Festival Facts

• Twenty-Seven years of successful annual celebrations highlighting Lexington’s famous heritage.
  
  
• Twenty-Seven years of helping to build community among all of the citizens of Lexington and Davidson County.
• Admission to the Barbecue Festival is FREE.
• The festival generates year round positive publicity for the City of Lexington, Davidson County and the State of North Carolina. Media coverage has included print, radio, and newspaper from local, regional, and national media outlets.
• Production of the festival has become a yearlong, full-time job for the director and support staff.
• The Barbecue Festival provides more than 125,000 people with the finest arts/crafts, the most exciting entertainment, and of course, the Best barbecue in the world.
• More than 15,000 lbs. of our famous Lexington Style Barbecue is served at the festival from three tents located on the North and South entrances of the festival and at the square.
•  Both the Piedmont and Carolinian Amtrak trains make special once-a-year stops in Lexington for the Barbecue Festival. All aboard the “Barbecue Express”!
• In 2005, USA Today named the festival as “One of the Top Ten Great Places to Celebrate Food”. Most recently featured on the Travel Channel program “Barbecue Paradise”.
• Travel and Leisure Magazine recognized the Barbecue Festival as “One of America’s Top Ten Food Festivals”. In 2009, the festival was featured in People Magazine in Pauline Frommer’s list of Top Fall Food Fests. For many years, the Southeast Tourism Society has selected the festival as a Top Twenty Event for the month of October 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010!
• The festival has received more than sixty awards from the North Carolina Association of Festival and Events for categories including brochure design, souvenir design, poster design, sponsorship programs, etc. The festival has also received an award from the International Association of Festivals and Events.
• In 2003, The Barbecue Festival was named festival of the year for the state of North Carolina by the North Carolina Association of Festivals and Events. And, in 2002, festival director, Stephanie K. Saintsing, was named festival director of the year.
• In 2003, The Barbecue Festival was featured on more than 20 million Pepsi can panels celebrating the festival’s 20th anniversary. In 2008, more than 50 million commemorative can panels were produced for the 25th Anniversary celebration.
• In 2000, The Barbecue Festival was nominated by Congressman Mel Watt and selected by a committee of the Library of Congress for inclusion in their Local Legacies Program to celebrate the library’s 200th anniversary.
• Each year, the City of Lexington and Davidson County proclaim the month of October as Barbecue Month.
• During the 2005 session of the North Carolina Legislature, the Festival was the talk of the town in Raleigh. A bill was introduced naming the Barbecue Festival as the state’s official food festival. Since barbecue tends to be a political food staple, the idea got bogged down in technicalities and eventually passed in 2007, with a different title…naming the Barbecue Festival the “Official Food Festival of the Piedmont Triad Region of NC”.
• Since it’s inception, www.barbecuefestival.com, has received more than six million hits and has generated thousands of brochure requests from every state and from more than forty foreign countries. The website averages 40,000 hits a month. The website has become a tremendous resource for festival information and information about our community.
• The production of the event would not be possible without continued support from the City of Lexington and local businesses.
• The festival is extremely proud to serve as a catalyst for community fundraising by providing more than forty plus non-profit organizations the audience to have their biggest fundraising day of the year by selling concessions, parking cars, selling raffle tickets, etc.
• The Red Cross hosts their largest blood drive of the year at The Barbecue Festival.
• For many Uptown Lexington merchants, festival day is their most profitable day of the year.
• The Barbecue Festival is a 501-C-4 non-profit organization and was established in 1983. The Articles of Incorporation state, “The purposes for which the corporation is organized are to promote and conduct an annual festival in the City of Lexington, North Carolina, in order to perpetuate the history of Lexington as the pork barbecue capital of the country, and to educate the public on the history of barbecue making in Lexington.” The original directors were Kay K. Saintsing, Joe S. Sink of The Dispatch, and Carl Hughes, Jr. of BB&T. Mr. Wade Reece was the BB&T city executive at the time of initial discussions and planning of the inaugural festival but was transferred prior to the signing of the articles of incorporation.
• The annual budget for the event now exceeds $200,000.
• The festival serves as a year round ambassador for Lexington and is proud to represent the community in such a positive way with this signature event!