Cream Cheese Festival

Don’t forget the bagels when you visit this annual event, held at the home of the world’s biggest cream cheese factory

True story: Philadelphia Cream Cheese was actually birthed in New York State. And the world’s biggest cream cheese factory is in Lowville, at a Kraft Foods plant here that processes hundreds of millions of pounds of milk every year. The 10th annual Cream Cheese Festival, slated for September 2014, comes on the heels of the creation of the world’s largest cheesecake at the 2013 edition: a 6,900-pound, 90-inch-round behemoth that accounted for 24,533 servings. Or so. 

At a glance
  • Join more than 10,000 people at the festival, which includes events such as a cream cheese mural, cream cheese bingo, cream cheese toss, and more.
  • Early versions of cream cheese date to the 16th century. The Philly brand comes from New York, but was named for the City of Brotherly Love because it was well-known for producing that style of cheese.
  • If you’re counting calories, you’d have to walk about 43,000 miles to burn off that cake.