Meet entrepreneur Kate Levenstien — the woman behind the Bacon and Beer Classic

Courtney Verrill

With over 13,000 attendees, 100 craft beers to try, and a plethora of delicious bacon treats, the national touring Bacon and Beer Classic has become one of the most popular food and drink festivals in the US. The wildly popular food festival is hosted by New York City based, large scale event planning company, Cannonball Productions.

After studying journalism and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, entrepreneur Kate Levenstien shortly discovered that she had a whole different passion — event planning. This soon sparked an idea, and at the young age of 26, Levenstien started her own successful event planning company, Cannonball Productions. 

As a young company, they are about to celebrate their third anniversary. Below, take a tour of their New York City office and see Levenstien in action.

Right after she graduated college, Levenstien got a job at the Oprah Winfrey Show on the booking and productions team for its last two seasons. Once that show ended, she made her way over to LivingSocial where she managed the live entertainment team.

LivingSocial shortly pulled the plug on its live events team, and Levenstien was out of a job. "When I was looking for jobs, there was really nothing that stood out to me," she told Business Insider. "I had ideas that I had just pitched to LivingSocial that were never completed, so I really had a level of interest in seeing those through. A couple of companies wanted to bring me on full-time, but I reversed it and brought them on as clients [with my own company]."

Losing her job could have been awful but Levenstien saw it as an opportunity. She soon realized that she wanted to run her own event planning company. "I loved my job at LivingSocial and I wouldn’t have left, but given the fact that there wasn’t really an option it was the perfect time in the crossroads and work and life just matched up," she said.