CONWAY, S.C.  |  June 12, 2026  |  By Thomas Beach Vacations Staff

Sunday Fundays Are Coming to Downtown Conway This Summer

A new outdoor event series brings food trucks, live music, and family fun to the historic Town Green on five Sundays from June through August 2026.

The Grand Strand is about to get a little more social on Sundays. A new event series called Gathering on the Green: Sunday Fundays is coming to downtown Conway this summer, setting up at the Town Green, 200 Laurel Street, on five Sunday afternoons between June and August. Think food trucks lining the square, music drifting through the old oaks, and balloon animals for the kids — a gathering built, as the organizers describe it, around community, family fun, and some of the Grand Strand’s best mobile kitchens.

Each event runs from 3 to 8 p.m., giving families a wide afternoon window before the Sunday evening winds down. The series received approval from Conway City Council on Monday, June 1, and the first event was scheduled to take place in less than two weeks from that approval — a sign of how ready this city was to get something like this off the ground.

The People Behind the Idea

The driving force behind Sunday Fundays is Tommy and Megan Festa, owners of The Clever Cleaver, a food truck that has become something of a fixture in Conway’s local food scene since relocating there in the summer of 2025. The Clever Cleaver launched in 2017 and built a following as a truck that takes creative liberties with comfort food — not your standard parking lot fare, but a step up in both technique and concept.

Tommy Festa is not a newcomer to the idea of building community around food. Before landing in South Carolina, he spent years operating in the food industry up north, where he watched people come together over shared tables and good cooking. The move to Conway, it appears, gave him the platform he was looking for — and now he is using it.

The event is presented jointly by The Clever Cleaver and Lemons and Dough, another Conway-based food truck that has developed a loyal following for its baked goods and sweet offerings. Together, the two trucks serve as co-anchors for an event they hope will grow beyond just a food truck lineup.

Nine Food Trucks, Five Sundays

Nine food trucks are participating in the series, though the full lineup will not appear at every event — trucks rotate depending on the date, so the experience shifts slightly from one Sunday to the next. The confirmed participant list for the summer includes The Clever Cleaver, Lemons and Dough, Nito’s Empanadas, Dirty South Soda Co., Loaded Lobster, Paulie’s NY Italian Sausage, Hawg Dawgs, Stellas, and Blackcat Kitchen — a range that covers everything from handcrafted empanadas and New York-style sausage sandwiches to specialty soda drinks and seafood.

The opening event on Sunday, June 14 featured the first seven trucks on the list, according to The Clever Cleaver’s Facebook page, with Blackcat Kitchen and Stellas rounding out the roster for later dates. Tent vendors are not part of the approved format at this stage — the Festas have said they want to see how the early events unfold before expanding the footprint.

The Setting: Conway’s Town Green

The Town Green at 200 Laurel Street sits squarely in the heart of downtown Conway, one of South Carolina’s oldest communities. Conway was founded in 1732 and its downtown district — centered on Main Street and spreading out to Laurel Street — carries the kind of lived-in architectural character that newer developments simply cannot replicate. The Conway Downtown Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, recognized for its collection of late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings that tell the story of a small Southern coastal town growing from tobacco economy to tourism hub.

The Town Green has become Conway’s de facto gathering space for public events, hosting everything from Coastal Carolina football Tealgates to the Groovin’ on the Green concert series and native plant sales organized by the Grand Strand chapter of the South Carolina Native Plant Society. It is a well-used space, and Gathering on the Green fits naturally into that tradition of making downtown Conway a destination rather than just a pass-through.

The Town Green also sits close to Conway’s Riverwalk, the city’s most popular pathway, which now runs from Kingston Lake and the Waccamaw River north to 4th Avenue following the latest expansion completed earlier in 2025. That linkage between the Riverwalk and Main Street has been drawing more foot traffic into the downtown corridor — and an afternoon event series like Sunday Fundays is well positioned to benefit from it.

Full Schedule for Summer 2026

Gathering on the Green: Sunday Fundays will take place on the following dates, each running 3 to 8 p.m. at the Town Green, 200 Laurel Street, Conway, SC:

Something Bigger Than a Food Truck Event

Both Conway City Council and the Festas have been open about their expectation that this first summer could be the foundation for something larger. The format is designed to be flexible — a word the organizers used deliberately. If the early events attract the kind of attendance they are hoping for, the plan is to adjust and expand, potentially growing the vendor footprint and adding more programming over time.

For small businesses on the Grand Strand, that kind of scalable platform matters. Food trucks in particular operate on thin margins, and a consistent summer series with predictable crowds gives operators the kind of revenue stability that one-off bookings rarely provide. The mix of trucks in this lineup — spanning savory, sweet, specialty beverages, and comfort-forward street food — suggests an intentional effort to curate something for everyone rather than cluster around a single style.

Conway has been quietly building momentum as a destination in its own right, particularly for visitors who want something beyond the beach. The Riverwalk expansion, the growth of the downtown dining scene, and events like Sunday Fundays are part of a longer arc that is repositioning Conway as a place worth a full afternoon rather than just a quick detour from Highway 501.

A Natural Day Trip from North Myrtle Beach

For anyone staying along the Cherry Grove Beach stretch or near the Ocean Drive district in North Myrtle Beach, Conway is a short and easy drive — close enough to make a Sunday afternoon trip without cutting into beach time on either end. Visitors staying in Crescent Beach or Windy Hill will find the same convenience.

The 3 to 8 p.m. window is particularly well-timed for beach vacation schedules. Morning on the water, a midday break, then out to Conway for the afternoon — it is the kind of day that breaks the routine of back-to-back beach days without straying far from the coast. Park near the Riverwalk, explore downtown, grab food from a few different trucks, and let the evening find its own pace.

Events like this are exactly what the Grand Strand’s inland communities do best — give visitors a reason to look beyond the shoreline and discover the texture of a place that has been here a lot longer than any resort. Conway has been drawing people to its riverfront since well before the first hotel went up on the beach, and Sunday Fundays is another reason to see why.

Sources: MyHorryNews.com, WMBF News, Conway Chamber of Commerce, City of Conway (conwaysc.gov), Conway Downtown Alive (conwayalive.com), National Register of Historic Places / SC Department of Archives and History. Event details current as of publication date; confirm schedule at Clever Cleaver’s Facebook page prior to attending.

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