Winooski businesses welcome a trimmer Waking Windows

Waking Windows 2024. Photo by Busy Anderson

Melissa Shennett, the kitchen manager at Our House Bistro, has watched Waking Windows fans show up for the music and leave loving the mac ‘n’ cheese. The restaurant, where she has worked for the past five years, serves 24 varieties of its signature dish, which it calls Twisted Macs. 

“We definitely get a lot of people that are like, ‘Oh my god your food was amazing. We're gonna come back.’ And they do,” Shennett said of the extra traffic that Our House has enjoyed during the Waking Windows music festival. 

Scheduled for this weekend, May 3 to 5, Waking Windows has slated roughly 60 bands, 25 DJs and 10 comedians for live shows in downtown Winooski’s Rotary Park and neighboring businesses. They are expected to draw an estimated crowd of 1,500. It’s a scaled down version of the event from its high in 2022, when about 7,500 people came to see around 200 acts. 

“It was just too hard on my employees,” said Moe Paquette, who has worked at Papa Frank’s Italian Restaurant since 1990 and became owner 20 years ago. When Waking Windows was at its largest in 2022, Papa Frank’s was bombarded. Drunken crowds piled in the cozy space, where he had limited staff to handle the rowdier customers.

“It became a little excessive,” Paquette said from his kitchen, while he slapped dough on the counter and slid pizzas into the hot oven with a long-handled pizza peel.

Now in its 12th year, after taking a break in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, Waking Windows brings an annual boon to local businesses but also headaches. When the 2022 crowds flooded in to hear well-known headliners Dinosaur Jr. and Japanese Breakfast, they overwhelmed the small city and strained the capacity of some eateries and shops. As of last year, organizers downsized the event to make it more manageable while still giving downtown Winooski the benefit of exposure to new and returning music fans. 

“A smaller festival helped us still celebrate the coming of the spring season, get out into the fresh air with our friends and listen to bands that we love, and it just happens that those bands are a little smaller and less famous,” said Paddy Reagan, a Jericho resident, and one of five Waking Windows founders. 

The organizers see the festival as a “community good project,” not a giant money-making venture, Reagan said. The current size is more sustainable for the long term without sacrificing the core components that keep people coming back, he added. 

The new version of Waking Windows feels “a little bit more engaged, rather than something that was sort of superimposed” on the downtown area, said Logan Bouchare, manager of gourmet food and home goods shop Misery Loves Co., which faces the Winooski rotary. The festival still provides an opportunity for customers to see the changes Misery Loves Co. has made in the last few years, specifically its evolution from a full-service restaurant to a prepared foods purveyor, said Bouchare, who has managed the place for 12 years.

On both sides of the Burlington-Winooski Bridge, businesses were stocking up to have enough food and drinks and scheduling extra staff for the three-day event. Our House planned to extend hours, said Shennett, and others will have outdoor space for live music. 

“It has always been one of our busiest weekends,” said Lisa Bergstrom Sullivan, a co-owner of Pingala Cafe for six years. At the vegan eatery, which sits along the Winooski River on the Burlington side, Bergstrom Sullivan planned to have a strong team in place for the weekend and handle the demand with the regular menu and same operating hours. “We know that those work, after having [done] this for 10 years.”

At Spec’s Cafe, which opened in December on West Canal Street in downtown Winooski, lead barista Kyle Palmer expects the festival crowd to reach levels similar to those in town during the eclipse. If that’s the case, “we’ll be slammed,” Palmer said while sitting in the back room of the coffee bar, “but it’s a good thing.” 

Jamie Lacourse, co-owner of McKee’s Pub & Grill, said she sees no downside to Waking Windows at its new scale, especially if it generates heavy traffic at the restaurant. “It’s a win-win for everybody.”