Taste of Pinellas, the food and music festival that once drew tens of thousands to downtown St. Petersburg's waterfront, is coming back for one day on Saturday, February 6, 2027, after a 13-year hiatus. The revived event will be held at Tropicana Field, a shift from its longtime home in the city's outdoor parks, and will benefit Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital as part of the hospital's 100th anniversary.
According to Creative Loafing Tampa, the 2027 revival will feature 20 to 30 restaurants and live music, with ticket pricing still pending announcement. Organizers have said a national headliner will be announced later. Longtime promoter Bill Edwards, who previously helped transform the festival into a large-scale concert event, is again helping bring back what organizers describe as the concert and food experience.
A Festival Built to Fund Pediatric Care
Taste of Pinellas has deep roots as a hospital fundraiser. The event was originally created in the mid-1980s through a partnership between the local chapter of the Florida Restaurant Association and All Children's Hospital executive Joel Momberg, who spent 30 years in top fundraising roles at the hospital, according to the Business Observer. Proceeds from the festival went to what is now Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, and by 2004 the event had raised more than $2 million for the hospital over its run, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
In its earlier decades, the festival drew crowds of up to 60,000 to the St. Petersburg waterfront over multiple days, per the same Tampa Bay Times account. It debuted in Straub Park before expanding into Vinoy Park, where it was held for 26 years and hosted 40 to 60 food vendors during peak summer weekends. A decade before its 2014 relocation, the festival counted more than 40 food stalls, per Creative Loafing Tampa.
From Sheryl Crow to the Blues Brothers
Bill Edwards transformed Taste of Pinellas into a large live-music event starting in 2011 and 2012. The 2011 lineup featured performers including Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, Colbie Caillat, Chris Isaak, Dashboard Confessional, Third Eye Blind and Buddy Guy, per the outlet's reporting. Earlier still, in 2003, organizers partnered with Ruth Eckerd Hall to book national touring acts such as Chicago, The B-52's, and Foreigner, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The festival's final run before its hiatus came in 2014, when it moved to Albert Whitted Park — a smaller venue chosen as better suited to the crowd size, located across from the Mahaffey Theater and the Dali Museum. That year's event featured Pat Benatar and Loverboy as headliners, along with The Blues Brothers starring Jim Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and KC and the Sunshine Band. Nearly two dozen local food vendors took part, with ticket prices starting at $25. The festival was ultimately canceled in 2013 because of low attendance in previous years, and organizers have described the local entertainment industry as having a changing landscape since then.
Why Tropicana Field, and Why Now
The choice of Tropicana Field ties the festival's return to a milestone year for its beneficiary. Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital was founded in 1926 by St. Petersburg's American Legion Post 14 as the American Legion Hospital for Crippled Children, treating pediatric polio victims in a building that had previously housed a speakeasy, according to Tampa Bay Parenting. The hospital joined the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Health System in 2011 and was officially renamed Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in 2016, per Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Today the hospital operates 259 licensed beds and a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center, and it was ranked Florida's top pediatric hospital by U.S. News & World Report, per Tampa Bay Parenting. Tropicana Field itself has a long history as a large-capacity event venue: it opened in March 1990 as the $138 million Florida Suncoast Dome and operated for eight years before the Rays played their first game there in 1998, according to MLB.com. The domed stadium has hosted major indoor concerts over the years, including a 1990 New Kids on the Block show that drew 47,150 fans and a 2024 WWE Royal Rumble that set the venue's all-time attendance record of 48,044.
Bill Edwards, who is again involved in reviving the festival, has his own history with the hospital beyond the festival stage. He made a $2.5 million gift to All Children's Hospital in 2010 to endow its music therapy and patient education programs, according to MusicWorx. Specifics on ticket pricing, the national headliner, and how food vendor logistics will work inside Tropicana Field's concourses — a departure from the open-park layouts of Straub, Vinoy and Albert Whitted parks — have not yet been announced.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
