Volunteering at Adams Avenue Street Fair
Signing Up to Volunteer
I’ve volunteered a fair amount in my life so far and have had good experiences with it over all. While in high school I volunteered at the USO, some soccer events, and Christmas Cheer. I’ve also volunteered at Habitat for Humanity and donated every chance I get. Needless to say, volunteering is a large part of my life. The Adams Avenue Street Fair was the first time I’ve volunteered in the beer field. As someone passionate about beer and volunteering, this was an exciting opportunity for me.
I got an email through the SDSU beer program that the beer gardens were in need of beer pouring volunteers. I emailed the contact person with my availability as soon as possible. A couple of days later I got a response that there was an opening available for four hours Saturday night. This was perfect. A few days before the event I received an email with the schedule for the garden I was volunteering at. The email also had more information about the event and volunteering. In order to volunteer, I had to attend ABC training in the morning. The training was to take place at 11:30am and would last 20 minutes at the most. This was a little annoying since my shift wasn’t until 5:30pm. I would have to drive there and find parking twice in the same day.
It’s Finally Time!
The day of the event was finally here! I was extremely excited to start this adventure. I left a little early for the training to account for traffic and parking. Parking was crazy so I parked about a half mile away, which I didn’t mind as the exercise is good. I pulled up the email with the location of the training and was on my way. I parked a couple of blocks down from training so walked through the festival some. It was pretty early in the day so there weren’t too many people there yet. On the outsides were the beer gardens and stages set up for bands to play. Down the middle of the roads were tons of art vendors and food trucks. Not wanting to be late, I didn’t pay much attention to what was set up, but what I did see looked awesome.
Training
I arrived at the training area and asked one of the volunteers where I needed to go. He told me I was in the right place and pointed out the person who was in charge and where to stand and wait. There was a small crowd of people waiting for the training so I just went over and stood with them. We stood there and waited for a while before finally being addressed. The person in charge came over and started checking people in. When she got to me, she had no record of me signing up to volunteer. We got past that and she started addressing us and giving us some information about herself and the event. We were informed someone else would be leading the training who was really busy and be there soon.
He showed up out of breath and didn’t seem to know left from right. An information sheet was passed around as well as a signature sheet saying we received the training. So we essentially checked in twice, well, only once for me. He stumbled through some basic rules of pouring beer and checking IDs. All information presented on the sheet that was passed around. We were told some rules about pour size, oh wait, thats a different event, heres the actual pour size. Immediately after the “training” it was a frantic rush to assign people to breweries for the tasting area pouring, which was opening up 5 minutes ago. Since I wasn’t doing the tasting area, I started to head out.
Needless to say, I was a little disappointed by the start of this event. I was also upset they wasted so much of my time with information that easily could have been sent in an email.
Start of Volunteering Shift
I came back for my shift and was able to find parking in about the same area, maybe a little closer. Walking through the festivals I could tell that it was definitely busier than in the morning. I walked to the gardens I was volunteering in and showed my ID to get through the gate. Walking up to the serving area there was a long line of customers waiting and I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
We did the shift change, got a brief explanation of what we were doing and started right to work. There were two lines, one for cash and one for VIP. Since there were five volunteers working that shift we divided the work up. Two people took orders from the VIP line and one from the cash line. Myself and another one of the volunteers were pouring and handing the beers to the customers.
The Rest of the Volunteering Shift
This wasn’t a great system we had set up, especially since the beer wasn’t pouring very well. Pouring into a 16 oz cup, over half of it was foam. While foam is essentially beer, people don’t like drinking foam. We would pour a beer and then set it on top of the jockey box and wait for it to settle down and then pour some more. When we were really running behind we would just pour out the foam until we got a decent sized beer. Not the best way to showcase your beer.
We didn’t have a lull in line until 9:30 that night, also known as last call. I was definitely not expecting that many people to be there and waiting in lines for the beer. Having long lines and being busy most of the night was fine with me as I get bored easily. I was definitely not bored during this event. Throughout the event I did many different task while volunteering. The majority of the time I was running and pouring the beer. I also helped sort people into lines, poured out the dumb buckets, restocked beer cans, and helped clean.
Conclusion
I certainly learned a lot from this volunteering experience! There were definitely some things that I would have done differently if I was in charge of the event. That being said, I thought it was a great event and people seemed to really be enjoying themselves. I also made a good amount of money in a fairly short amount of time with the tips. I will absolutely be volunteering at more beer festivals in the near future.
Have you had any great experiences volunteering at beer festivals? Let me know in the comments below! Be sure to follow my social media and sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date on my adventures!
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