Fredericksburg is building on its reputation as one of Texas’ leading food, wine, and tourism destinations. In this CEO Spotlight interview, Fredericksburg Food and Wine Event Foundation’s Jim Mikula shares how the city’s Food & Wine Festival has grown into a nationally recognized event named among Forbes’ top food and wine festivals in the country.

With more than 80 operating wineries in Gillespie County, a sold-out Street Dinner, and a focus on local chefs and Hill Country AVA wineries, the festival is designed to preserve Fredericksburg’s distinctive small-town character while welcoming visitors from across Texas and beyond. Mikula also discusses the area’s resilient economy, historic Main Street, agricultural roots, and the luxury hospitality developments shaping the region’s future.

Listen to the full interview below.

Thank you KRLD 1080 and David Johnson of the CEO Spotlight

Full transcript below:

Food and Wine Festival

You know, a couple of weeks, I don’t know, maybe three weeks ago on the show, we had a fascinating interview, I thought, with Brian Heath [of Heath Family Brands]. You remember, he was in Wall Street, and he gave up Wall Street, and now he’s making wine, and he’s got vineyard. And it was in, it’s in Fredericksburg, and so we started talking about Fredericksburg, TX.

Then, sounds like one heck of a place, and he’s not alone down there at all. Time to check in on Fredericksburg. Jim Mikula’s the president and CEO of the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce, joined us right now.

It’s good to have you with us.

Well, thanks for having me on.

This is like southern France, in Fredericksburg. How many wineries are down there?

Just in Gillespie County, there’s currently 90 licenses approved by the state, and 80 of them are operating in the county.

That’s astounding. But what it’s done is it’s really grown. I was looking at, you put on this food and wine festival in February, and it’s coming up in October, and this thing seems to be an enormous hit.

Big money banker, and everybody’s happy about this.

Well, for the food and wine festival, yes. So we, the Chamber [and Events Foundation], we took it over three years ago. It’s actually been operating over 30 years here in Fredericksburg, the wine festival.

And Brian is one of our big sponsors, so I know him pretty well. And so with his support and the other wineries, Forbes magazine listed us in the top 10 food and wine festivals in the country right now. So when they’re talking Aspen, they’re now talking Fredericksburg, Texas as well.

That’s really astounding. I had no idea. Now I got to try.

So I went on the website and looked, and so this thing is a month away, and a lot of the stuff’s already sold out.

Yeah, yeah. For the opening party, I think there’s four tickets left for that. And that’ll be enough.

So they’re sold out. The all access tickets are sold out. Our street dinner, which is the most popular event, is on Friday night.

And that sold out in 90 minutes.

That looks like a scene from an Italian movie where the little towns and everybody, the entire community is set up at one big table right down the middle of Main Street. That looks like a blast. You must have good weather.

Yeah, well, the first year we had pretty good weather. Last year it rained, so we have to move it into a covered area to get that done. But this year it’s bigger.

I’ve doubled it. So we’re 256 people for this dinner, five chefs, five different wineries.

And you’re already sold out.

Yeah.

So your background is interesting. You spent most of your life in the food and lodging hospitality industry. You know, Four Seasons, lots of big brands.

How does this translate into what you’re doing in Fredericksburg?

Well, because of my hotel background, a lot of my time was in sales and marketing, recruiting groups and getting groups into the hotels and understanding the logistics of handling those groups. So the city didn’t want to run it anymore. And I felt it was an opportunity to take over that event and upgrade it significantly.

So I took my luxury hotel background and then applied it into these events. We’ve upgraded it significantly, and we’re running more people at the event, higher revenues, et cetera. So for me, because I started out as a butcher’s assistant in high school, and then I was a baker, and then I was in catering, and I did all that stuff.

And so for me, I just have this love for food and beverage and culinary and with my Four Seasons time, I was traveling around the world a lot and drinking a lot of wine and a lot of food. And so I have that collection of experience that I can apply to this festival and create an experience for our attendees that’s unique.

Unique Town Character

It’s really interesting, this identity of Fredericksburg, though, because in a sense you are, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I mean, you’re between two major municipalities, San Antonio and Austin, that seem to be headed the same destiny of Dallas and Fort Worth, just sort of growing together and blending into one. And there you are in the middle, and you don’t get squeezed out. What’s the identity of Fredericksburg?

Well, we, being a little German town, we’re still small, 12,000 people in Fredericksburg. There’s only 32,000 in Gillespie County. But you’re right, 50 minutes away to San Antonio is what the eighth or ninth most populous city in the country, and Austin is number 12, something like that.

Houston is number three, and that’s a three hour, four hour drive. And then you have the DFWplex, and folks from there coming down to here. But what’s kept us, our flavor and our nature and all of that is in the 90s, there was a group of leaders that made sure that there was no chain store on Main Street.

So it’s still all mom and pop little stores on Main Street. We have an historical review board that maintains the historical nature of our building. Because we have architecture from the 1870s all the way into the 1950s on Main Street.

And they’re maintaining that look and not changing what downtown looks like. So that’s part of our magic. And also we have agriculture here, not just the wineries and the peaches, but we have a very large cattle operations.

We have goats. Matter of fact, we’re one of the largest supplier of goats to the Middle East.

No kidding.

Yeah.

I will win a bar bet with that.

And so anyway, you have that collection of small business operators and the wineries and all of the architecture. It just creates a unique destination. And we’re a very friendly town, especially to outsiders coming in to live here and visit.

It’s just a wonderful place to live.

Economic Resilience Growth

That sort of economy does not, to me, seem to be recession proof, however. And I know you, since you had, I guess COVID hit, since you’ve been there. You’ve been there, what, a decade now, and you’ve been settled out there.

But how do you, how does an economy like that do during challenges, challenging periods?

Well, actually COVID was a blessing for Fredericksburg.

Really? Yeah.

So what happened was that when most of the country shut down, Texas was the first place to open up. And so Texans couldn’t fly out, go anywhere. So they all came to Fredericksburg.

So we had this boom during the pandemic period, 2020, 2021, early 2022 were just booming years for us. And then it dipped a little bit, but we’ve never gone below where we were in 2019, which was pre-pandemic. We had a little dip in 2020, and then late 2020, 2021 were fabulous years.

And then last year we had a little bit of a drop because of the fire we had in March of last year. And then the flood in Kerrville hurt us because of our location. But right now, year to date, we’re running our sales tax numbers are up 6.5%, which is two points over inflation.

And our neighboring counties are not doing as well as we are. So the economy that we have, both tourism and the agricultural economy, our economy is pretty resilient, continuing to grow. And as a matter of fact, our economy has grown faster than the state of Texas, so in the last five years.

Well, then I can’t believe that Four Seasons or Walmart or somebody hasn’t made a run, either Simon Properties to put up a mall or something, haven’t made a run at Fredericksburg, because you seem to be booming.

Well, Waldorf Astoria is going through its approval process with the city right now. So they plan on, they should break ground probably early next year, I would think.

Will that be a resort type or a standalone hotel?

Yeah, it would be a resort. And then Klimpton is putting in a 180 room hotel on the west side of town. Then there’s a couple of independents that are coming into town.

And north of us in Lano County, the Amman Group is putting in an ultra luxury property there. So you have this conflagration of major populations around us and drivable, and there’s no five-star luxury hotel outside a major metroplex in Texas. So that would be the first international luxury resort in Texas that’s not in the city.

Preserving Local Charm

So what’s next? I mean, it sounds like you’ve got, well, you’ve got the wine business booming. You’ve got this food and beverage festival that’s a big hit.

Do you keep it growing? Yeah, yeah, we will.

But I would say for the food and wine festival, we know that we’re going to max out at probably 4,000 people, because if it goes beyond that, then we’ll lose the charm that we have. So it’ll limit us from revenue, but at the same time, we want to keep that charm that we have at our food and wine festival, because we don’t allow any national brands or national distributors into this festival. You have to be in the Fredericksburg Hill Country AVA, which is a viticultural area that’s designated.

So you have to be within that AVA to be in our festival. So the folks who attend, like our folks, you know, we’re folksy, we’re local. We don’t have any big chefs from New York or DC.

It’s all local chefs. We do bring in a chef from Austin on occasion, but people like that. We’re just very, you know, just come on in, y’all.

It sounds like great fun. And like I say, just a booming industry down there. Jim Mikula is the president and CEO of the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce and seems to have his hands full.

Thanks for taking the time to be with us.

Well, I appreciate that.

Thanks, Jim.

Bring your friends down from Dallas.

I won’t bring too many because I know I know your space requirements. For more of our conversation, go to krld.com/ceo of David Johnson News Radio 1080 KRLD.

From CEO Spotlight: Jim Mikula, President & CEO, Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce  “From Hill Country Town to World-Class Destination”, Sep 8, 2026