Gather at the Mayo Civic Center for a true celebration of the people who produce our region’s finest locally-produced and sourced foods and beverages.
Local Feast! Marketplace on Saturday, November 7 from 10am-4pm is a unique tasting and shopping experience. At each booth you meet the makers who have dreamt up and then created the items they have for sale and for sample.
It’s the presence of our vendors, our true product experts, that makes Local Feast! Marketplace so special. Meet three of the exciting vendors who will travel to Rochester to share their passion for food and beverage with you.
Meet the Makers: Dry Wit
Peder Schweigert and Megan Dayton imagined a distinctive line of flavorful beverages without alcohol. They lamented the lack of elevated non-alcoholic beverages intended for pairings and to be savored like a prized bottle of wine.
The brand name Dry Wit came from their goal of creating a playful drink that’s not to be taken too seriously. Plus, as Peder shared, they’re a little squirrely themselves.
Produced in northeast Minneapolis, Dry Wit slow-brews whole botanical tisanes, incorporates upcycled grape juice, and balances flavor with tannins, acidity, salinity, and carbonation rather than sugar or shortcuts. Their elevated pours have no added sugar, no fermentation, no residual alcohol. When Peder and Megan stopped drinking alcohol, “the thing we missed the most was connecting with people around a bottle of wine that was interesting and told a good story of a place.”
Their non-alcoholic pours are crafted to be just as distinctive as an aged bottle of wine. “It is so meaningful to hear how we improved someone’s life. One time in particular a woman approached us and was moved to tears that we made her pregnancy so much more enjoyable,” reflects Peder. “That’s a day that we talk about often.”
“Marketing a product you make by hand, building a brand, and constantly learning is an incredible joy and is also so dang hard!” shares Peder. “I speak for both of us that we would do it all over again if we had the chance. We are fortunate that we get to connect with people throughout Minnesota. We are looking forward to Local Feast! Marketplace in Rochester. It’s the best event we have been a part of in our three years in business.”
Find Dry Wit on the shelves at 140 retailers around the country, mostly in Minnesota or come meet them as they pour sips at Local Feast! Marketplace. Try the distinctive beverages that earned Dry Wit the judges’ award of the best non-alcoholic beverage at the 2026 Taste and Toast at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. https://drywit.com/ FB & IG: @drywitdrink
Meet the Makers: Hazel Heart Farms
Hazel Heart Farms is a collective of small regenerative farms in the Midwest. Emma Dempsey shares that longtime Feast! attendees may know their brand as the American Hazelnut Company. The company, founded in 2014, changed their name last year to better reflect their work as a grower-owned business that puts farmers at the forefront.
The founding hazelnut farmers started the business to build a market for midwest hazelnuts, a native plant that works well as an agroforestry crop. As a perennial plant that doesn’t require annual replanting, hazelnut bushes protect against soil erosion and improve water quality through their strong filtering root systems. In addition, hazelnuts naturally have heart-health benefits and provide an alternative to imported nuts and oils to be used in cooking.
The Hazel Heart farmers work together to grow demand and get nuts out to customers. They share labor too. Shelling hazelnuts, making products, marketing, and sales all require a lot of time, money, and effort. By working together, farmers share the expenses of machinery and hiring while building the market under a unified brand.
Emma shared the magic of a hazelnut farm around harvest time. “The fields come alive. You’re bound to come across bird nests and caterpillars with hawks circling up above.” Given that hazelnuts have grown naturally in the Upper Midwest for 10,000 years, you’ll likely find them in a state park too. “By eating and growing these hazelnuts, we’re connecting to nature and to our ecological history. It’s very special.”
At Local Feast! Marketplace Hazel Heart Farms will share hazelnut oil, whole roasted hazelnuts, hazelnut flour, and signature snack mixes, including Midwest Munch, made in their Viroqua, WI kitchen.
“We love being a part of food events at Local Feast! Marketplace where we have the chance to talk with customers about why we love hazelnuts and how they can use them in their cooking,” says Emma. “I love hearing how they used the products they bought the year before. It’s a wonderful community.” https://www.americanhazelnutcompany.com/ @hazelheartfarms
Meet the Makers: Capra Nera Creamery
A regular at the Rochester Farmers Market, Katie Bonow runs Capra Nera Creamery from her Altura farm and cheesemaking facility. Altura is nestled in Minnesota’s small but mighty Driftless Region with field-covered hills that feed the goats all summer long.
Studying abroad in Italy during college heavily influenced Katie’s cheesemaking style. After visiting several small Italian farmstead creameries, she was inspired to make that model work back in Minnesota. Her love of goats, however, started when Katie won Blossom, her first goat, from an essay contest she entered when she was 12. “Blossom is absolutely the reason I started milking goats and making cheese,” smiles Katie.
Capra Nera means “Black Goat” in Italian. Today, the Capra Nera herd has goats of many colors. Thanks to social media, scores of goat-loving fans follow along each spring during kidding season. “There's nothing more satisfying than assisting my goat mamas as they do the miraculous, amazing and hard work of giving birth and caring for their babies. And everyone LOVES baby goats! They are a wonderful way for me to share real farm life and help connect people to the work that goes on behind the scenes of local, small-scale food production,” shares Katie.
Capra Nera produces artisanal cheeses made directly from the milk produced on farm. “My goat cheese is unique, and you might not even know it is goat cheese because the flavor is so clean and delicious,” explains Katie. “It is extremely difficult to find good tasting goat cheese in the US. It’s even rarer to find hard, aged, raw milk varieties.”
To find the quality of cheeses you found while traveling abroad or shopping at high end cheese counters in big cities, this is cheese you must try. Beyond Local Feast! Marketplace, Capra Nera will return to the Rochester Winter Farmers Market. Also find her cheese in store at Rochester’s This is Food Union. Shipping available for the holiday season. https://www.capraneracreamery.com/
FB @capraneracreamery
IG @capra_nera_creamery
Advanced ticket sales now open https://www.local-feast.org/buytickets Discounted tickets available through November 6. Come meet Dry Wit, Hazel Heart Farms and Capra Nera Creamery, along with dozens more food, beverage, and alcohol producers coming from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
