2025 Maple Festival Wrap-Up – Parts 1 & 2

The 2025 Highland County Maple Festival is in the rear-view mirror, and for a wrap-up on it, I spoke with an old friend –

“Chris Swecker, Executive Director of the Highland County Chamber of Commerce.”

“Yeah, my initial observations from the 2025 Highland County Maple Festival were that it was going to be a pretty big one. Whenever you have good weather, obviously the Festival is really dependent on that as far as the crowds –  when the weather is nice, we have good crowds, and that first Saturday is typically our biggest day – when you combine it with the nice weather we had, it can be pretty huge.”

“And this year we had, you know, three out of four nice weather days. So looking at the amount of people, particularly on the Saturdays, I was in the high school a lot, and the elementary school – when you could look down the hall and you can’t really see the end of it, you know, you’ve got a lot of people, and it’s a real success.”

“Obviously just speaking with vendors as well, some of them, you know, can’t catch their breath because they’re talking with people and selling so much, and everyone look like they’re having a great time. I mean, more than the amount of people, you know, it’s just that everyone’s also having a good time and being safe and just enjoying all things maple here in Highland County.”

So Chris, before we talk about the hard data you use to assess the Festival, let me ask you this, – as Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce, what metrics do you use to gauge success?

“Yeah, that’s a good question. There’s lots of metrics for the success of the Festival, but to me, at the end of the day, the real success is that there weren’t any real major incidents, from both a safety standpoint or just like a major logistical error. There’s always going to be some minor incidents. You know, we try to avoid everything, but if things go smooth, the vendors are happy, the local organizations are doing well, and there’s no real kerfuffle, you know, that’s successful to me.”

“Obviously, from a monetary standpoint, to know that we’ve had good crowds that are supporting all the civic organizations, the vendors, local businesses, that’s what we also look at that as well, obviously. But the real success is that it just runs smoothly, and this year we feel like it really did.”

And that hard data?

“Again, we’re still reviewing some data. We do, really, a deep dive in May, but initially, what we’ve looked at so far is the Chamber, we really look at our key chain sales, you know, to get entry into the gyms, at the school for arts and crafts and at the Highland Center, we sell our really popular key chain, and we order 10,000 of those, been doing that since I’ve been here since 2019. And we sold the most ever this year, almost 9,300 so we almost sold out. If that last Sunday would have been better weather, I think we would have. But for us, that’s pretty incredible. Of course, 12 and under is free, and some people don’t even go to those entrances. So my rule of thumb, again, not completely scientific, but it does align when we’ve had an economic impact study from Virginia Tech and some other universities that have helped us, you can almost multiply that number by three and come up with, maybe that’s a good estimate of how many people are in the county. So you’re looking at probably almost 30,000 if not 30,000 this year county wide over those two weekends.”

“We also put surveys out to our vendors, and I know I’ve heard from several that had record years. I mean, one person in particular had been 20 years, it’s their best show ever.”

“And then local organizations, I can’t say that they’ve run all their numbers to make it official, but I’ve heard from at least two Ruritan clubs they had record pancake sales and record donut sales – local businesses, at least two, the biggest days they’ve ever had. So it really was a fantastic year at the Maple Festival.”

Stay tuned for Part Two of this look back on this year’s Maple Festival.

This is Part Two of my conversation with Chris Swecker, Executive Director of the Highland County Chamber of Commerce, looking back at the 2025 Maple Festival, which, by any metric, was an unqualified success.

Chris is definitely not the type to “toot his own horn” when it comes to such success, although he works tirelessly year-round to assess what can be improved on for the next year. I asked him what factors he could point to which contributed to this year’s accomplishments.

Because the Festival is county wide, I always say it takes a village, and we have really strong partnerships, and collaborations, and good staff, but it really takes a lot of people working in tandem, all with the same goal. We want this to be a great experience, to experience southern maple syrup in the US.”

“So one thing that we worked really hard on is for traffic flow, in particular, working with the local police department and the Fair Association behind the school this year. It’s taken us a couple years, like I said, we review it and to get the right amount of signage, the right place, the right ropes, to allow people to park back there now, where traffic is constantly flowing. And that might look like there’s not as many people around, because people are kind of used to traffic being backed up, maybe Jack Mountain, and it wasn’t this year, but if you looked around, the people were here. So, hats off to the police department and the Fair Association for allowing us to do that, because that has been the biggest improvement in the five years that I’ve been here, you know, this is my fourth festival, so we were very, very pleased with that, and want to continue doing that.

“And then we had our shuttle that we did all four days this year where they park at the stockyard, and it takes you to a couple of popular stops here in Monterey. And that went very well, we had almost 500 people use that, individuals, throughout the whole weekends. That might not sound like a huge number, but that’s, you know, however many cars that translates into that aren’t trying to get downtown or, you know, clogging it up, so every little bit of help. And we thought that was a real success. And, you know, that’s only the second year we’ve tried it, and that’s only going to, I think, continue to increase in popularity, as the word spreads and we get better signage.”

Any hints for possible changes next year?

“Oh, I always have, at the end of the Festival a huge list of suggestions, some good, some bad, nothing major, again, until we kind of do that really deep dive in the sand. But, I mean, there’s always going to be something to improve, but I think we’ve really improved, again the traffic is the biggest one in Monterey. I’d like to look a little bit more in McDowell, and we’ve talked about that with police as well.”

“But no huge changes. I think a lot of the reasons why people come is that it doesn’t change too quickly each year. You know, there’s always minor improvements that we build upon year after year. But it should be a good year next year, it’ll be the latest in the year, just because the way the calendar falls March, 14, 15th and 21st and 22nd 2026 so –  we’re already planning, getting ready.”