Taste of Bloomington 2025 Review from The Chocolate Cult

It can be a challenge to find a chocolate related event with a half-day trip away from where I live that I can afford to check out for you all because I've visited so many of them. I expanded my search into food festivals, where I can look for chocolatey offerings and check them out. My first is the reimagined Taste of Bloomington Event of 2025, which just went to with family and friends on August 2nd. Check out the map below:

2025 Taste of Bloomington Map

As you can see, there were six places that probably had chocolate, but some of them were repeats or really the same company. Bloomington Chocolate Company is also Kirwood Sweet Shop and two listings for the Chocolate Moose, which we visit a couple of times a year after live theater we attend in the downtown area. Baked I've covered a few times here on this blog (and we go there a few times a year, too), but Little Black Dog Bakery is a place I have not visited before.

I stopped by the joint Bloomington Chocolate Company tents where I tried my first of their Bloomington O's which as it sounds like is a chocolate covered Oreo. In the photo you can also see the owner of the company, Linda Armes, who we interviewed when she was just getting started.

Little Black Dog Bakery had several chocolate options, all of them below the maximum price of $5 per item set by festival policies that all vendors had to agree to follow. I picked their Turtle Cheesecake square. I was thrilled by the vanilla cheesecake with caramel and pecans on the top, but more pleased by the fact that the base was nearly solid chocolate with pecans and a thin layer of caramel (possible also cheesecake) between them. Luckily I had a bit of a wait for others in the group to catch up so the sun made the chocolate soft enough to finally use the fork on. Yeah, I did also pick it up in my fingers, too.

We were at the festival between 6pm and 8:15pm (ET). How busy was it? After we crossed Lincoln Street, I took photos to the west and to the east along the blocks set out for the festival. It stretched two blocks west of Lincoln and three blocks east of where I was standing when I took this photo.

Overall, we liked going, but it was crowded and there was little organization of the flow of people. I strongly recommend that the festival invest in controlling the flow of people in a much better way. While not charging an entry fee was a big reason we attended for the first time, and I suspect encouraged a lot of others folks to go as well, that doesn't mean it should be a free-for-all in terms of entering and leaving. The confusion over how the traffic inside the festival should go resulted in such long lines at some vendors that it made it nearly impossible to get to others. The lack of the promised menu listing for the vendors, also made it difficult to decide where to stop without interfering with people waiting for food. The inclusion of standing tables as well as setting areas was a wonderful addition. The live music was good but made it quite challenging to have conversations between people and between you and the vendors at times.

While it would take more effort of festival organizers this is what I ideally would like to see:

1 – Organize vendors by the type of food they offer to help people organize where they want to visit.

2 – More space between vendors and clear lines to show where guests should wait to place orders and get food.

3 – Organize the flow of visitors much better in terms of direction to walk. If the map and vendors were organized, someone looking for Asian food could use the sidewalk outside of the serving/eating areas to get to the category of food they want without trying to see where everything was.

4 – Have more info locations. One at Lincoln and Kirkwood wasn't enough. If people don't know where to go for the food they want to try, it only adds to the mass of folks bumping into each other trying to look around for signs and also where they are moving.

5 – Estimate the number of attendees so you can improve the preparedness of the vendors. By the time we left, at least three were closed because they ran out of food, and the festival had almost two hours to go; two of those vendors were closed when we first saw them between 6:30 and 7pm when there was three plus hours to go.

6 – Turn the music down just a bit. Do we really need to hear it two full blocks away? The WFHB Orbit Room Stage was set off to the south and that made a wonderful area for folks to gather and eat their food. Pull back the vendors from so close to the Master Rental Stage and set up some more tables and chairs there.

7 – Finally, make it clear what North-South Streets will be open and what will not. I know that for safety some need to be open, but make it clearer on the map and with signs for both drivers and walkers.