The annual Pig in the Park Barbecue Festival and Cookoff will return to Williamston’s Mineral Spring Park this weekend, May 19 and 20.
The event features a weekend of championship cooking of barbecue, food sales, vendors and other activities.
There will be eighteen cook teams competing for the Championship and the Williamston Masonic Lodge will be selling wrist bands for all-you-can-eat barbecue samples on Saturday.
Activities will begin at 12 noon on Friday and go until 9 p.m. with food sales, craft/vendor sales and children’s play area. Kendall Lanford and Clearview will be performing live music at the Amphitheater Stage as part of the Envision Williamston Concert Series being held on Friday nights in the Park.
Saturday activities will be 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. and include food sales, craft/vendor sales and children’s play area. Music will be provided by the Anderson District 1&2 Career and Technology Center.
At 10:30 a.m., the Williamston Masonic Lodge will begin selling $13 wristbands for All-You-Can-Eat barbecue samples, while it lasts! Competitors will begin giving out their samples at 11 a.m. (wristband required).
Judging of barbecue will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday with presentation of BBQ Championship Awards at 2:30 p.m.
Cooking teams include: Casual Smokers Jamie Mintz; Swig-n-Pig Andrew Massey; High on the Hog Matt Talbot; Adventure in Smoke Jason Doss; Meat Market William Holladay; The Hog Mafia Morris (Mo) Gray; Monkey Bottom Boy’s George Ray; This Little Piggy Ronnie Frier; Cannon BBQ Brandon Cannon; The South Carolina BBQ Company, Travis Alan McCurley; The Smokin Grill, Ken Scales; Men At work BBQ, Brian Roach; Daddy Blue’s BBQ, Desmond; Singing Meats, David Smith; Backwoods Bar-B-Que, Gene Culbertson; Mill Hill BBQ, Jordan Gambrell.
Food vendors will include: The Feed Room, Jim Cason; Fatso’s BBQ, David Darnell; The Smokin’ Grill, Kenneth Scales; This Little Piggy, Ronnie Frier; Dad BoD’s BBQ (Sales Plates), Kaleb Cox.
Craft Vendors include: Rylee Woods Designs and CTM Designs offering personalized tumblers, Cookies, cupcakes, candy apples, barks, breads, Funnel Cake, fried Oreos, kettle corn and lemonade, 1/4lb Gourmet Cookies, lemonade pouches, soda & water.
Sponsors of this year’s event include: 4C Sitework Inc; Foothills Gun & Pawn, Inc.; Orchard View Meats; The Journal; Town of Williamston; Waste Connections and Zefco Inc.
Pig in the Park is a Charity Event sponsored by the Williamston Masonic Lodge.
Net proceeds from the event will be donated to Christian Learning Center, Operation Care and Williamston Masonic Lodge No. 24.
