ROB MURRAY: Canmore Uncorked returns April 8th through 22nd. I’m speaking with Uncorked organizer Andrew Nickerson. Just like with any event right now, you’ve obviously had to do a lot of adapting for COVID-19. How is Canmore Uncorked going to work this year?

ANDREW NICKERSON: There are three ways to participate in the festival. We wanted to be very cognizant of COVID-19. There are in-person specials within the businesses where people who feel comfortable going in, and as long as it’s meeting COVID regulations, can go in and enjoy the specials there. Also, we’ve allowed it so deals can be take out instead of dine in at the restaurants. Most importantly, we’ve added a virtual component to the festival. For people who are are outside of town and not comfortable or not permitted to travel yet, or for local people who don’t want to be going into the businesses directly right now, during the course of the festival you’ll be able to access deals from all of the participating businesses through our online marketplace. Those deals can be used at a point in the future.

RM: Canmore Uncorked has typically been known as a big food and drink festival with a lot of set price menus at a variety of local restaurants. I noticed in your logo this year you’ve added (& Adventure). There’s more to it this year, isn’t there?

AN: There’s two sides to that. One is we wanted to work with the restaurants. The three-course menu process that we’ve done in the past isn’t necessarily as practical during the time of COVID. As far as the food and beverage partners are concerned, we’ve allowed them to do anything they want to in terms of their specials that they can best handle during the time of COVID. What we also wanted to do was open up the value to customers. We have a number of retail stores that are in and we also have a number of adventure operators. Maybe it’s a great chance for locals to try something they’ve never tried before through some of our great activity providers, or for people coming to town to try something new and exciting.

RM: Typically along with Uncorked you have things like the long table dinner, the beer festival and the spirits festival. Those aren’t going to be happening in this year?

AN: No, those aren’t going to be happening this year. We’ll definitely be bringing them back at some point in the future, but there’s simply no way we could operate them safely and in the same spirit of fun that we have done in the past. We’re focused on working directly with the businesses.

RM: This is all being coalesced around the virtual passport, which is a paid thing this year. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

AN: In order to access the deals you have to buy a passport. Everything’s done digitally and nothing’s printed. The reason that we’re having to do the paid passport is there are some significant costs in organizing and promoting such a festival, and what we’re trying to do is to ensure that the businesses themselves are not incurring any costs through being a part of this.

RM: Do you have a ballpark of how many businesses are participating in this year’s Uncorked festival?

AN: We have more than 60 that are in, and we’re probably going to finish with somewhere around 65 to 70. We have a few that are just joining in at the last minute. The majority of these are a food and beverage, but we do have retailers and we do have activity providers.

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Filed under: Canmore, Canmore Uncorked