Impact
Over the past 9 years, Highlands Festivals Inc. has contributed tens of millions of dollars in economic impact, supported hundreds of jobs and generated millions in taxes to the Western North Carolina region. As a HFW supporter purchasing tickets, lodging at hotels, eating out, and buying goods and services bolsters this region’s local businesses and supports this area and beyond as the premier destination when visiting North Carolina.
Highlands Festivals Inc. has contributed over $250,000 to numerous charity and non-profit organizations over the past 10 years:
- $110,000 scholarship endowment to the Culinary Institute of America
- $34,000 to Highlands Food Pantry
- $26,000 Hurricane Helene recovery
- $20,000 Friends of Kelsey-Hutchinson Founders Park
- $20,000 to Scaly Mountain Fire & Rescue
- $10,000 to The Bascom
- $10,000 to Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust
- $10,000 to Highlands Biological Station
In 2023, Western North Carolina University executed an independent Economic Impact study and identified Highlands Food & Wine contributed a total of $2,899,862 and created or maintained 32 jobs for the local economy in 2023 alone.
As of 2024, HFI funded a full scholarship in perpetuity for the Culinary Institute of America, in the name of Louis Osteen, one of the south’s highest-esteemed chefs and advocate for southern cooking preservation.
Louis Osteen Legacy Scholarship
In partnership with the Culinary Institute of America, Highlands Food & Wine is proud to announce the establishment of the Louis Osteen Legacy Scholarship. This scholarship at CIA is specifically designed for students from the Highlands/Cashiers area that hope to follow Louis’ extraordinary culinary path. Louis Osteen, the James Beard award-winning chef, whose influential, South Carolina restaurants elevated the Southern cuisine we enjoy today, passed away in Highlands, NC in 2019. His influential work at the Pawley’s Island Inn, and later at the Charleston Grill, was the foundation of the restaurant scene in Charleston and throughout the South. While Louis had no formal culinary training, he was very connected to French cooking and applied those techniques to Southern cuisine. In addition, Louis loved guiding those working in his restaurants and coming up in the restaurant scene.
Highlands Food & Wine is actively raising funds for the scholarship. Please consider donating and helping the next generation of great chefs follow in Louis’ footsteps.
The Friends of Founders Park goals are to protect, inform the public, and represent Kelsey-Hutchinson Founders Park. Friends of the Founders Park help generate, organize, and apply financial and volunteer resources for the maintenance, improvement, and protection of the park in cooperation with the Town of Highlands, NC. Highlands Food & Wine and Highlands Festivals, Inc. are proud to contribute to the protection and maintenance of the park, a wonderful venue for this event and so many others that continue to bring the community together.
The Bascom creates visual art experiences that inspire and empower individuals and communities through seeing, thinking, and doing. For more than 30 years, The Bascom has served as a vital cultural resource for Western North Carolina, and they continue to build on that legacy through their work and advocacy for the arts.
Your support of The Bascom makes it possible for The Bascom to offer free access to state-of-the-art exhibitions, to recruit talented artists as teachers in our arts classes, and to continue vital outreach to the communities of Macon and Jackson counties in partnership with other nonprofits. Through the generous philanthropic support of donors, The Bascom advocates to keep the visual arts a vibrant part of the community and creative economy.
Western North Carolina University executed an Economic Impact study and identified Highlands Food & Wine contributed a total of $2,899,862, and created or maintained 32 jobs in the local economy in 2023 alone. The total contribution included $1,928,215 in direct effects, $537,523 in indirect effects, and $434,124 in induced effects.
