Chris Fairchild began his career as a grapes guy.

But even while working in the retail side of the wine business, Fairchild was able to gain exposure to many aspects of the beverage industry. And during the last few years of his vino venture, beer began to capture his attention.

“I starting learning as much as I could, reading everything and doing a ton of tasting. That developed into a passion for beer,” says Fairchild, who now holds the title of Certified Cicerone. “It was a great time for craft beer all around the country and I found it very exciting.”

So exciting, in fact, he joined the staff of Tampa Bay Beer Week as a non-designated board member and spent his early tenure working from mostly behind the scenes to help plan, promote and execute various events. This happened two years after the first official Tampa Bay Beer Week.

“Since the inaugural Tampa Bay Beer Week in 2012, TBBW has hosted hundreds of events such as large-scale festivals, brewing competitions, charity events and educational seminars,” reads the nonprofit’s mission statement. “The efforts of TBBW have been a major factor in the continued growth of the Tampa Bay craft beer community making this area one of the top beer destinations in the southern United States.”

While the Florida Brewers Guild festival and the Brewers Ball had often been held over the course of a single weekend, it wasn’t until Cigar City Brewing began holding its Hunapuh’s Day festival that a local group of like-minded and beer-invested residents began to formulate a week-long celebration bookended by those events. The idea for Tampa Bay Beer Week was based on an existing structure in other cities including Philadelphia, and evolved into the eight-day early March celebration now marking its 10-year anniversary.

With a board of directors built around representatives from distributors, breweries, retailers and homebrewers, staffing Tampa Bay Beer Week can sometimes resemble a well-organized game of musical chairs based on promotion rather than elimination. Since moving into a permanent secretarial position, Fairchild has filled almost every seat, he says, except Treasurer – and only months after moving up to chairperson he was voted into the executive director role.

Beer Celebration Faces Covid Challenges

And shortly after taking over, Fairchild was reconciling with the toughest challenge yet to face Tampa Bay Beer Week in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the ever-evolving early stages, as guidance was updating, the 2020 iteration of Tampa Bay Beer Week changed from one day to the next.

“I remember going to Florida Brewers Guild and Brewers Ball having hand sanitizer on my belt and doing the elbow bump,” Fairchild tells Florida Beer News editor Mark DeNote on a recent episode of the BeerWise Podcast. “I think FBG was a lot more hugs, and then the next day at Brewers Ball was elbow bumps. It was evolving as we went.”

Fairchild was at a Thursday night Beer Week 2020 dinner, mid-course, when news broke of Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa canceling events for what was then the foreseeable future, signaling the start of serious shutdowns. A year later, Tampa Bay Beer Week events were limited in both size and number. For 2022, the Hunahpu’s Day festival has still not returned as the second-weekend bookend.

But a partial reset was not completely unwelcome.

“Five or six years ago, we were hosting several hundred events with about 40 or 50 breweries,” says Fairchild. “We weren’t even at a high-number point for breweries. That community is still growing. But it was overwhelming. It was exhausting.

“We don’t need to have 400 events every year. We would love to have 150 to 200 events, maintaining the variety, focusing on the quality over the quantity. It has been fun to watch it evolve.”

The Festival Partners With Local Retailers

As much focus is directed toward the area’s craft brewery scene, Tampa Bay Beer Week is a celebration of beer itself, not only those made in the Tampa Bay region and not only promoting those who make it. Retailer partnership with the bars and stores hosting events is also important to keeping the nonprofit running – and, by extension, to feed distribution dollars into the breweries.

The craft-focused bar Independent is hosting events nearly every night of Beer Week between its Tampa and St. Petersburg locations, and Tampa’s Lowry Parcade has an event welcoming Tallahassee-based Ology Brewing to the area. Ology will move into Angry Chair Brewing’s original location after Angry Chair takes over the former Florida Avenue Brewing and Brew Bus space. Fairchild is especially excited about this year’s co-branded souvenir cups available at St. Petersburg’s The Ale and the Witch, offering dollar-off pours into the reusable drinkware with earnings from the sales going directly to Tampa Bay Beer Week.

And every little bit helps.

“We still view this as a recovery year,” says Fairchild, emphasizing the lost income of the past two years. “And we still don’t have a ton of out-of-state brands visiting. But we’re confident they’ll come back next year.

“Change is constant. If you’re not evolving, what are you doing? After 10 years, we’re here for the long haul.”