On the road again | As fair and festival season arrives, a look at the business of the Yarmouth Clam Festival

It's summer in Maine, and that means festival season is upon us ˆ— time for the carnival rides to go up in a parking lot, the artists and craftspeople to unpack their wares, the fried dough vendors to set up shop. And it's also time for lots of money to change hands.

The budget for the Yarmouth Clam Festival, which this month celebrated its 40th anniversary, is $200,000, but that number doesn't reflect what's likely the hundreds of thousands of dollars passing through town during the third weekend in July. (Festival organizers say they'd rather not talk about specific numbers due to concerns about security.) Nor does it reflect the hours of work put in by the festival's mostly volunteer organizers.

With events like the opening parade, which features volunteer marching bands, beauty queens and neighborhood floats ˆ— including a well-honed lawn mower drill team ˆ— the Clam Festival has a casual small-town feel. But it's also an important source of funds for the nonprofits that participate. Groups ranging from a local nonprofit day care facility to the First Parish Church to the Yarmouth Ski Team run the Food Circle, a gathering of booths in front of town hall. After paying their expenses, the groups take home the proceeds from food sales during the three-day event; in a good year, the haul for each group can reach $20,000.

And in Yarmouth, as at the Rockland Lobster Festival, the Moxie Festival in Lisbon Falls and the Common Ground Fair in Unity, the festival means just another paycheck for the carnival workers, the cops putting in overtime and the artists selling their work. The staff of Mainebiz fanned out across Yarmouth in mid-July to interview and photograph people connected with the Clam Festival, ranging from its director, Judi Clancy, to a young woman working at her family's display of hot tubs on festival grounds. We asked about the logistics of putting on the festival, which this year drew an estimated 120,000-150,000 visitors, as well as its economic impact.

Judi Clancy
Clam Festival director

There are a whole lot of puzzle pieces to put together to organize this. We have a steering committee of about 25 people, and each person on the steering committee is responsible for an element of the festival. There are some elements that are bigger than others and some people who are more involved than others. You can be as involved as you want to be or as laid back as you want to be, relative to your event.

Because of the fact that the infrastructure of the festival costs so much, we have to do a lot to get sponsorship dollars, so I've spent a lot of time this year working on sponsorships. The reason we had to go look for more sponsorship money, for starters, is that the last year that Phil Harriman and I ran the festival [in 2003] we had a bill of just under $8,000 for our insurance for the weekend. Last year it was $30,000, and this year it's $30,000 again. We have a number of fixed costs like that that there's really nothing we can do about ˆ— we have electrical, we have the booth set- ups, porta-potties, a lot of costs that aren't going to go away rain or shine.

That was kind of a struggle. Last year, Hannaford came in at a $25,000 level, and they dropped out this year. What we learned is that we don't want a giant sponsor, because it's hard to make that up. I was not hired until the beginning of November, so I got started as soon as I could. The middle to end of November is not a great time to look for sponsors, because people go into the Christmas mode. So in January we started pretty seriously, but a lot of corporate dollars are already assigned in the fall. So fall is really when that should be happening.

We try to sponsor all our entertainment and events, but that's not really possible. It's very, very time consuming to do that. We don't have everything sponsored, but we did really well this year in terms of percentage of sponsors. The rest of the money comes from the nonprofit food booths

and the parking lots, who pay us a percentage. Smokey's [Greater Shows] pays to come here [Clancy won't disclose the amount of the contract], the craft show people all pay between $300 and $400 to come here.

The food vendors are free to purchase food from whomever they like and to pick the prices they sell for, and then they pay a percentage to the chamber for the infrastructure costs, which works pretty well if we have a great festival ˆ— but it's almost entirely weather dependent. If there's rain not as many people come; if it's really hot not as many people come. One year we had really, really high temperatures on Saturday afternoon and it was a ghost town. Actually, a perfect festival day is probably high-60s and overcast.

The other fairly large task I have is negotiating deals for everything ˆ— the tents and the tables and the sound and the porta-potties and all that stuff. I have a law degree, so I'm trained somewhat for that. I'm really comfortable negotiating, but I prefer win-win to hardball. I don't have a problem going out and getting bids, but I also don't want to get bids for certain things that are not broken. I would not do this festival if I didn't have the electrician I do, just because he knows what he's doing and I can work with him easily. So there are certain people that I'm not going to try to get a better deal from.

The other thing about organizing the festival is that we have had a lot of issues this year that don't always come up. This year, I've spent an extraordinary amount of time with media. Because there was red tide, everyone wondered whether we could hold a festival. I was getting two and three calls a day about that issue, and that takes up a lot of time. An event of our type obviously doesn't depend on one item. Yes, we're called the Clam Festival and we love our clams and it's a fun, funky kind of thing, but we can still have a festival ˆ— I mean, we will have clams, there is no red tide anymore ˆ— but that was a huge drain of my time. Huge.

They got to me way too soon, and what I was telling them the whole time was that it could clear up at any time, so we're not worried; if it doesn't clear up, we have other ways of getting clams.

I was at Scarborough Beach and the New York Times tracked me down. So I was quoted with a very silly quote that I loved, actually, because it was such a silly issue. What I said was, "I'm just out here at the beach, yelling at the clams, hoping that they'll clean themselves up." And that was what they printed, along with something about our clam-shucking event, which was kind of cool. I'll take whatever kind of media attention we can get.


Lewis Sawyer
Carnival ride operator, Smokey's Greater Shows

I do this seasonally every year to make a little extra money. I've been doing this off and on for 22 years. I traveled with them for about 15 years, but I didn't want to do that no more.

The trucks got here Sunday; they opened up Wednesday night, though. I'd say roughly two, three, maybe four thousand people come through here at a time. They've been going strong. This job is exciting ˆ— I get to meet different people, and I like to see the kids happy. My kids are all grown up so now I'm just waiting for my grandkids to come out.

Tearing down is tough. The rides go up easy, but they come down hard. The hardest thing is [the kids' carousel ride]. That center pole weighs a good 500-600 pounds; it takes five guys to lower it.

They start tearing down around six p.m., and the big rides can take anywhere from three to four hours for four or five guys. Most of the rides are all hydraulics, you just push a button and it does all the work for you. But the Tilt-A-Whirl and the bumper cars all have to be lifted manually.

I've worked for the Portland Regency Hotel almost 12 years. I come up here and do this [because] my check just don't do it, not when you've got a house, a car, and you've gotta pay lights, water and sewer. Wherever [Smokey's is] ˆ— Lewiston, Portland, Calais, Bangor ˆ— I go up and help tear down.


David Van Slyke
Yarmouth Ski Club

I've been in charge of the booth for five years; this is my fifth year, but the booth has been going for 10 years or so. It's the high school ski team, both the boys and the girls. The Clam Festival is just one of our fundraisers; we use the money to support the Christmas camp, which is when all the kids on the ski team go away to Sugarloaf. This year they're talking about going to Mont Sainte Anne [in Quebec]. Both the alpine and the Nordic kids go, and the festival pays for food, lodging, lift tickets and all that type of thing. My younger daughter is going to be a junior this coming fall and my older daughter is going to be a sophomore at St. Lawrence [University]. She was a skier when she was in high school.

It's a pretty wild affair for the core people. It really started last Saturday morning, when all the equipment got unloaded and we did the build-out for the deck we have out back across the stream. Wednesday evening we finish up the inside of the booth, with all of the fans and heat lamps and the rest of that. Thursday is when we get organized and get the food product into the refrigerators and get everything into the production area. This morning starting at about 6:30 we fill the Fryolators with oil. By 10 o'clock when the festival opens we're frying our first clams, and it's off to the races.

Right now, Friday at about 5:15, there's probably about 35 people working at our booth. Over the course of the weekend, we will have about 250 different shifts of three to four hours each. Obviously if each person only worked one shift, we'd need about 250 different people. Usually we have about 80 people who work, so everyone who works puts in six, eight, 10, 12 hours. And the core people, the "fry dogs," we're here literally from 6:30 this morning and we'll leave probably 11:30 tonight, and then start it up again on Saturday. On Sunday we'll be out of here with cleanup completed and everything broken down by about 8:30 or so.

The clams we get are from downeast Maine and the Maritimes of Canada from a very reputable seafood guy, Bob Young of Young's Seafood up in Belfast. The Food and Drug Administration has been monitoring [the red tide situation] very closely, so we have absolutely no problems at all. And every gallon of clams we get here from Bob Young's has on its label the date the clams were picked, the date the clams were packed, where they came from, so everyone's very confident that there's not a problem.

We certainly process a lot of clams over the course of the weekend. We'll hand-bread and fry probably about 120,000 clams, probably 400,000 onion rings, probably 40,000 oysters and probably another 30,000 clam strips ˆ— and I don't know how many chicken wings and calamaris we'll do. There's an awful lot of product that goes out the door here.

When I bring people to visit the clam festival, I always try to bring them to the back of the booth and they say, "I just thought I was buying some clams out there, I had no idea how much time and effort and intensity go into it" ˆ— and that there's people back here breading clams and dancing away to the oldies station and having a great time while they're doing it.

The people you see here working behind the booth and doing the Fryolators ˆ— there's executives from L.L. Bean here, I happen to be an attorney with Preti Flaherty in Portland, there's insurance people, accountants, environmental consultants ˆ— all sorts of professional people who devote a tremendous amount of time over the course of the weekend to make this all happen. And that's not just our booth, that's all the booths.

Our first meeting for next year is July 17. It's a little debriefing ˆ— what went right, what went wrong. We also talk about who the really good workers were, the people who put in a lot of time, so you maybe go out and get them back next year, particularly if they were people that came out of the blue for us. Especially the people who fit in with everyone here, who are having a good time but working hard.

Jessica Wallace
National Pool & Spa

We have locations in Gray, Windham, Kennebunk and Saco. My father, Dave Wallace, owns the business. Our summers are busy. We always do the Cumberland [Fair], the Fryeburg, the Acton Fair, and we do this one. I meet people and explain that we're selling hot tubs and how to maintain them, what the different models are and what's best about them, depending on the size of their [house] or what's going to be most comfortable for them. We're here 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; it's a long day.

We've been here the last few years. Fryeburg's our biggest fair; we sell the most hot tubs there since you're there for seven full days. You're only here for four days. You're here just to show your face and let people know you're here. With this type of fair, most people don't realize that this type of stuff is going to be here, but when you go to Fryeburg, they know they're going to see a lot of home stuff, tractors and all those type of things.

We just want to put a ring in their ear and let them know that we're right in the area, 15 minutes away, and maybe they'll come back into the store after seeing us here. Our Gray store's close. And even if they already have a hot tub, maybe we get them as a chemical customer. We do sales, service and installation, so it's not just selling hot tubs.


Carolyn Schuster
Managing director, Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce

Yarmouth Clam Festival is, for some businesses, a great boon. If you talk to the people who own the gas stations and hotels and Pat's Pizza and the restaurants ˆ— they get a huge amount of business from this. But there are many businesses, particularly those along Main Street, who just shut down because the people who come to town are coming for Festival, and they're not going to shop for a lawyer or other things. And so it's a mixed bag when it comes to what the benefit is for businesses.

The chamber provides all the administrative support for the festival, including all the staff and telephones, paper ˆ— all the administrative backup stuff. You can imagine that if the chamber didn't exist there would have to be a Clam Festival office. They would have to have phones and copy machines and fax machines and storage and people to take questions and greet people.

Obviously, the financial [return] is the biggest piece for us. If you know anything about chambers in this area, we are unique because we exist as we do. Most of the other suburban towns of Portland belong to the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce. So they don't have staff and they don't have their own offices. It's very difficult to maintain a chamber on dues alone, or dues and other fundraising, but we can remain free-standing because we have the financial benefit of the festival.

The amount of money [we bring in from the festival] varies year to year so drastically. If we have a great year we do a little bit better. If we have heat or rain, not so much. I would say that about half of the chamber's operating income comes from Festival, and the other half we get from dues, our golf tournament and other fundraisers we do.

Before this I was the parade chair, so I've been with the festival at the administrative level for 10 years, and it has changed significantly. I'm not sure what drives it, but probably one of the biggest differences obviously is our expenses, and how we've changed to meet those changing expenses. It's very much more difficult to get volunteers than it was 10 years ago. Mom and dad are both working full-time jobs. They've got the kids in Little League and club soccer, and they are so busy that it's really hard to say, "By the way, could you take on this big volunteer piece ˆ— or even a small volunteer piece?"

Because it's more difficult to get volunteers, we have to pay people we didn't use to have to pay. And of course, as the festival gets bigger, things like trash and potties just get more expensive. And so I think from the time that I started at the chamber seven years ago we have probably quadrupled what we bring in sponsor dollars. Until the last year or so, sponsorship was pretty much a local thing. It was local businesses who supported the festival, and most of our sponsorships were well under $1,000.

That's one of the things that's changed. We've started to expand. We're looking at more national sponsors, more corporate sponsors than we have had in the past. Still, it's not big dollars compared to many other festivals ˆ— because we talk to Rockland and La Kermesse or the American Folk Festival in Bangor. It's nothing for them to have several $25,000 or $30,000 or $50,000 sponsors. We don't have any of those. You know, if we get $5,000 we think we're really doing well.

It used to be, we'd say to Joe at the hardware store, "Hey Joe, could you help us out with $500 and we'll put a sign up when the guy performs and we'll put your name in the brochure." And that was fine. Well, it's much more sophisticated when you get to the corporate level with Bank of America or something like that. They're not looking for a sign and a little piece on a brochure. They have complete departments that do their sponsorships, and they want a lot of exposure for their dollars.

It's one of the ways that I think Yarmouth is different and probably why we won't see a lot of $25,000 sponsorships, because that's not what we're about. We've tried very hard to limit the commercial exposure in this festival. We've obviously had to move that line a little bit in order to make our budget in the last couple of years, but that, to me, will be the telling piece ˆ— whether or not we can continue to survive saying to someone like Bank of America, "Yes, we'd love to have you give us $5,000, but you're not going to be able to put up a tent and hand out flyers, and you're not going to be able to collect names and addresses." I don't want to say that's never going to happen, but it's not the character that we've tried to maintain over the years, and as long as we can maintain it we will.

Margette Leanna
Painter

We started like 30 years ago doing the craft show [at the Clam Festival]. I have migrated to the art corner. I think this is my fourth summer here in the art show part. I do about 12 summer shows up in Maine a year. I only do about three shows in Massachusetts; that's where I'm really from, but we've just gotten a house in Rockland.

I like just art shows, not art and craft shows. There's a craft show up there [on a different section of the festival grounds], but we're separate. When you mix them together, people buy the crafts and not the paintings.

I've been in very, very few galleries. I'd rather do outdoor art shows, because you wait three or six months in a gallery. Here, it's two days and you sell four or five [paintings] and move on. It's better to meet the people that you've sold to.

The right people are here. Yarmouth people are very good art buyers; I did very well last year. They used to say in the craft business that if your fee [to rent a booth] was 10% of what you made then you're doing good.

This show is expensive. This year [the town of Yarmouth] decided they wanted a certificate of liability. They want you to have business insurance now. This is the first year for that, because the festival is usually covered [by the city]. And you can understand, all these people and liability. They don't want to cover it, so, new expense.

How much do I bring in over a summer of shows? I gross 12 [thousand dollars]. Every year is generally a little bit better. Usually it is good one year, a little bit down, better the next year, a little bit down. The last couple years have been up, up, up. You never can tell. We've gone through Sept. 11 and we've gone through gas shortages, and people still come.

Barbara and John Saint Amour, with sons Barrett and Will
Yarmouth residents.

We're from Yarmouth, and we come every year. We always come twice ˆ— we always go on the appreciation night for the kids, and we come back one other night, typically Friday night. We spend at least $150 or $200 ˆ— we think the rides are a little expensive ˆ— and then there's the craft fair, where we'll buy gifts and spend probably another $50-$60.

From the kids' standpoint, it's something they talk about all year round ˆ— it's something exciting and different. With them going to school right here, it's something else to see their entire world transformed overnight, and it creates great memories for them. The traffic is a little bit of a hassle, but it's worth it. You just have to know where to stay away from at what times.

Hopefully it's bringing some kind of financial benefits to the town. You see the booster clubs and the hockey clubs and things like that. Our kids aren't at the age yet where we're taking advantage of that situation, but we're assuming that the economic benefits are great for the organizations that are participating. I think it's great that the money goes to the local organizations, rather than just businesses charging for everything. There seems to be a real sense of community when the clam festival comes into town ˆ— it's really nice.