Catering at Festivals.

[JamesCoard]

Hello,

I recently set up my company and originally intended on a static base in a shopping cente, here in Edinburgh.

However, to negate the risk, I've decided to spend a year touring festivals instead. I have pretty much everything sorted, from the marquee, the food preparation certs etc. The only thing I'm a bit stuck on is actually booking stalls/stances at festivals!

I know there's quite a few vendors out there, that deal with larger festivals like Leeds/V etc. I do plan to do one of the larger festivals this year, but to begin with, I'm keen to do a few trial runs at smaller festivals/country shows/fayres etc.

I was hoping somebody on here has been in my position before. Who can give me an idea of numbers of units expected to be sold, also maybe someone with contacts in order to book stalls/stances. I have funding pending, but I really need to show them a list of festivals/bookings that I'll be working at, in order to justify my business plan projections.

Any help greatly appreciated!

James

 

[Billmccallum]

google is your friend.... http://www.vfestival.com/v-info/trading-at-v-festival

 

[Talay]

If you haven't got the cash to start out and would be reliant on borrowing to finance your venture, I'd forget it.

The big festivals will be way off your radar to begin with as they'll all be sown up on head leases and you'll be fighting for scraps with folk who know way more than you do.

First, get some cash together. While you are doing that, develop your product and work out your pricing per serving including all the costs of production, not just the ingredients. Look at transport and whether you need to buy the stall come serving stuff or can hire it to begin with.

You'll also have to reverse engineer the pricing which people will pay. By that I mean that if people will pay £5 and if your fixed costs are £1 and variable costs £2, then you could make a maximum of £2 per unit sold. However, if people will only pay £3 per unit, you cannot make a profit even if you sell out.

My guess is that unless you know how to cook something really tasty which costs next to nothing and has next to no wastage, then you are going to be out of luck because you won't be able to compete with the regulars already supplying burger and chips.

We set up a family member doing this for Asian food at a few festivals throughout the year as an alternative to them working all year on near minimum wage. They started out with a few variant types of satay which was easy to work out a per unit cost and as they could be cooked and frozen prior to the event, there was no wastage because you only reheated what you could sell and reheating only required a large griddle / hot plate.

What will knock you for six is the cost of getting a prime position at a popular event. It is hundreds of pounds for quite small scale events and many thousands for the larger stuff. What you need to know is the competition both in number and variation. You need your product to stand out but amateur organisers will sell space to competing units who kill each other's business.

 

[MaryLawson]

Hello,

I recently set up my company and originally intended on a static base in a shopping cente, here in Edinburgh.

However, to negate the risk, I've decided to spend a year touring festivals instead. I have pretty much everything sorted, from the marquee, the food preparation certs etc. The only thing I'm a bit stuck on is actually booking stalls/stances at festivals!

I know there's quite a few vendors out there, that deal with larger festivals like Leeds/V etc. I do plan to do one of the larger festivals this year, but to begin with, I'm keen to do a few trial runs at smaller festivals/country shows/fayres etc.

I was hoping somebody on here has been in my position before. Who can give me an idea of numbers of units expected to be sold, also maybe someone with contacts in order to book stalls/stances. I have funding pending, but I really need to show them a list of festivals/bookings that I'll be working at, in order to justify my business plan projections.

Any help greatly appreciated!

James

Do you have the right funds for your business? If you do them 3 main course for start up catering business would be good. Its has work for my catering business when I first started...