Aw shucks: Oyster Festival to return for ninth year

With spring weather around the corner, Wareham residents can look forward to a usual shell-ebration.

For the ninth consecutive year, the Oyster Festival will return to Wareham, this time with a new organizer and a fresh location.

On May 24 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. 125 vendors will gather in Besse Park, accompanied by a 12 piece funk band, an oyster mascot named Salty and a variety of other interesting attractions. Admission will be free.

Vendors will offer a variety of food, including barbecue, strawberry-dipped treats, fried dough, burgers, hot dogs and of course, oysters. Arts and crafts and beer and wine vendors will also be selling their goods.

In previous years, the festival shut down Main Street for a day in May. This year, under the leadership of new promoter Lorna Brunelle and under the banner of Sip and Stroll, the event will take place in Besse Park and extend to the area surrounding Warren’s Harborview restaurant.

Along with the change in location comes a change in date with Brunelle opting to hold the event on a Saturday as opposed to the usual Sunday, to account for potential weather.

“If it rains Saturday, we can still come out on Sunday and frolic and eat, drink and be merry and not think about work on Monday,” she said.

Brunelle took charge of the event after the previous organizers decided to take a break from the festival, due to "uncertainties in the shellfish industry,” according to their website.

Brunelle, who is the daughter of Danny Warren, owner of Warren’s Harborview, founded Sip and Stroll, an event she puts on five times a year in the South Coast region.

She first hosted the event in Middleboro, bringing together hundreds of vendors and thousands of attendees and it has since spread to Kingston.

After the Oyster Festival organizers decided against hosting the celebration in 2025, the Select Board approached Brunelle to bring Sip and Stroll to Wareham in its place.

“But once I realized they had the Oyster Festival in almost the exact spot I was going to have Sip and Stroll it didn’t make sense to bring almost an identical event,” Brunelle said.

Instead she’s revamping the Oyster Festival under the name Oyster Fest 2025 and bringing along many Sip and Stroll vendors. Almost 40% of the stands at the festival this year are Sip and Stroll regulars.

Among them are some “celebrity” names, Brunelle said.

“We have some pretty heavy hitting vendors like Hippie Pilgrims. She’s really well known because she cooked on television with Queen Latifah,” she said.

The Wareham Redevelopment Authority has provided $5,000 for the Oyster Festival, which will primarily go toward police and fire department expenses.

As in previous years, the event is not dog friendly.

In the leadup to the event, Brunelle will highlight vendors on social media. Attendees will also be provided with a map showing the location of each attraction.

“Creativity is in my blood, so the opportunity to support creative people and give them an outlet in a beautiful location is a total homerun,” Brunelle said.

More information will be available on Brunelle’s Facebook page closer to the event date.