You look at that countdown at the top there 184 days and counting until the 2024 National buffalo wing festival at High Mark stadium in Orchard Park but before that Western New York has the opportunity to bestow this popular festival with some pretty awesome honors USA Today has nominated the event as the best specialty food festival in the.
Nation you can vote now through Monday March 18th and right now the wingfest is sitting at number four right behind picklesburgh in Pittsburgh never heard of that one the cheese curd Festival in Ellsworth Wisconsin and the Delta Hot Tamale Festival in Greenville Mississippi joining us live here tonight to talk about this is the Wing King.
Himself Drew cza founder of the national buffalo wing Festival Drew great to see you thanks for coming in same here Michael how are we behind the pickle and the kurd yeah I know right those are some strange ones uh people it's funny we call you call this the national buffalo chicken wing Festival but people come from even beyond the United States.
Obviously a lot of Canadians but even even beyond that um tell me first of all about this you know USA Today ranking what you make of it and what an honor something like that would be it is a great honor Michael and I think with USA Today they're all about travel yeah and to be nominated by travel writers uh is pretty cool uh we have visit Buffalo.
Nigara come to the festival every year and they track where visitors come from and even last year 47 different states were tracked and I think 26 different countries wow we actually had a restaurant from um uh all the way from Iceland okay one from Mexico we've had them from Great Britain Australia so it's really it's really a cool way to.
Find different food styles that have been incorporated into the chicken wing yeah absolutely so every year this event grows I mean now it's at High Mark Stadium doesn't get any bigger than that in Western New York um 184 days out what are our preparations like you know we're we're pretty much uh we're the 11th Hour believe it or not yeah we're um you know.
Sponsored most of them are signed up restaurants um now it's the execution mode but marketing is really key we Market the festival I work every day marking the festival nationally uh doing interviews and really promoting the buffalo wing but also the buffalo wing Festival it's great for the city it's a great economic impact we deliver and.
This people forgot it's the 60th anniversary of the chicken wing oh wow 1964 at the world famous Anchor Bar um so we're going to celebrate it at the wingfest this year so there's been a lot of interviews for that um people love Wings it's just a fun passion of food absolutely some of the numbers are too are just so impressive um five million.
Chicken wings over the years which is just incredible and also uh the event has raised more than $460,000 for local charities um for people who are watching right now you know us we in Buffalo you know we love our bills we love our Sabers we love competition right and people want the the wing Festival to win how can they go.
And vote and and make sure the cheese curds don't uh don't and the pickle and the pickles yes um you know uh you can go to our website buffalo.com I believe your website has it as well you can just Google USA Today top 10 but through the website you can do it our Instagram account Facebook and Twitter account just put in National Buffalo wien.
Festival you can vote every day and the voting goes on till March 18th so you can vote every day and you know I'm not a big social media guy so please help us out um we have our guy uh Sean Van Patton who handles all our social media he's blasting it out as best as he can but it would be a cool honor to to win it and put a little feather in our cap.
Absolutely um 15 seconds left are you a you're a hotwing guy right or are you a not too hot I'm a hot too hot yeah hot not extra hot unless it's got a lot of flavor I like the blend of the sweetness and heat Russo and Leah over there they like they like the hot ones oh they like free ones too I know Russo he likes the free one when I bred in the free.
Ones uh Drew s great to see you drew thanks as always we appreciate it we'll show you one more time you can for the national buffalo wing Festival you'll find that link at wkbw.com and on our Facebook page we'll keep you updated as that continue
