EVENT OVERVIEW
The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party is the nation’s largest culinary and music festival, welcoming more than 140,000 attendees and fans from cities near and far. The free, weekend-long event is set in the heart of New York City’s most beautiful and cherished public spaces – Madison Square Park. Guests flock to the festival to enjoy the best in barbecue from the world’s most celebrated Chefs and Pitmasters. Entering its 15th year in 2017, the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party is a wildly-anticipated annual festival that garners widespread media coverage and is considered by many as a cultural gift to the city.
The Big Apple Barbecue brand has grown significantly since its inception encompassing a single city block with a handful of pitmasters and a few thousand attendees and has transformed into a unique, organic platform showcasing the best in Barbecue culinary talent, curated musical performances, hospitality, interactive sponsor/partner activations and all the other great things that make this event such a beloved NYC tradition, year-after-year. Originally founded by Union Square Hospitality’s Danny Meyer (Shake Shack), Upsilon Ventures was selected by Madison Square Park Conservancy to produce the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in a long-term partnership.