About The 2012 Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival

Date:  October 19, 20 and 21, 2012 (Always the 3rd weekend in October)

Location:  J. F. Gregory Park, located at 521 Cedar Street, behind the City Hall complex in Richmond Hill, GA.

If you're interested in being a vendor, forms will be available in February of 2012.

History and Philanthropy

The Seafood Festival began in 1985 at the Kilkenny Fisherman's Co-op as a small, community fair that offered local seafood and a venue for local non-profit agencies to fundraise for their organizations. In the beginning, the founders of the Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival were all volunteers, and very few in numbers. What they produced was a fun, family-oriented event, that also showed Richmond Hill as a great place to live.

In 1998, then-Mayor Richard Davis approached the Richmond Hill-Bryan County Chamber of Commerce to bring the seafood festival to Richmond Hill. J. F. Gregory Park had just been built, and was basically just a large tract of land with a road circling around it. Linda Barker was Festival Chairperson at the time, and remained in that capacity for three years. This was a new event and they really didn't know what to expect. The event featured live music and seafood vendors and drew people from outside the city. The headline entertainment was The O'Kaysions, and approximately 8,500 people turned out for the festivities. Over the next few years, changes were made to include a carnival, Saturday events and nationally known musical acts.

Today, thirteen years later, we are still mostly an all-volunteer committee of approximately 300 people (with the exception of a few paid entities such as police/safety, fire and emergency staff, bus drivers, and so on). The Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival has grown to a festival of 35,000 attendees featuring some of the best coastal seafood you can find, cooked in a variety of ways, premiere desserts, and who can forget the Kettle Corn and Peach Cobbler cooked by the Boy Scouts! We have over 50 arts and crafts booths showing their wares, business booth row showcasing numeous businesses around town, a class car show featuring over 200 cars, a 5K Crab Crawl, and oh, the entertainers....

You never know who is going to show up to perform at our event. Past entertainers include Little River Band, Lou Gramm & John Waite, Charlie Daniels, Survivor, Eddie Money, The Blues Brothers, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Swingin' Medallions, Gregg Allman & Friends, The Original Tams and The O'Kaysions.

So, why do we do what we do?

The Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival is a program of the Richmond Hill-Bryan County Chamber of Commerce and is the main fundraising event for the Chamber, as well as numerous other non-profit organizations. A large portion of the festival proceeds are donated back to all participating non-profit organizations. Over the past five years alone, the Seafood Festival has donated $156,769.00 to local non-profit organizations and to the City of Richmond Hill. Some of our regular non-profit entities include the Boy Scouts (Troop 400 and Troop 486), Youth Challenge, Lion's Club, Exchange Club, Richmond Hill Area Tennis Association, Freeman Project, Richmond Hill Senior Citizens Center, Bryan Animal Care Givers, VFW Post 7331, YMCA of Coastal GA, High School JROTC and Boosters Club and several churches.

Our favorite event has to be our Special Events program that is held on Friday morning prior to the festival opening. The program is designed for children with special needs, and are invited from schools in the Coastal Empire area. Kissel Entertainment graciously opens the carnival for 100 children ~ the rides are slowed down and the music is turned down to a level the children can tolerate. For an hour or so, the children have the entire carnival to themselves, all donated by Kissel Entertainment. Afterwards, the kids are treated to lunch, ice cream and usually music, and a visit from a certain mascot from a local restaurant. It's a lot of fun ~ for all of us.