercial-grade kitchen.

Heidi Schlag: Right.

Rick Kriebel: And we absolutely don't ourselves. So… It's baked goods, and it's hard cider, along with, you know, some water, maybe some non-alcoholic cider, too. And because of that, we pinned it to a little bit later in the evening, around 7 usually is when we try to aim the start. That way, people have plenty of time to get dinner first before they go there, and they can still enjoy it, because You know, if it was at 5 o'clock. I know if I saw Tavern Night at 5 o'clock, I'd want to go there and get a full, like.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah.

Rick Kriebel: tavern meal and I'm stuck with cake and cider. That would be.

Heidi Schlag: [laughs]

Rick Kriebel: Unpleasant, but if it's a couple hours later in the evening, as something to kind of get me ready for the night, that's… That's pleasant.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah.

Rick Kriebel: So it takes a little bit of flexibility. Just know what your resources are. And… how you can best use them.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. I would say, oh, go ahead.

Renee Bayliss: Probably have to check with your insurance, carrier, I think, whoever you would be using, and asked if you needed to get any kind of special rider or something like that for having an attendance of people over a certain number, or… Things like if you had a tent or something, I would think.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. And, beside, I, I agree with that. And I would say also, if you're planning on serving alcohol, you need to check with your state, liquor board to see if you need.

Renee Bayliss: Oh, yeah.

Heidi Schlag: It varies by state, so… Let's see, we have from Allie, 4 years into the event. What is something you could go back and tell yourself when you were first starting? That's a good question.

Renee Bayliss: That is a good question. What do you think, Rick?

Rick Kriebel: I mean, honestly, I think it's gone pretty smoothly. There's been.

Renee Bayliss: really smoothly.

Renee Bayliss: Think we've had hiccups or anything really.

Rick Kriebel: There's been some bumps, like, just sorting out when everyone spaces or events. That took a couple years, but that was the sort of thing where You just need to do it. And it's not like there were any… Major issues that we didn't really foresee with that. And so I'm grateful that I'm working with organizations that are experienced in things like food or tourism. They could foresee some of those. One I'll probably tell myself is… Just based on local and state regulations, and on the nature of our historic store building. The only school groups that we can bring in there are homeschools. And they've been great. what I did not realize with homeschools, I probably should have told myself in advance, was, you know, I looked at 4th through 6th grade as my target audience, because with Common Core, that's when you're studying local history. But homeschools, when they have field trips, tend to bring everyone. I mean, I've had teenagers near their senior year of high school. I've had 2 and 3 year olds.

Heidi Schlag: Oh, interesting.

Rick Kriebel: And that was definitely a learning curve.

Heidi Schlag: Right.

Rick Kriebel: The thing with it is, you know, if it was, like, a… A public school, or even a private school. You could expect maybe the same teachers every year, but a rotating set of classes who are rising up. That level. With homeschools, because they bring everyone in. They… Basically, it's a one and done, which I get. You know, there's not a lot of places that the kids are going to want to see the same field trip year after year. If you're repeating field trips, it's usually different children in the same class. So, my first year, We had over 40 homeschoolers from a local area. And it almost paralyzed me, because one of the things I did was make a take-home recipe. So I found a historic recipe in our archive. Modified it to modern… Taste, basically, and modern… Directions and dialogue and, you know, what you would call the different items. And I decided to… Partner with a local antique store. where they would fund it if I would set aside bags of these for all the students, and they could take it home, it could be sort of a last lesson. When you have 40-some-odd homeschoolers assigned to do this, and you're basing off donations, you want to be respectful to the resources. You try to find the cheapest things possible, so in my case, like, one of the things they had in their recipe was bottled cherries, maraschino cherries. So I'm looking up a good quantity of maraschino cherries in a jar, and I settle on Target. They had it at a good price. And. I wiped out the pitted Maraschino cherry supply at all the targets in a one-county radius. trying to supply For 40-some-odd students. Then the next year I'm prepared for it to be another massive event. And I had half the number. 'cause a lot of the homeschools have already done it. So.

Heidi Schlag: Okay.

Rick Kriebel: You know, that that's taught me, like. I started expanding into Loudoun County, which is two counties over, but has a large pool of homeschoolers who aren't here. And it's just that was a learning curve I didn't expect, but yeah. what I would have told myself is. Homeschools… are a different breed in terms of administration and logistics from traditional schools.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, that's very interesting. So, we have… 10 more minutes to wrap up. So, and you sort of both addressed this already, but are there other lessons learned or advice that you might have for people on this call that might want to be starting something similar in their communities?

Renee Bayliss: So, one thing we didn't mention, I want to talk about just real quick, is, we actually… I know with tourism offices and things like that, we don't always… work together with other localities, because, you know, we're paid to promote our area, but we did partner on this event with another county next to us, so don't be afraid to, if you're a small area, you know, band together, create a region. Look outside of your boundaries, and, you know, the county next to us is a small county. They might not have been able to do something like this and got as much interest, and we worked together with them off and on on things, so it just made sense, and they have a great, great, some great history resources there, museums and the mill and everything, so… Work with your other localities, it's worth it. Yes, reaching partnerships, yes.

Heidi Schlag: Well, regional partnerships are critical.

Renee Bayliss: And… and the other thing is just kind of… I wanted to make a general comment about the value of this program. I think, looking back, I think Rick's idea was really ahead of its time, even though we're talking about history here. Because we've had so much of a kind of… public sentiment here of how we need to preserve our, our open spaces, our farms, our historic sites, like, everything that makes us unique. We're getting this, like, development pressure, we're getting the whole data center conversation, so everybody's like, we need agritourism, we need, you know, they're bringing in those those, those things into the conversation, and we're able to say, like, hey, look, we're doing this, we're trying, you know, this is… we're trying to do this to kind of preserve our culture here, and our identity of our community, and I think the public is kind of maybe even turning to that more, and seeing what we're doing and getting more interested in it, so… It's great to see.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, that's a great point. I love that. Rick, any last thoughts from you?

Rick Kriebel: Yeah, so I mean, I part of the inspiration I had from ALHFAM was we've got conversations like this going on all over the US and Canada about You know, people are looking to try and eat in more environmentally friendly ways, but… History sites know why we started industrializing food, and so many areas are growing with suburban sprawl, and how that impacts local agriculture. That was an impetus where I wanted to see some of that preservation happen here. And early on, I was measuring my expectations where, you know, I would have loved it if we could just go out there and say, hey, why don't we preserve this heritage? But you don't want to invite people in and then say, well, you need to make a program like this, right?

Heidi Schlag: Right.

Rick Kriebel: And… The first thing, if you're a historic site when it comes to these, the first lesson, especially with children, but also adults, is to enjoy it, to see why you should love and care about the local food and history, right? And the fun makes that a really critical element. Because, as Renee said. people are starting to make those conclusions themselves. You know, you don't have to feed it to them. But… If they just say, hey, I like the fact that we have this winery, that we have Apple Blossom as a festival, that we have This mill that's able to grind Local wheat and local corn, and then they're able to send it to a local brewery, where they're able to make a unique mix.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah.

Rick Kriebel: I want to keep that. I'd rather have the land go to that than to… If data centers are a current hot topic, but we've also had solar farms cropping up on fertile farmland. We've had housing developments. There's all kinds of use of the land. And really, if people don't value the agricultural use, it's not going to stay agricultural.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah. Yeah. Well, very…

Renee Bayliss: that makes this, sorry, one of what makes this event so unique too, I think is the way that we pull out parts of our history that are unique and different and little bits of history that people may not. know as much about. Those have been the most popular events, and food has a way of doing that. Some of our most popular events have been the Native American programs. Which, you know, maybe in Kansas or something, maybe there's more Native American programs, but around here, we don't do things like that as much. So if your site has something that has a story that's untold, people are dying to hear those things. And our African American history programs have done excellent So I think the food has kind of opened that up in a way. It pulls you into maybe some history, lesser known history.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, absolutely. Let's see, I thought I saw another comment pop up here. But yes, I think both of you… Very eloquent last thoughts. I appreciate those. And. I'm really thrilled to have you both here to have this conversation today. Yeah, Laura says the rest of America has a lot more Indigenous heritage programming than Virginia, so…

Renee Bayliss: believe it.

Heidi Schlag: Yeah, we'll have to work on that, Laura.

Renee Bayliss: I'm trying!

Heidi Schlag: All of our Virginia friends, we can put our heads together. Alright, are there any other last questions or thoughts before we wrap up? Well, I'm always available. I'm at heidi@heritagetourismstudio.com, and if you want to get in touch with Renee or Rick, I'd be happy to connect you with them. So thank you guys so much for joining us today, and I will be posting about next month's topic probably next week, so… Thank you all!

Renee Bayliss: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Heidi Schlag: Yep, thank you guys, appreciate your insights.

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