After the folk festival is before the folk festival. This applies to fans of brass band music, parties and beer from large mugs. But this is particularly true of the hosts, who have to plan for the long term so that everything works according to the guests’ wishes. Angelika Fontenot and her son Enrico Pfleghar can now get started with the Augustiner brewery. After their premiere this year, they were again awarded the Lohhofer Volksfest. You are now organizing the anniversary Oktoberfest, the 70th Lohhofer folk festival, with the city in the coming year. The hosts have rented a new, larger tent that can accommodate a good 2,500 guests inside and up to 600 outside.
The two landlords and representatives of Augustiner sealed the contract for the festival tent until 2025 at a meeting with Mayor Christoph Böck (SPD) in the town hall on Thursday. Mayor Böck spoke of a happy event and announced surprises for the anniversary edition. The Fontenot family had prevailed in a tender. With the three-year cycle, the festival tent allocation is back on track. The Lohhofer Volksfest was canceled twice due to the corona pandemic. Then Fontenot and Pfleghar came on for a year in 2022 and had to hold their premiere within a short time under difficult conditions.
There was advance praise on social media because of the prospect of the popular Augustiner beer being served for the first time. But staff was difficult to get due to Corona. How many guests would come was an open question. And then it went so well that both sides want to continue together. “The Lohhofer Volksfest has been well received,” says Fontenot with satisfaction. “Indeed, we had a small plus.” The landlady praises the cooperation with the city. The town hall promotes the festival well. It has a high priority.
After tapping came the downpour
But not everything went smoothly. The start of the festival was difficult. Mayor Böck had barely tapped the first barrel when a storm broke out. Half of the fairground was under water. People poured into the marquee and the waitresses didn’t get the beer as quickly as some would have liked. Correspondingly critical voices followed online. But City Hall spokesman Steven Ahlrep puts the criticism into perspective in retrospect. The situation was extraordinary. No one can do magic and immediately put a full beer on everyone’s table at 6 p.m. Angelika Fontenot remembers it well and admits: “We had problems in the tavern.” The waiters had to wait too long for the beer. Lessons have been learned from this. In 2023, for example, the beer will be served from wooden barrels instead of metal. Because that’s where the beer flows faster into the mugs. A mass from the wooden barrel is filled in 2.5 seconds, says Fontenot, and otherwise in 6.5 seconds. “That really is a difference.”
The complaints from the beginning fell silent. The innkeepers got the problems under control, as city hall spokesman Ahlrep says. The innkeeper family knows from decades of experience what is important in a marquee operation. Angelika Fontenot looks back on 30 years as the operator of the Radi stand in the Augustiner Festhalle at the Oktoberfest. The snack stand is now also being run there. The contact to the kitchen is close, she says. Her son Enrico learned to cook at the Augustiner-Bräuhaus on Landsberger Straße. The older daughter worked at Käfer as a confectioner and in the party service. Then Angelika Fontenot entered the Lohhofer Volksfest in 2019 with a small tent to try for the big tent. “We’re a big family,” says Fontenot. Everyone tackles. Besides her and her son Enrico, husband Curt is the managing director of Fontenot & Söhne GmbH based in Munich.
Next up is a small tent at the Christmas market in Unterschleißheim. The preparations are ongoing. And for the start of the folk festival on May 26, 2023 – “as always on the Friday before Pentecost,” as Fontenot routinely says – planning is underway. You have a lot of contacts, says Fontenot. And a sack full of experiences. Some will be optimized. Fontenot says that “we pay attention to the fact that people get their beer on the table quickly.”