Music fans will flood downtown Athens this weekend for the yearly Athfest Music and Arts Festival. For downtown businesses, that means preparing in advance for the influx of additional customers.
“We’re making sure that our kitchen is stocked [before the festival],” said Ragan Pollock, a bartender at Clarke’s Standard in downtown Athens. “Our kitchen manager has been prepping for all of the things we could need this weekend. We’ve had probably seven different vendors come in with different beer and liquors so that we can just make sure our bar is fully stocked and ready to go.” Pollock also says that like many other downtown business, Clarke’s will have additional employees on hand to serve its many customers. “On a usual Saturday, we’ll have one person come in and open, and we’d probably have one bartender,” said Pollock. “This weekend, we’re kind of doubling everything up. There’ll be two bartenders, double the servers, and double the kitchen staff.”
Restaurants are not the only businesses in Athens expecting to see an uptick in customers as a result of Athfest. Nathaniel Mitchell, a manager at Wuxtry Records downtown, is also diligently preparing for a surge in customers over the weekend. “We know it brings a lot of people and it is a music event, which means that people are going to be stopping in here,” Mitchell said. “We know people will be here for their regular record shopping needs as well as kind of a tourist destination, knowing the history of the store. We’ve been here for over for decades at this point. So we expect it’s going to be a good weekend.”
Athfest runs from tonight through Sunday. A full schedule of events can be found at Athfest.com.
