This week, a small northern Michigan town is lively. Colorful rides, tents and street vendors line the harbor of Rogers City. An unusual amount of traffic fills the streets of the small downtown area, and business owners see more customers than they would for the entire year.
All of it is for Rogers City’s most popular festival, the Nautical City Festival.
“The winters up here are slow,” Karen Spens, the chairwoman of the festival, said. “So this event, and all the other events during the summer are so important for the businesses because that’s where they’re making the majority of their money to sustain them through the year.”
The town of approximately 2,900 people, sees around 10,000 to 15,000 festival goers yearly, Spens said. That crowd, Spens said, are locals, families reuniting for the week and curious tourists stopping by on their way to Hoeft State Park or the Mackinac Bridge.
“It’s about bringing the community together, bringing back family and friends from all over,” she said. “It’s a homecoming for the community.”
This year, the festival started on Tuesday, and will end on Sunday. Volunteers have spent months prepping for this year’s festival, organizing the children’s parade, craft shows, local artist performances, and even pro wrestling.
Business owners also spent weeks prepping for the festival. Cassie Cook, the owner of the coffee shop, Cooks Coffee Nook, said the shop saw its busiest day on record during the festival last year.
“We almost tripled our busiest day that we had to date, so that was kind of crazy,” Cook said. “You never know how many people are going to come in or what the day is going to look like.”
Cook has been a resident in a small town close to Rogers City all of her life, and a business owner of the coffee shop for three years. She said businesses do a lot of preparation for the festival to make up for the influx of people.
“Preparations are ordering double of everything, adding extra staffing, extending hours, whether you start earlier, end earlier and then just kind of winging it and trying to make sure everything goes right,” she said.
Though the shop receives a good amount of business throughout the year, Cook said tourist season going into October really helps businesses through the winter.
“I would say that the summertime overall helps make sure businesses can stay afloat during the coldest months in the winter,” she said. “Nautical Festival itself is definitely a nice added push, but we have so much more than just a festival to offer.”
Kelly Romel is the owner of Harborside Bath and Body Works, another store in Rogers City. This is Romel’s first Nautical Festival as a business owner since taking over the store from previous owner Hayley Rose.
She ordered double of the amount of products she would typically sell in preparation for this year’s festival.
“The previous owner filled me in on what to expect and we can go back financially to see the big rise in the weekend on what takes place here,” Romel said. “So I bought extra inventory to make sure that we have everything in place if that does happen, which I’m expecting it to.”
She said the revenue the business receives during the Nautical Festival is about half the amount that the store would get for a whole month.
“It is a big jump and (I’m) very grateful for that,” Romel said.
