Residents of the tri-city area crowded the main drag of Fremont Boulevard from mid-morning Saturday and stayed until late into the evening for the 30th Annual Fremont Festival.

Mobile food trucks and an assortment of local vendors offered up their goods to the attendees with over 700 different artisans in attendance.

Fremont’s Chamber of Commerce hosted the event and they use the money raised to advocate for businesses in the community as well as to fund local nonprofit organizations.

Over the past 30 years the festival has raised approximately $9 million; Organizations from around the area such as Citizens for Better Community, Ohlone College Women’s Softball, and the Fremont Warm Springs Sunrise Rotary Club benefited from this year’s event.

“One of our core values are to work with the community in some local events,” said Cindy Bonior, president and CEO of the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, producer of the Fremont Festival of Art. “We also support local schools and nonprofit organizations, so we like to get out into the community and be part of everything that goes on.”

The heart and soul of the event, Bonior says, are the large number of artisans. Saturday’s festival covered nearly five miles and included 40 gourmet market vendors, 20 food booths, eight food trucks and two stages with live music.

“We partner with professionals who have the expertise to carefully jury each artisan’s pieces to ensure that only quality, hand crafted pieces are part of our show,” Bonior said. “It’s important that we offer our guests exceptional and distinctive pieces of art.”

Local bands performed at the festival, including Max Cruise, Pride and Joy and April & The Paradigm.

The festival provided a family friendly atmosphere with its ‘kid city’ amusement park, which included performacnes on the main stage and hands on activities by the East Bay Boy Scouts.

The gourmet marketplace featured mobile food trucks, specialty food items like vinegars and oils that are not normally found in local supermarkets, that are pre-packaged and ready to take home. Some of these vendors included Primo’s Salsa, Cupcake Shoppe, Celtic Gold Honey and Farm Fresh.

A new edition to this year’s festival was Whole Food’s cooking stage located in the center of the event. In honor of celebrating an upcoming grand opening in Fremont on Sept. 25, the store hosted free performances on healthy eating tips every hour.

“The city of Fremont has been wonderful and they really supported us coming here,” said Jim Hallock, marketing associate coordinator for the Whole Food’s Northern California region. “We have similar values in supporting local businesses and we just wanted to be here to introduce ourselves to the community and celebrate our grand opening.”

Whole Foods promoted local businesses that will be selling food at their store such as the Asian Season Team from Santa Clara with their Curry Fresh Curry and Three Twins Ice Cream from Marin. The businesses held tasting stations next to their main stage where festival attendees were able to sample their products.

The Chamber of Commerce hopes to minimize the event’s waste by increasing the amount of recycled and composted material that would normally end up in a landfill. Last year they were able to divert 75 percent of that waste, and hope this year they can bring that percentage up to 85 or 95 percent, said to Bonior.

In order to do so, they are partnering with Nothing Wasted Consulting, a waste management industry who works with their clients to develop and implement sustainable waste management system, their website states.