and a lot of other stuff need to line up. But it’s definitely easier to attract the talent that our fans expect today than it was in 2009. Spotlight on Business: Now for 2023, we see a new event for Cavendish, PEI with the inaugural Sommo Festival in July. Given Murphy Hospitality Group’s business focus a brand-new music and culinary festival featuring two days of music, food, and drink in Cavendish, seems a no-brainer. But we also know that a lot goes into these events so when did you decide to move forward with a second festival for Cavendish and why now? BM: Over the years, especially since the investment in a permanent site in Caven- dish, our goal has always been to have more than one event per year. But more importantly, working with all stakeholders to find the right kind of fit for a second major event at the site. The pandemic obviously gave us more time to brainstorm what we wanted this event to look like and spotlight.
“We want you to feel confident when booking your trip to Cav - endish that you can expect the best possible talent and that is not something that we take lightly and also something that we’re always striving to do better.”
We have so many fantastic producers, farmers, breweries, and distilleries along with world-class creators using these amazing Atlantic Canada products and we thought there was an opportunity to highlight all of these and really make them part of the festival. Don’t get me wrong, nothing against a good hotdog, hamburger, or slice of pizza but people are looking for maybe a little bit more of an elevated experience. So, we really want to highlight the amazing products from Atlantic Canada. Now there are so many amazing products here in this region that it’ll take us a couple of years to kind of get to where we want the full festival experience to be but to get it off the ground this year is super exciting. Once the focus of the festival is created then it comes down to what artists can we book for this type of event. We always joke that takes four or five years of offers before we can lock down and artists sometimes and we’ve been talking about Mumford and Sons through the years for all different types of things. And it just lined up this year, so we jumped on it with them. And I just them along with Maggie Rogers is the perfect entrance for some headliners for the Sommo Festival and then we’ll be able to build the food and drink thing around that. I think people are going to be very excited to come through the gates. And hopefully, there are lots of new fans that come to Cavendish to check it out this year. Spotlight on Business: Festivalgoers have come to expect excellence in entertain-
Photos Courtesy of Whitecap Entertainment
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VOL 23 ISSUE 2 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 23 ISSUE 2
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