{"id":1434,"date":"2020-09-29T14:10:21","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/?p=1434"},"modified":"2020-09-29T14:10:21","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:10:21","slug":"covids-impact-on-pumpkin-time-out-of-home-public-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/covids-impact-on-pumpkin-time-out-of-home-public-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid’s impact on pumpkin time out-of-home public activities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Halloween is American’s 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0most popular holiday after Christmas and Thanksgiving according to the Harris Poll. Halloween has grown to be a lot more than trick-or-treat. A whole industry of out-of-home activities and attractions have developed around Fall and Halloween. One has become a significant industry \u2013 agritainment\/agritourism fall attractions.\u00a0\u00a0These include farm-based fall festivals with such activities as corn mazes, pumpkin patches, petting zoos, hay wagon rides, jumping pillows and many others; u-pick apples and outdoor farm haunts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our company estimates that there are currently around 1,000 farm festivals that include corn mazes. That’s a dramatic growth from 1993 when American’s first corn maze in Annville, Pennsylvania was able to charge people $5 to get lost in it and launched the corn maze industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our company was fortunate to start working with farm clients when the agritainment industry was first taking off when we were approached by the 7th<\/sup> generation Davis family dairy farm in Massachusetts about developing an agritourism destination. Our feasibility study was positive. We went on to work with them on the design of Davis Farmland<\/em>, a children’s discovery farm. It started small. Every year since, we’ve worked with the Davises to grow their business to what has become a major destination for families with young children in the western Boston area. In 1998 Davis Mega Maze<\/em> was born across the street from Davis Farmland<\/em>. Several years ago, we helped them transform it into the Davis Mega Farm Festival<\/em>, a beer, wine, food and music festival. These two agritainment businesses now support the Davis’ farm. We recently designed a BBQ restaurant addition that is currently under construction to give them a year-round business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have been very active in the agritainment\/agritourism segment of the location-based entertainment (LBE) industry over the past 26 years. In fact, during the pandemic, we’ve been working with six different agritainment\/agritourism clients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agritainment has high appeal, not just due to the popularity of Halloween, but also because attending a fall farm-based festival has become a tradition with many families. It works for both adults and children, and there is the nostalgic and authentic appeal of being at a real farm in the outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our company’s national surveys have found that one or more members from 1 in 3 households annually attend some sort of agritainment activity between the end of July and early November. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, some farm fall festivals have attendances in the 100\u2019s of thousands and revenues in the high single-digit millions of dollars over just six weeks from the end of September through the end of October. That’s higher attendance and revenues than most location-based entertainment venues achieve in a full year, including for most family entertainment centers (FECs).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What impact will the coronavirus pandemic have this fall on the agritainment\/agritourism industry? A recent survey by Civic Science indicates farmers will fare much better than other segments of the LBE industry. Over 6 in 10 people (63%) say they are comfortable going to a u-pick pumpkin patch or an apple orchard, and over half (51%) are comfortable attending an outdoor fall festival. However, the comfort level with indoor Halloween events and haunted houses is very low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comfort with an outdoor fall festival is highest with age 18-24 (67%) and decreases with age. For the primary age range for parents with children (age 25-44), a key target market, a little over 6 in 10 are comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here’s how the comfort with outdoor agritainment u-pick and festivals compares with some other public activities. People are far more comfortable going to an outdoor fall festival than going to a restaurant or shopping at a mall.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s not surprising that people have the highest comfort levels with outdoor agritainment activities. It hits the sweet spots for being as safe at a public activity as possible during the pandemic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. It’s outdoors<\/li>
  2. It allows generous social distancing as it isn’t crowded since people are spread out over many acres.<\/li>
  3. You spend very little time in the immediate proximity of people who are not part of your family or social bubble.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Lots of people are going stir-crazy and craving some sort of \u2018safe\u2019 out-of-home entertainment they can visit. If the agritainment activities also make mask-wearing mandatory<\/a>, they should attract good attendance this year despite the pandemic compared to other out-of-home entertainment activities. The early reports we’re getting from our agritainment clients are very positive. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Lots of people are going stir-crazy and craving some sort of \u2018safe\u2019 out-of-home entertainment they can visit. This fall it look like agritainment\/agritourism will be the winner. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Lots of people are going stir-crazy and craving some sort of \u2018safe\u2019 out-of-home entertainment they can visit. This fall it look like agritainment\/agritourism will be the winner. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[266,267,361,362,17,37,358],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agritainment","category-agritourism","category-coronavirus","category-covid-19","category-location-based-entertainment","category-out-of-home-2","category-pandemic"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4dB0k-n8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1434"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1441,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434\/revisions\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitehutchinson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}