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This May, the Norfolk Greek Festival organizers had an interesting conundrum: How do you hold a festival without the festival?
Over more than 30 years, with roots stretching back as far as the 1950s, the Norfolk Greek Festival has built itself into what may be the largest and oldest ethnic cultural festival in Hampton Roads — an elbow-to-elbow powerhouse of dance, music and food devoted to the exact opposite of social distancing.
“If you’ve been, you know. There is usually zero social-distancing stuff going on,” laughs Steve Webb, co-chair of the festival alongside Mike Griffith.
Last May, as many as 60,000 people arrived at Granby Street’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral for more togetherness than any human could ask for. The annual festival raises funds for both the cathedral and area nonprofits.
But during the coronavirus pandemic, close quarters amount to a public health hazard. And so this year, the region’s biggest Greek festival is going drive-thru. From Thursday to Saturday, festival volunteers will instead deliver souvlaki and baklava and pastitsio “Greek lasagna” to a line of waiting car windows snaking 85-deep through the church’s parking lot. Walk-up service will not exist.
When you show up, Webb says, you’ll get a menu handed to your car, with greeters waving to people from a distance, and music playing outside to add to the festive atmosphere.
The festival’s new format has also occasioned a name change, so people know what to expect — and what not to expect.
“It’s not called the Norfolk Greek Festival,” Webb says. “It’s called the Greek Fest Express, sponsored by the Norfolk Greek Festival.”
There’s already a precedent: Newport News’s Greek festival also went drive-thru in August, before holding a takeout event in November.
But for a festival the size of Norfolk’s, along a busy thoroughfare like Granby Street, there are some serious logistics in play — lest the drive-thru line back up traffic for miles. And so the Norfolk festival, usually held in spring, kept getting pushed later and later as consultations with Norfolk city officials dragged on.
“We’ve just gone through painstaking meetings after meetings, and Zoom calls after Zoom calls with the city,” Webb says. “Finally, we have a date. Thursday was our last possibility — we can’t do it any closer to Christmas. Thank god, the weather seems to be turning in our favor.”
Greek Fest Express will enlist 15 Norfolk police officers to direct cars. The traffic plan loops drive-thru traffic around side streets, with cones on the Granby Street median so cars don’t clot up the street by performing U-turns.
For safety reasons, the organizers also were choosy about whom they picked to volunteer, to minimize exposure for people in high-risk groups.
And in the meantime, there was math. Lots of math.
“We were thinking whatever the drive-thru normally does in business, we’re going to double that number,” Webb says. “That’s how we’re able to purchase the food, purchase the drinks.”
That meant 5,000 gyros. 2,500 orders of chicken souvlaki. 1,500 servings of pastitsio. A whopping 8,000 orders of baklava.
Webb’s co-chair, Griffith, an engineer by trade, looked into the logistics of how to serve that vast volume of food, “crunching numbers and doing analysis and spreadsheets” in order to “streamline every piece of baklava.”
“We’re going to look at it like a Chick-fil-A,” Webb says. “Do you ever complain when you go to Chick-fil-A and there’s a line? No, because they’ve got their stuff together, and they’ve got the right model. And we piggyback their model on the foods that we’re selling. So I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as people think.”
Let's Eat
In part, getting their systems in order meant streamlining the menu to just the greatest hits — no lamb, no pork souvlaki, no pastries except baklava. They will also enable online ordering starting the morning of the festival at facebook.com/norfolkgreekfestival, with a priority car line for people who’ve ordered ahead.
For further speed, the festival organizers disallowed cash payments, and got rid of ingredient substitutions. The gyro is the gyro, and if you don’t like lettuce you’ve gotta pick it off. The baklava is the baklava, four pieces to an order.
Webb figures all the hard work of organizing will be worth it in the long run, especially since it’s impossible to know whether they’ll be able to run a traditional Greek festival next year, or even the year after that. This year, he says, will serve as a pilot program for future drive-thrus.
“It might be four years before people feel comfortable,” he says. “Our festival is known to be people on top of each other, in a good way. They dance together, eat together, they’re in the tent. It’s a fun party, like the Greek islands. It’s wall to wall. And until we can get back to that, then I say we keep doing the drive-thru.”
If the drive-thru works as well as they hope, Webb says he doesn’t rule out expanding the food offerings next time around.
“After we get some information and get some help, well shoot: Maybe we should open it up to a few more items and make it bigger and better,” he says. “But right now, we’re keeping it simple, clean and delicious.”
The Greek Fest Express runs 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday to Saturday at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 7220 Granby St., Norfolk, norfolkgreekfestival.com. Menu and online ordering starting Thursday at facebook.com/norfolkgreekfestival. Credit and debit cards only.