The first-ever Brentwood Business Festival was held at Kirkwood Park on Sep. 21, 2022. The event was presented by the Brentwood Neighborhood Association and gave businesses and business owners located within the Brentwood boundaries a chance to promote themselves to their neighbors.
We noticed that there were a lot of businesses in our neighborhood still trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic and we wanted to find a way to help them out, so we decided to create an event where we could bring together the businesses in our neighborhood and the people who live here.”
Over 20 businesses and business owners located in Brentwood set up booths around Kirkwood Park during the business festival. When attendees arrived at the event they were given a card with the name of each business in attendance. If they visited each booth and had the business initial their cards, their names were entered into a drawing for free prizes.
With events like this you worry about people not going by and talking to the people at the booths, so we created the cards as a way to encourage the interactions. It worked really well and everyone seemed to love the idea. We had a large number of prizes to give away that were all donated by businesses in the neighborhood. Some of them were from businesses that could not be there in person but wanted to help out in some way.
Although the main purpose of the business festival was to promote local businesses, it also served as a social event for the Brentwood neighbors. The event included free food, bouncy houses for kids and live music performed by Brentwood resident Reverend Paul the Red Shoe Picker.
It was so great to see our neighbors enjoying the event and each other’s company. We had over 100 people come and go throughout the day. It has been a long time since we have had a chance to get together like this. This went so well, we may just do it again.