Taste of Niles brings community members to taste local food and buy local products at Riverfront Park

NILES, Mich. -- The second annual Taste of Niles featured a lineup of local food vendors alongside makers selling baked goods, jewelry, and other handmade items.

"It feels pretty good because you know, like people are coming out and supporting and kind of coming out of their comfort zone to come try our food and like they could go anywhere else, but they decide to come with us, so it feels pretty nice," said Miliyah Goodlow, a server at Talk of the Grill

Despite some overcast skies the event brought a new addition where People's Choice Food Award gave attendees the opportunity to taste entries from participating vendors and cast a vote for their favorite.

"What we're doing is they're gonna have tastes of what they went through, and we're gonna go around and ask people what were the best foods that they had, and we'll go through the pit of choice that way," said Ylonda Scott, an Event Coordinator of Taste of Niles.

Scott also said the goal of the event was to give the community a more direct connection to small business owners through the competition, "we want our small businesses to know that people love what they have and so letting the people know that they have good food and to bring fun into it."

Several attendees said they had traveled specifically to try the vendor's food after hearing about it from others.

"Just knowing that people choose us and like choose to eat our food, I feel like that'll just give us some type of peace of mind that people like our stuff," said Goodlow.