The South Carolina Pecan Music and Food Festival’s 22nd year brought a record number of vendors to downtown Florence on Saturday, Nov. 7. More than 250 vendors and 38 sponsors took part, alongside a reported 176 volunteers. The event ran from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; two full-time city employees handled the festival’s organization.
The Post and Courier reported that Florence development manager Hannah Davis led the effort, with downtown development coordinator Austin Watters as the only other full-time city employee assigned to it. The report described the staffing arrangement as one of the event’s notable operational details.
A Festival Built on Borrowed Time and Volunteer Hours
Organizing the festival takes months of advance work. Vendor applications open each February, the Post and Courier reported, allowing organizers to arrange food trucks, craft booths and entertainment ahead of the November event.
The post-event volunteer count was 176. Festival founder and Florence City Councilman George Jebaily has chaired or co-chaired the event since 2003, according to the Post and Courier.
Economic Boost and a City Councilman’s Legacy
Jebaily has estimated the festival’s annual economic impact at roughly $3 million, a figure he gave to WMBF News before this year’s event. Separately, Here Florence reported that some visitors later contact Florence’s downtown organization to ask about opening a business.
Davis said downtown businesses resisted closing streets to motor traffic for the festival when it began. Jebaily has credited the event with helping downtown Florence recover from a difficult period and become a destination, according to WMBF’s report on his economic estimate.
Downtown’s visitor economy in context
The festival’s reported economic impact is an organizer’s estimate, not a standalone measure of Florence County’s visitor economy. The South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism lists a 2024 tourism economic and fiscal analysis with state- and county-level impacts. Separately, the City of Florence’s FY2025 annual financial report says accommodations tax receipts rose 5.2% from FY2024; that citywide measure offers lodging-related context but does not establish the festival’s impact. The City of Florence says downtown is a Nationally Accredited Main Street Program and received the Great American Main Street Award in 2023. As a prior-year attendance benchmark, not a count for this festival, The Post and Courier reported that the 2023 event drew nearly 50,000 attendees.
Music, Miles and a Record Fun Run
Saturday opened with the national anthem on the main stage followed by remarks from Florence Mayor Lethonia Barnes, according to the Post and Courier’s reporting. Barnes called the festival’s behind-the-scenes effort a labor of love, saying Florence feels like a family. The lineup stretched across genres — hip-hop, jazz, country, blues and gospel — and included a set from Jason Scheff, a former lead singer of Chicago.
Out on the course, the festival’s “Run Like a Nut” 5K, 10K and marathon drew the most runners in the event’s history, per the post-event report. Organizers had worried about the weather beforehand, with Jebaily saying conditions looked favorable and that festival planners simply pray for what they call pecan weather, the outlet noted. By the time the day wound down, more than 50,000 people had reportedly flooded downtown within a few hours, though that figure describes crowd flow rather than a confirmed final attendance total. Crowds weren’t expected to peak until between 5 and 7 p.m., Davis said.
The People Who Showed Up to Remember
Florence resident LaNice Eaddy operated her Sea Soul Melody food stand at the festival. The Post and Courier also reported on volunteers whose reasons for attending reached beyond the event: Frankie Rivers, 69, came in memory of his wife, Robin, who died of cancer in August. Brandi Frazier, a peer support specialist who has been sober for four years, reunited with her daughter, Rebel. While in foster care, Rebel had sung “God I’m Just Grateful” to console herself.
Those stories sit alongside the festival’s broader civic footprint — one that dates back to the event’s 2003 origins as a celebration of the pecan and its 2011 designation as the Official South Carolina State Pecan Festival. The Florence Downtown Development Corp. owns and produces the event each year on the first Saturday in November, a tradition that, for one more year, leaned on a skeleton crew of two to make it happen.
