Afterthoughts: The National Taste Delivers a Spin-off

Center stage, October, 1999: prior to kickoff, the 50-yard-line presentation at Cleveland Browns Stadium of $85,000 to the Cleveland Food Bank, the net collected at the first-ever local Taste of the NFL.

March 1999, I find myself in Minneapolis attending a restaurant show there. The local restaurant association has invited me to moderate a panel of foodservice operators to discuss something or other. I can’t remember exactly what the topic was, but if I had to guess, it was most likely to talk about foodservice fads currently bubbling up and what was the industry going to do about them especially if some of the dumber ones become trends.

At the break following the panel, Wayne Kostroski corners me. He says he wants to talk about a spin-off of the national Taste that he has been thinking about ever since the first one in 1985.  He says the national Tastes have reached such a level of success and awareness that it is no longer a SuperBowl novelty, but now the kind of event (soon to become legendary: other than the game itself, a main attraction) anticipated by darn near everyone going to the game. Kostroski had dubbed it, “The party with a purpose.” 

Wayne was never content with the fundraising efforts of the national Tastes. More to the point? He appeared always to be disappointed by what he thought was “the chronic lack of awareness of hunger in America.”

“Here’s a thought,” he says. “If I want to raise awareness, raise more money, why not capitalize on the Taste of the NFL brand and initiate local Tastes at every NFL city. Having said that, I can’t think of a better place to launch this event than with the Cleveland Browns and their return to the NFL after an absence of three years. And I can’t think of a better time than the Monday following the home opener.”


1999 Taste committee members,
Lou Groza and Bede Littman.

Can you help, he asks. You do know, I say, that the home opener is six months out. You’re not giving me much time. You can do it, he says. I’ll give it a shot, I say. Get Jeanne to help, he says.

It wasn’t easy. But, in less than six months, thanks to the tireless support from the marketing department of the Browns (Meredith Camp a key player of the team’s marketing department), we got the word out to the media, recruited volunteers to work the event, arm-twisted 20 chefs and their respective restaurants to dish up some of their finest tastes, amassed dozens of sports memorabilia for our silent auction, solicited (and got) three or four more doozies to be live-auction-hawked by local celebrities, convinced former Browns players—preeminent among them, Lou Groza—to attend, mingle and sign autographs, pleaded with purveyors to donate food, beverage, glasses, napkins, tables and chairs, and convinced Heather Kozar (below), Playboy’s “Playmate of the Year,” to help out.


Kozar and George Hwang, chef/owner,
Pearl of the Orient.

In short, it was wildly successful; a sellout: more than 1,000 people attended. It was the first time a Taste event was held outside of a Super Bowl city. Beneficiaries? Unlike the national Taste where proceeds are split among all of the NFL cities to be distributed wherever they thought the funds would do the most good, all of the proceeds from the Cleveland Taste, $85,000, went directly to the Cleveland Food Bank.



At the Cleveland Taste, l. to r.: Ann
Kagel, Jeanne Michaelides, Wayne
Kostroski, Bede Littman, Alice Ake

Kostroski used the success of the Cleveland Taste to convince other cities to follow suit. It was slow-going initially, but today (2014), there are 11 active local events. Wayne deserves much of the credit, but, he insists, it would have taken a lot longer for the local iterations in other cities to surface, “had it not been for your efforts, Stephen, and those of Jeanne, Lou Groza, and others. You were all instrumental in helping to establish a template for other teams to use.”