If you've been meaning to figure out what to do tonight, here's an easy answer: the 2nd Annual Sip & Stroll lands on the Event Lawn at Ballantyne Country Club from 6 to 8 p.m. Fifty-plus local vendor tables, live music, raffles, and food and drinks for purchase. It's outside, it's walk-up, and the rhythm is whatever you make it.
This is year two. The inaugural ran last May, and the format proved itself: open lawn, vendors set up under tents, a band on one side, and the kind of unforced conversation a neighborhood walk produces. Earlier this month, Publishers Ashley and Nathan Grimm previewed tonight's edition in their May Stroll Ballantyne publishers' note as deliberately low-pressure — come for ten minutes or stay the full evening — and we covered it then as a save-the-date. Tonight is the doors-open version of that same idea, scaled to fifty-plus tables.
The vendor mix leans Ballantyne and Matthews-area — the small operators who fill the Stroll Ballantyne preferred-partners pages all year. Think the Tifa Chocolate and Gelato side of the spectrum: owner-operated businesses where the person behind the table is the person who runs the place. The May Stroll Ballantyne issue ran a wider business slate I'll be looking for tonight — the kind of evening where you can browse, taste, learn what's new in the neighborhood, and walk out with two or three names you didn't have before.
A practical note for anyone who wasn't here last year: this is not a structured wine festival with a tasting flight, and it isn't a craft fair with a cover charge. It's closer to an open-air vendor market with a band. You set the pace. Some people will stop at three tables and call it an evening. Others will work the whole lawn.
The Event Lawn at BCC is the part of the property that opens to the sky on the back side of the clubhouse — wide, flat, the natural place to drop tents and string lights. Late May in Charlotte means it's warm well into the evening, and 6 to 8 catches the long stretch before sunset. Bring a friend. Bring an after-school pickup. Bring nobody — fifty vendors is plenty of company.
The details.
- What: 2nd Annual Sip & Stroll
- When: Tonight — Thursday, May 28, 2026 — 6 to 8 p.m.
- Where: Ballantyne Country Club — Event Lawn
- Format: Live music + 50+ local vendor tables + raffles + food and drinks for purchase. Walk up at any pace.
- Cost: Free to walk through; food and drinks for purchase.
- RSVP: Via the QR code in the May 2026 issue of Stroll Ballantyne Country Club, or by contacting the Stroll team directly at ballantyne@strollmag.com.
See you on the lawn.