Adelaide’s Beer & BBQ expanding to Sydney, music to play a major role

The highly successful Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival is making its Sydney debut in winter at Moore Park.

While the name indicates a spotlight on food and drinks, the event is as much a music festival with a huge array of emerging and established acts.

These will be announced down the track, along with the 70 brewers, cider makers and BBQ bosses who will offer tastings of their wares from Friday June 29 – Sunday July 1.

They’ll also be presenting master classes and keynote speeches.

A pop up vinyl record store, markets, barbershop and a family friendly Sunday program will round out the experience.

Tickets will go on sale on Tuesday April 24 here.

The Adelaide festival is staged between July 6—8.

The Beer & BBQ Festival in both Adelaide and Sydney are run by three hospitality and events professionals Marc Huber, Gareth Lewis and Aaron Sandow.

It all began when Huber, who was working for the Adelaide Hills Cider Company and boutique brewer Mismatch, was approached  by an international cattle feed company to put on the festival.

He didn’t know much about music events.

But his friend Gareth Lewis ran the Adelaide music venue King’’s Head and handled the bars for every major festival in the last decade including Parklife, Soundwave and Future Music.

The trio’s plan was to showcase South Australian food and drink products, and they decided in the end to go on their own without the international company.

Their first event was three years ago. Today each of the three days draws 4000 people.

Lewis recently said:  “People can trust the Beer & BBQ brand now because they know we’re not going to throw them in some cheap venue and sell them cheap piss.”

The three now also bring acts into Adelaide. They are independent of the festival but uses its brand name as Beer & BBQ Presents.

Adelaide is notoriously risky for promoters because audiences tend to wait until the last minute before they buy tickets.

Nevertheless, the three have made it work. Over Easter they brought in Gomez after no other SA promoter would take a punt.

A second show featured emerging acts Japanese Wallpaper, E^st and Odette.

In the works is an all-day concert featuring just South Australian music, and a heritage show for the baby boomers.