Preparations are underway in Traverse City, as businesses get ready for one of their busiest weeks all year.
The National Cherry Festival draws huge crowds from all over the world.
The extra traffic means a tremendous boom for local businesses.
"The next eight days will be our busiest week of the year," said Kyle Belton.
For businesses throughout Traverse City, like Pangea’s Pizza Pub, the National Cherry Festival is one week they count on to stay swamped. And it’s all hands on deck.
"Staffing up quite a bit more. We slice our veges and hand make our own dough so we always make extra dough and veges fold all our boxes for to go delivers we are going to do," Kyle said.
And they aren’t the only ones. Sugarkissed is also ready to go, hoping to cater to the crowds sweet tooth.
"We’ve really been working on desserts getting them ready we have cherry cobbler trying to get our gluten free out we’ve had a couple orders this week so doing that too so we’ve been busy baking and getting the store ready," Hannah Jackson said.
And even though its cherry crowd chaos this week, employees are finding time to have a little fun along the way.
"I love talking to all the people that are from different places seeing why they like coming here if it’s their first time or what but definitely that," said Hannah.
"I can’t wait to enjoy it myself a couple days hopefully here when I don’t have to be at work because it is a great time for everyone from locals to tourists alike," said Kyle.
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