WEST CAPE MAY — It’s not summer until vendors and businesses set up their stands at Wilbraham Park for West Cape May’s Strawberry Festival. This year’s festival went on without a hitch June 8, despite the rainy weekend.
“The festival was great. A bit cloudy but no rain,” festival event coordinator Sharon Flanagan said. “The crowds were out having a good time, and the vendors were pleased with the day as well.”
The annual market has been a signal of the start of summer in the borough since 2000. The festival is like a farm market with different vendors selling items from handmade art to baked goods.
The Strawberry Festival was founded and hosted by the West Cape May Business Association, an organization comprising local business owners. The association is now a committee within the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Cape May.
Flanagan and her husband, Ken Low, were two of the association’s original members when it formed in 1996. They are the owners of the Bird House, located in the West End Garage.
“Many merchants in West Cape May back in 1996 formed an association to promote our businesses,” Flanagan said. “This was a time when print advertising was about the only effective advertising there was.”
The association helped owners advertise and promote their businesses during a time before digital advertising. They offered memberships to business owners that included advertising in local newspapers and being featured on a rack card.
Flanagan reflected on the ways they advertised their businesses and talked about the welcome bags the association made.
“Businesses would put their cards and information in a gift bag that realtors would give out to their renters,” she said. “When people came to Cape May, they’d get a little bag with different things to do and places to go.”
Flanagan and Low have watched their business grow and change over the past 20 years as digital platforms began to take over.
“I think it happened pretty slowly at first and people thought, ‘well, we’ll try this but continue with our printed forms of things,’” Flanagan said. “Not everything was online, but then it seemed all of a sudden nothing was in print and everything was online. It is a little strange, and I was skeptical if anyone was seeing it, and I guess people are.”
The Strawberry Festival was a result of experimenting with different advertisement techniques. It helped raise funds to promote the businesses. Every member of the association ran his or her own booth, and together they oeprated a joint booth that sold strawberry shortcake.
Over the years, the association’s numbers dwindled as people sold their businesses and are now a committee inside the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Cape May in 2021. Despite this, the Strawberry Festival has continued to thrive over the past 20 years.
“Back with the association, there were different committees, but now it’s a totally different thing,” Flanagan explained. “This committee is within the chamber, and the West Cape May Business Committee is a side group that works on the strawberry festival.”
Flanagan has been organizing and coordinating the festival as the event coordinator since 2017.
“I stepped in and took over, and every year was going to be my last, and I’m still doing it,” she said. “It is so much fun. We usually have beautiful weather and people are happy, and strawberries are wonderful. It’s a great time to come together and enjoy each other’s company and kick off the summer.”
The festival is filled with local vendors that sell handmade products like pottery, jewelry and birdhouses. The products sold at the market reflect he area’s eccentric nature.
Flanagan is proud of her she and the committee highlight and support local businesses.
“We haven’t had to open it up to commercial vendors; it’s all artists and local people and unusual businesses,” Flanagan said. “Some of the people have been with us since we started. We’ve had a nice turnover of people and new people getting into new hobbies and businesses.”
As the festival has grown, the strawberry shortcake booth has evolved into a project for nonprofit organizations.
“We featured the strawberry shortcake booth as an association project, but then turned it over to some non-profit organizations,” Flanagan said. “It ended up for many years with the culinary students from Cape May Tech junior class as a successful way to raise money for their prom.”
On top of that, proceeds from the festival are used to support an annual scholarship awarded to students at the Cape May County Technical School.
The Strawberry Festival is just one of West Cape May’s many unique events that celebrate some of area’s best qualities.
“It’s small like West Cape May is,” Low said. “It’s a smaller scale, a nice park and neighbors and mostly local vendors. It’s got a personality.”
By JULIA DiGERONIMO/For the Star and Wave
