For years, the routine on Bean Days weekend in Horace went the same way. The parade rolled down Main Street, the car show wrapped up, the vendor booths packed in their tents by late afternoon, and then everyone scattered. If you wanted a real sit-down dinner or a place to keep the evening going, you got in the car and drove into West Fargo or Fargo. Horace had the festival. It didn't have the after-party.
That's no longer quite true, and the reason has less to do with the festival itself than with what's gone up a few blocks away on Jack's Way.
What's Actually Happening September 11 and 12
Bean Days runs Friday, September 11 through Saturday, September 12 this year, according to the City of Horace's own event page. The weekend keeps its familiar backbone: a parade down Main Street, a car show, vendor booths, food trucks, and a street dance. The Horace Lions Club runs its usual pancake breakfast, and the Senior Center hosts BINGO, both traditions that have anchored the weekend for years.
One of the newer fixtures is the running event. The Horace Bean Day's 5K and 1-Mile Fun Run happens Saturday morning, September 12, and this is its third year on the calendar. A festival that didn't have an organized race a few years back now has one heading into its third running, which says something about how much programming has stacked onto this weekend as Horace has grown.
Families with younger kids get their own corner of the weekend too. The Horace Park District has confirmed Kidfest at Meadowlark Park as part of the Bean Days lineup, alongside a bean bag tournament, a kickball tournament, and a pickleball tournament, all run through the park district directly rather than the festival's central vendor row.
Main Street Runs the Parade, Jack's Way Runs the Evening
Here's the part that's actually changed the shape of the weekend. The parade route and the legacy businesses around it, places like Big Erv's Bar & Grill on Main Street and The Grove Coffee & Wine a few doors down, still carry the historic center of Horace. That's where Bean Days has always physically happened. But it's not where people are ending their night anymore.
That's happening on Jack's Way, a commercial strip that barely existed as a dining destination a few years ago and now functions as something close to a second downtown. The Headquarters, known locally as HQ, sits inside the Shoppes at Horace retail center at 7951 Jacks Way. It's owned by Bob Kietzer, who also owns Bar Down and PubWest in West Fargo, and its opening gave Horace something it hadn't had before: a full bar and restaurant built specifically as a gathering spot, with games, live music nights, and a scratch-made menu, rather than a fast-casual stop on the way somewhere else. The same Shoppes complex also houses Sunshine Latte and the Sanford Health Horace Clinic, which means the corridor now handles coffee, dinner, and a doctor's visit within the same short strip.
Farther down the same road, the corridor is filling in further. Dairy Queen has held down 7875 Jack's Way for years, and Circle K sits at 7675. Between them, at 7785 Jack's Way, a new McDonald's is under construction. InForum reported the build was progressing quickly as of late July, though the city hadn't been given a firm opening date at that point. Whenever it opens, it closes a gap that's existed on that stretch for a while: a fast, kid-friendly option sitting between two other high-traffic spots that were already drawing people to the same corridor.
Add Taco Revolution on 1st Street North into the mix, and the practical effect is this: someone who watches the parade, catches the car show, and wants to grab dinner before the street dance now has real options without leaving town. That's a genuinely new condition. Bean Days has existed for years. The infrastructure to stay in Horace for the whole day around it hasn't.
Why This Is Worth Noticing If You Already Live Here
None of this changes what Bean Days is. It's still a small-town festival built on a parade, a pancake breakfast, and a street dance, the same ingredients it's always had. What's changed is what surrounds it. A festival weekend is a decent proxy for how a town's commercial base is filling in, because it's the one weekend a year when foot traffic concentrates and people make real decisions about where to eat and how long to stay.
Three or four years ago, that decision usually ended with a drive out of town. Now it doesn't have to. That's not a small shift for a place that's still building out its retail base one strip at a time, and it's worth knowing whether you've lived in Horace for ten years or moved in last spring. The town isn't just adding rooftops. It's adding the things that make a Friday night in September feel like it's actually happening here instead of somewhere else.
If Bean Days weekend has you thinking more broadly about how Horace is growing, or what that growth might mean for property values down the line, Tyler Bretz tracks these shifts closely as part of working the Fargo-Moorhead metro day to day. Reach out anytime you want a local read on where things stand.
