The City of Clayton wants a stronger recipe for success if Taste of St. Louis is to return next year. But the long-running event’s promoter isn’t sure he even wants to be back in Clayton.
At last week’s Clayton Board of Aldermen meeting, Clayton’s director of economic development, Gary Carter, outlined the city’s concerns after the food-focused festival’s first year in Clayton. The event moved west after spending recent years in downtown St. Louis, a move that was welcomed by Clayton leaders. Promoter Chuck Justus told SLM earlier this year that Clayton made throwing such a large-scale festival more cost-effective and that he wanted to be closer to the region’s population center.
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But attendance flagged in the event’s Clayton debut, and Carter outlined problems to aldermen including lagging trash pickup, a late-shifting footprint, poor promotion, and weak entertainment.
Carter acknowledged that “there is always a first-year learning process” when staging a new event, and Clayton officials expressed a willingness to bring Taste of St. Louis back to their downtown in 2026 on a revised, one-year contract that would stipulate several enhanced performance measures.
But event organizer Chuck Justus says he’s not ready to commit to a location just yet.
“I don’t know that we know the answer to that right now,” Justus tells SLM. “We were approached by a group out of the city of St. Louis about trying to work with us in the city of St. Louis. But that’s all very preliminary. We haven’t gotten down to any of those things just yet. It’s very much up in the air. I would like to say that Clayton was certainly a nice place to have it. There are challenges there, but there are challenges everywhere. That’s not unique to Clayton, by any means.”
For Clayton, hosting an outdoor, three-day event such as Taste of St. Louis was supposed to be a step toward creating more vibrancy in the St. Louis County seat, which has a reputation for sleepy, empty streets outside of standard business hours. Developing downtown Clayton into a more active destination, with nightlife and events, is among the goals in the city’s comprehensive plan. But Taste of St. Louis’ arrival didn’t do much to boost foot traffic in 2025.
Both Justus and the local officials agree that sweltering heat during the event’s run from August 15–17 was the primary reason for the low turnout.
“I think the weather played a huge part in the poor attendance,” Carter told aldermen. “It was just clearly too hot to be eating fried food on a city street.”
Also citing the multiple food festivals that took place around the region the same weekend this past year, Justus says a move to May or June could be the solution. Clayton officials seem willing to consider such a shift—should the event return to town in 2026.
“I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I think this [summary of concerns] represents a staff statement that it was totally not worth it, or it was the event producer’s fault as to why this happened this way,” Carter told aldermen. “I would lay a lot of the blame on the extreme heat. The other stuff that we encountered is an opportunity to address in the future in a revised contract.”
Says Justus: “It was 100 degrees. It just killed it. People just didn’t come out as big as what we were hoping for. Maybe it should move to the spring because of the [crowded summer] event calendar for one, and two, to just get away from the extremely hot weather.”
Even if Taste of St. Louis is staged in Clayton next spring, city officials said they want assurances that the event—and the cleanup—would run more smoothly and be up to the city’s standards. Trash pickup was a point of contention in the city’s post-festival assessment. Both the city and Justus agree that a vendor is at fault for some of the leftover trash that should have been picked up after the festival finished on Sunday.
The city says there was an expectation that downtown would be clean before opening for business on Monday morning. Justus says that, upon learning of the leftover trash, he immediately went downtown to handle it himself.
“I personally went out there and picked it up,” he says. “It was off the ground by about 9 a.m. This was really a very small thing, and I feel bad that it happened. On the other hand, I can only take the word of what a vendor says. I think we rectified the situation very quickly. It was enough trash that could fit on a golf cart. That was it.”
City officials were nevertheless left feeling lukewarm. “I don’t think it was successful,” Carter told the aldermen. “I, unfortunately, wasn’t able to attend personally, but from discussions with the staff that was there and the event producer, he lost money. I think he was fairly upfront about that.”
Justus confirmed to SLM that not only did he lose money this year, but that the festival has never been profitable for him. He cites overhead costs and thin margins as factors that make it difficult to make money off the annual culinary showcase. Still, Justus believes in the festival’s upside, and says the potential of helping small local businesses gain exposure in a positive community setting keeps him going.
“It’s a good brand,” Justus says. “The comments we get from people about the festival and how much they love it is encouraging. That fools me into trying it again. I’ll tell you that the restaurants—I asked them how they did, and almost every one of them said this was the best Taste of St. Louis for them yet. So the restaurants do well. I feel like there’s a civic responsibility when you have a megaphone, like what we have with Taste of St. Louis, to try to help others out. Yeah, it’s been a financial loser. But we know there’s a recipe here that will work. We just haven’t quite found it.”
