Rowan County Weather Podcast Cheerwine Festival Episode

The 2024 Cheerwine Festival is coming up one week from tomorrow Saturday May 18th, 2024, in Salisbury NC. Rowan County Weather is honored as always to be the official onsite weather partner for the Cheerwine Festival. In today's episode of the podcast, I speak with Joy Harper who is a member of the family that started Cheerwine and has owned the company and brand from its origins here in Rowan County. Glass bottle of Cheerwine is now available nationwide which is something that was unheard of 20 years ago. 

In the beginning ... there was Cheerwine! Cheerwine was celebrating "100 Years of Cheer" and wanted to share the cheer with their hometown of Salisbury, NC. So, they decided to have a festival, with true Southern hospitality.

Working with the City of Salisbury and local organizations, they organized a celebration of all things good and cheerful, southern and delightful.

The event was a wild success, with tens of thousands of locals and visitors from across the Carolinas converging on this small, historic city to eat good food, shop Cheerwine merchandise and have fun in the downtown area. 

Locals and fans of Cheerwine alike loved the Cheerwine Festival in 2017 so much they demanded a return! In response, the City of Salisbury decided to continue to host the festival as an annual tradition, working with Cheerwine to ensure the cheer would continue.

In 2018, the festival area was doubled in size to include almost all of downtown Salisbury so that more food trucks and vendors could participate, the kid's activities evolved into a kid's play area including rock climbing and a bounce house, and a beer garden was added for the adults.

The musical lineup was upgraded as well, with headlining band Sister Hazel performing at the end of the day to a cheering crowd!

n 2019, the Cheerwine Festival featured the revered, MULTI-PLATINUM California pop-rockers Smash Mouth! Downtown Salisbury was flooded with over 50,000 lovers of Cheerwine from the surrounding Charlotte area, North Carolina, and nearby states.

Food vendors sold over 1,800 Cheerwine tacos, 500 Cheerwine floats, 500 bags of popcorn and over 5,000 hot dogs! Afterwards, Cheerwine donated $7,500 from their drink sales to local charity, Meals on Wheels Rowan.

Perfect weather and the ever-increasing popularity of the Cheerwine Festival brought a record-breaking crowd of 100,000 Cheerwine fans to Salisbury in 2023. Cheerwine-inspired beer, crafts and food were available from a diverse lineup of local and regional vendors. And the cherry on top of the festival was the entertainment lineup rocking the music stage, including Ryan Perry, Divided by Four, New Local and headline act Neon Trees!

This year will be even bigger! Come on out and join us next Saturday for the Cheerwine Festival!!! For more details visit https://cheerwinefest.com/

Follow Rowan County Weather on all of our social media platforms for details. You can find them at the bottom of this page. 

For details on Cheerwine visit https://cheerwine.com/

For the latest on Salisbury NC visit https://salisburync.gov/

To watch the episode of the podcast, click the play button below.