Ribfest gets taste of Cold Lake, donate 500 racks to Food Bank

Oragnizers look to return next year after a quick surprise stop in Cold Lake.

For the first time, Ribfest was held in Cold Lake this past weekend, and it’s looking like it’ll be back for more next year with more of their usual festivities.

Typically, the travelling food festival makes its stops in larger cities such as Edmonton and Lloydminster, but this stop in Cold Lake happened on a bit of a whim.

Organizer Andrew Reinhard said they were happy with the turn-out, especially in the midst of complications resulting from COVID-19.

The event also made hefty donations to the City’s food bank, with 500 racks of ribs and 200 pounds of pulled pork coming from the event staff.

“A big thing of ours is always working with the community and giving back to the community, especially with what’s going on right now,” said Reinhard.

“Next year, we’re going to partner up with the food bank, and they’re going to be on-site accepting donations, for perishable or non-perishable items.”

While some questioned the group’s lack of local volunteer force, this can be largely attributed to the sudden decision to make a stop in Cold Lake.

“It was all very last minute,” said Reinhard. “Normally we’d have a very large group of volunteers helping us out, but this year we did have two incredible gentlemen from the community that helped us out.

“I think there was somewhere around 2500 cars. We were super happy with the turnout, and it went really good for a first year show in a smaller city.”

According to Reinhard, the festival will try to arrive during the months of July or August as opposed to this year’s fall arrival for its second outing in Cold Lake. They hope to include more specialty food attractions such as bloomin onions, Alabama lemonade, and a licensed liquor area.

“We’ll definitely be back next year.”