For those of you from Kansas City, I wanted to provide a recap of the most popular part of the Plaza Art Fair. Sure they call it an art fair, but by far the most common activity is eating the food offered by Plaza restaurants while walking the streets sipping a cocktail. When I made passing mention of it in a previous post, I searched unsuccessfully for a site detailing the food offerings. So on Sunday afternoon I went back to the art fair to photograph the booths. Hopefully this provides you with fond memories during the 51 weeks worth of waiting for next year’s event.
For those of you not from KC, this is interesting on a different level. The Country Club Plaza is Kansas City’s premier dining and shopping district. During the art fair over 100,000 visitors will come to The Plaza to see art and sample some of the local restaurant’s fare. This not only represents a great marketing opportunity, but also a huge opportunity to generate revenue. A successful art fair booth can generate $20,000-$50,000 in revenue on top of a large spike in business inside the restaurant. In order to seize this opportunity you must build, staff, and stock a freestanding restaurant complete with kitchen. The visual appeal of your booth, the quality of your offerings, and the value you provide will determine your success. It is a high risk venture with the potential to do more volume in the free standing booth than most restaurants in America will do in a week.
Some restaurant chose not to participate this year. Notable no shows included The Cheesecake Factory and Buca Di Beppo. I tried diligently to document all those who did participate. I also did some research and as best I can tell will be the first to reveal to the internet the winner of the Plaza Art Fair best booth award. Here are the booths in alphabetical order. Click any picture to see a larger version. A breakdown of their food offerings can be found here.
810 Zone
Blanc Burgers and Bottles
Bo Lings
Brio
Classic Cup
Figlios
Fred P Ott's
Houston's
In gre di ent
Jack Stack
Kona Grill
M&S Grill
O Dowd's
PF Changs
Plaza III
reVerse
Ruth's Chris
Starker's
The Capital Grill
The Granfalloon
The Melting Pot
Tomfooleries
Topsy's
And The winner of the 2010 Plaza Art Fair best booth award goes to……
McCormick and Schmick
I hope everyone who attended had a great time. I hope everyone who didn’t get to make it found this post a nice way to enjoy it vicariously. I hope everyone who worked it for three days straight recovers soon. This is a great event for the area and one that definitely draws customers down to the Plaza. Only 51 more weeks until the 2011 Plaza Art Fair. I hope my body has recovered by then.
Tips on improving your Tips 
Sep 28, 2010 @ 13:39:32
A wonderful vicarious trip to the Plaza- one of my favorite places. Thanks for the visual tour.
Sep 28, 2010 @ 20:15:51
I thought that might be fun for some folks who haven’t been in a while.
Sep 29, 2010 @ 21:02:06
I had no idea it was like that! I wish I had known. 😦
The Index « Tips on improving your Tips
Nov 07, 2010 @ 01:42:01
Feb 17, 2011 @ 11:39:13
I am a visual artist who seeks a living by selling my work at such fairs. I am very disappointed that you dissed the artists that exhibit there as if they were accessories to a social and dining event…Not even close to true…but thanks for letting me know NOT to apply for this event.
Feb 17, 2011 @ 17:45:04
I’m not really sure where the hostility is coming from on this one. This is a restaurant blog. The food portion is much more relevant to myself and my readers. Over 100k people show up to this event, most of them are not looking to buy art. Most will buy food or beverages. Some of those that come down for the food(like me) will also look at art (like me) and will leave with something (like me the last two years and my girlfriend the last four). Working a couple of extra shifts at the booth usually finds those tips converted into a shopping budget. It is a symbiotic relationship. Like I said at the beggining of the post, there are tons of sites detailing the art aspect. On my restaurant blog, I talk about the restaurant related aspects. A restaurant blog probably isn’t the best place to base your decision to not attend an event. I hope you choose to apply. I hope you are grateful for the wide variety of restaurants generating addition traffic and food so you will ne neither literally or figuratively a starving artist.
Yeah, I worked pretty hard to get to that joke.