City Center Market Brunch is a new event for the Florence Food and Wine Festival | Local News Leave a comment

FLORENCE, S.C. – The Florence Wine & Food Festival returns Thursday, March 31, with five events. After a two-year hiatus due to COVID, excitement about the coming festival is mounting.

The festival will take place across three days in downtown Florence. One of two new festival events is the City Center Market Bruch, which takes place during the day on Saturday, April 2, at the City Center Market. A ticketed event benefiting Help 4 Kids Florence, the brunch is for anyone who loves local food, farmers and chefs, said Tamara Kirven, executive director of the Florence Wine & Food Festival.

She said the brunch, happening from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will run concurrently with the market. Many of the prepared-food items that guests can sample from the gathering table (cheeses, honeys, and jams), will also be available for purchase from market vendors.

Guests will have the opportunity to sample from eight tasting-stations featuring some of Florence’s finest restaurants and caterers, including Rebel Pie, LilJazZi’s, Osbornes, Julia Belle’s, Doug the Food Guy, Will Altman of Altman Farm and Mill, and Notch 8 Catering. There will be Batch Nine Coffee served by the folks at F.E. Pop’s, a Mimosa Bar featuring fresh-pressed juices by market vendor Sherrie Hughes, of Legacy Juice, a gathering table featuring prepared-foods made by market vendors and curated by Fletcher Bateman of The Happy Hours Co., and live music by Greg Spittle.

“And all the fun takes place under a large tent at City Center Market while the market is in full swing,” Kirven said.

The brunch is part of a collaboration between the Florence Wine & Food Festival and the City Center Farmer’s Market and Kitchen, at 200 Sanborn St. in a renovated warehouse that once belonged to the Atlantic Coastline Railway. City Center Farmer’s Market and Kitchen is operated by the Local Food Initiative of the city of Florence, and since March 2020, it has served as a hub for Pee Dee residents looking to find locally grown and raised foods, and also for food entrepreneurs needing a commissary in which to prepare their foods — and a place to market them.

The Farmer’s Market runs every Saturday of the year from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“This is an exciting opportunity to support the great cause of Help 4 Kids while showcasing the local-foods community that’s grown up around City Center Market in the two years we’ve been here,” said Merrette Dowdell, director of the Local Foods Initiative for the city of Florence. “We’re hoping the brunch brings in new people who may never have experienced the City Center Market before. We want to show everyone our wonderful facility, the quality of foods grown and raised in our area, and how much great work gets done at the market to support Pee Dee farmers and food producers.”

Tickets to the brunch are $50 for a single ticket, $90 for a couple’s ticket.

Help 4 Kids Florence is a nonprofit program providing food packs to elementary schools in Florence County to send home with children every Friday, providing them food for the weekend so that they return to school on Monday fed, rested, and ready to learn.

If you’d like to become a sponsor of the 2022 Florence Wine & Food Festival, contact Tamara Kirven at flowineandfood@gmail.com or 843-615-1625.