The 2024 Hot Chocolate Festival was a hit

The 5th annual Hot Chocolate Festival in Okotoks wrapped over the weekend, and the winners have been announced.

The festival ran from February 7th to 17th, with 16 businesses participating, hoping to be crowned the hot chocolate champ.

According to the festival organizer Katie Fournell, this year's festival went really well.

"It was cool, because it seemed like the businesses were putting a little bit of extra effort into their hot chocolates this year," says Fournell. "Like there's some really, really stand out hot chocolates this year, which was really cool. And also, the beginning of the festival was very busy. So, that means people are getting excited about it before it's been running for a while, and it means that people are waiting for the hot chocolate festival to come."

Part of the festival was a voting system to determine the winner of two categories.

Fournell says there were 406 votes cast throughout the festival to determine who reigned supreme in the Okotoks Hot Chocolate Community.

Which is roughly 100 more votes than they had in previous years.

After tallying up the votes, Fournell has determined who took home the top prize in each category.

"The Highest Rated Hot Chocolate was the British Chippy, and the Most Popular Hot Chocolate was 94 Take the Cake," says Fournell.

There were also prizes for participants who took the time to come down and rate the hot chocolates.

"The first names of the people who won, Gay and Jennifer, both got $25 gift cards to the British Chippy, who is the Highest Rated. And then Basil got the $25 gift card to 94 Take the Cake," Fournell says.

The winners were notified Wednesday.