Eggfest on LI?

Smitty the Smoker has been organizing the Eggs by the Bay in the San Francisco area for a few years.http://eggsbythebay.proboards70.com/v45index.cgi?

and Gwen(dimplesmom on the egghead forum) did a fantastic job at the 1st Annual Pacific Northwest Eggfest in the Seattle area last year. You may want to gine them a PING over there.
http://www.greeneggers.net/index.php?option=com_simpleboard&Itemid=103&func=showcat&catid=1

DrBBQ or the Mothership can probably give you more info.

If I had the resources, and interest why would I want to draw the focus away from my product?

Eric - Interesting. I was wondering if LI would ever have a big enough market as well for one.

Nice idea for sure.

A problem I see is that an Eggfest at a dealership or sponsored by one offsite allows new customers to buy new units from the dealership (and allows others to buy demo units as well). Not being affiliated with a BGE dealer is just like having a big cooking party. For that matter it could be any cooker.

Don't know if BGE would sponsor something direct that is unaffiliated with their established dealer in the area so as not to undermine them.

I'll be interested in hearing about your progress if this can get off the ground.

Interesting idea.
No eggfests that I'm aware of have been linked to any other event. There's usually a distributor or dealer involved from the beginning but not always. A few have been started by people on their own who just wanted to have one in their area. They always get a dealer or the distributor involved though because two of the main attractions at an eggfest are the many eggs all cooking at once and then the discounted pre-sale of those demo eggs. The demo egg thing just isn't going to happen without an ambitious dealer or the distributor and usually involves both. The best ones involve an ambitious egger, a good dealer and the distributor.

As for the promotional value, there are a lot of people watching the egg in all areas and just looking for a reason to pull the trigger so when an eggfest happens they seem to come out of the woodwork. Many buy their eggs then because of the good discount and then they meet all the eggers and they are hooked. Others come to see what all the fuss is about and often times they end up with an egg as well. Many of these folks are back the following year cooking and joining the fun.

It's been an amazing success story. As ,mentioned, Gwen in Seattle spearheaded the new eggfest out there and the distributor and a few dealers decided to help. Around 300 people showed up and they sold like 40-50 eggs. A huge success and they will do it again this year and I suspect it will be much bigger. Smitty's Eggs By The Bay is a similar story.

Now back to adding it to a cookoff. I think the eggers would be overwhelmed by people looking for free food and it would probably not go well. It hasn't been tried but I've been to a lot of both kind of events and that's my thought. It's also a big project moving a couple dozen eggs to an off site and that may be a deal breaker for the dealer. For a first time event they'd probably want to have it at or near there store. But if there was a dealer close to the event, who knows?

So if it were me I'd start with a local dealer and see if he was interested.

Eric
There is an egg dealer on Central Ave. in Farmingdale. Not too far from Sparky's. I think the name of the store is GPM.
Hope this helps.