A Decade of BBQ and Blessings
Gwinnett County’s favorite barbecue festival started with a question.
It all began when Jim Lloyd and his wife, Cindy, were sharing a meal with Home of Hope Executive Director Maureen Kornowa, and Jim asked, “Why don’t Cindy and I start a barbecue festival where 100% of the proceeds go to Home of Hope?”
From that conversation, the Sip & Swine BBQ Festival was born!
Jim and Cindy have been Home of Hope supporters for over a decade. They first connected with Maureen at the Gwinnett Food Bank where Cindy volunteered. Later, Maureen asked Jim to join the board of directors at Home of Hope where he served for ten years.
At the same time, the Lloyds were competing in professional barbecue competitions across the South. Combining their passion for Home of Hope and barbecue seemed the perfect way to give back to the community.
“It started over dinner, and it was a really big success the first year,” Jim said.
Sip & Swine has only grown from there!
“We generally have around 100 teams and 200 volunteers,” he said, “about 125 vendors and probably around 40,000 people attend.”
But the most important number? “We’ve raised about a million dollars for the shelter,” he said.
Besides live music and local vendors, the festival has enough barbecue and fun for the whole family!
“We’ve got a 120-feet tent where we have something called People’s Choice where people can come out and sample the barbecue,” Jim said.
Progressive Insurance provides the pork butt for the barbecue teams, and the teams smoke the pork overnight. Then volunteers prep the cooked pork to be sampled and sold.
“Whatever you may be buying – whether it’s a sample of barbecue or beer or wine or soft drinks – it all goes to a good cause,” he said.
Sponsors and musicians have shown up in big ways to make the festival a success.
“Rick Hendrick Automotive Group is our title sponsor,” Jim explained. “They come out and bring a few cars, and they’ll generally bring the Hendrick Automotive Group race car out.
“We have live bands on Saturday, and none of these bands have ever charged me a penny.”
Jim hopes that the festival boosts awareness for Home of Hope every year.
“Home of Hope is plastered everywhere,” he said. “It’s on all the signs, and people say, ‘Let me go look that up.’ Then they look it up and say, ‘Wow, [Home of Hope] is doing a phenomenal job. Let me see if there’s something I can help with.’
“We’ve got a few hundred volunteers that come out for the weekend. They get to see the difference, and then the volunteers who come out to Sip & Swine will start volunteering [at Home of Hope].”
Jim is quick to give credit to everyone who makes the festival possible, especially Cindy and his right-hand woman, Chrissy Keheley, for all they do to cement the festival as a Gwinnett County favorite. He also emphasizes the work the Home of Hope team does daily to empower mothers and their children.
“Maureen and her team make a huge difference,” he said, “and I think the little things we might do as the community — whether it’s coming out to Sip & Swine or another event — make a small difference in those lives. And of course, small things turn out a lot of times to be big things.
“It keeps growing, and people expect it on the first weekend of March. A lot of the same people keep going back out because of the entertainment. They like the whole vibe. They like what it’s going for.”
The Lloyds have made Sip & Swine a family affair, and they hope more local families will too.
“If you want to be a part of something good next year, come out and see for yourself what it’s like, enjoy the experience and know that, at the end of the day, it’s going for a really good cause,” Jim said.
“It makes you feel really, really good that you’re helping and giving back.”