Congratulations to Florida Penguin Productions and the North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) for hosting a super-successful third annual Summer Rum & Seafood Festival.
Despite heavy rains that delayed the start of the event, this year’s Summer Rum & Seafood Festival on July 13 at the Tampa Premium Outlets was four hours of tasting samples of rum (and other spirits), great bands, local vendors and, of course, lots of seafood.
More than 1,000 patrons came out to enjoy samplings from nine different Florida-based distilleries including: St Pete Distillery, Everglades Distillery, West Distilling, Tarpon Springs Distillery, 90 Miles South, Lugo’s Craft Distillery, Preez Distillery (photo below), Reif Rum Spirits and American Freedom Distillery.
Entertainment this year included popular southern rock & country band Southbound 75 and Turn It On Again, A Tribute to Phil Collins/Genesis. Turn It On Again did an amazing job of covering the catalogs of Collins and his former Genesis bandmate Peter Gabriel.
Among the fun returning events were the hermit crab races (bottom right), a live mermaid tank (below, right) and 10 different seafood vendors offering everything from crab legs to crab cakes, shrimp skewers, whole snapper and more.
Among the favorite seafood trucks were crab cakes from New Tampa’s own Charm City Eats (top photo) and From the Soul to the Sea’s shrimp bowl (above).
Major sponsors of this year’s event were Universal Roof and Pasco County Recycling ,with a media shout out to MOR-TV.
According to Drew Cecere of Florida Penguin Productions, admission fees and sponsorships for the Rum & Seafood Festival raised $2.600 for the North Tampa Bay Chamber Foundation. — GN
