The organization held its first festival back since the pandemic downtown at the Davis Odd Fellows Lodge
By HANNAH SCHRADER — city@theaggie.org
On Sunday, Feb. 4, at the Davis Odd Fellows Lodge, the Davis Chocolate Festival was hosted by the Davis Odd Fellows from 2 to 5 p.m. There were 400 tickets originally available online, but the festival sold out of all online tickets shortly before the event. As the event was underway, more tickets were made available at the door for a discounted rate.
A total of 12 local vendors were at the event and booths filled both the upstairs and downstairs levels of the lodge. This chocolate-themed event featured items for samples from chocolate baguettes to chocolate almond toffee.
Local residents were encouraged to enter the cookie bakeoff held at the Chocolate Festival and the judge panel included Davis Enterprise Columnist Shelley Dunning, Assistant Publisher at the Davis Enterprise Debbie Davis and Noah Stromberg, a local Davis resident.
Shortly after the event began, Dave Rosenberg, master of ceremonies, welcomed guests to the event with a lighthearted quip.
“Welcome to the chocolate festival, are you having a good time?” Rosenberg asked the crowd. “You getting enough chocolate? We’re talking about starting a vanilla festival next year. What do you think? There cannot be enough enthusiasm here.”
The member briefly went over some of the history behind Odd Fellows and what the aims of the organization are.
“Odd Fellows [is] the oldest organization in the city of Davis,” Rosenbergsaid. “We do a lot of fun things and raise a lot of money primarily for children, disadvantaged [children] and children in need, so thank you for being here. You’ve contributed to helping children.”
Vida Gupta, a Davis local business owner who attended the festival, spoke about her experience at the festival.
“[I] like the samples, it’s nice to try all the different types of chocolate people are making,” Gupta said. “There’s a chocolate fountain around here theoretically so that’ll be fun, and [I will] just [be] trying and maybe buying some chocolate.”
Cheryl Randell, a traffic manager at Capital Public Radio in Sacramento who attended the festival, spoke about her favorite part of the festival.
“The chocolate fountain,” Randell said. “This is my first time [at the Davis Chocolate Festival].”
To close out the festival, one of the Odd Fellow members thanked the sponsors of the event and reminded guests of the cookie bakeoff.
“We want to thank all our sponsors and committee members […] check out the bake sale in the lower hall,” they said. “And we’re gonna have the cookie bakeoff starting around about what 3:30 p.m.? Stay tuned for that.”
Written by: Hannah Schrader — city@theaggie.org
