To wonder whether festival food is a rip off

[wejammin]

We're at a music festival, we go to one or two a year and the food prices are just going up and up.

What I'm wondering is, are the stall holders getting greedy or is it increased overheads? E.g. a couple of years ago I'm sure a roasted sweet corn cob was £2.50, this year it's £4. That seems like a huge profit to me but I have no idea what the outgoings of festival catering are.

I don't want to be moany if it's unjustified because it does look like hard work!

Yeah, it is a rip off. Didn't used to be as bad.

£6 for a polystyrene cup of macaroni cheese. Oh sorry, mac n cheese.

The stuff is one of the cheapest things you can make!

£7 for a burrito.

Some festivals have a volunteer run rotary tent or something like that doing chips and sarnies. I always go to them when I can as they're so reasonably priced.

I know that V Festival charges a few grand per day for each stall, then you have the cost of the food, staff and fuel etc.

On our local kids park the other day a tiny tray of Tesco value chips (saw the packet she took out the freezer ) £2.50 , I would be struggling to say it was a cone of chips , and this is in the Midlands .

Would be interesting to know if people ARE getting greedy or are the rates and costs going up this much !

I've worked on a stall at a festival- (toasties!)

Staff didn't get paid you just got your ticket covered and arranged to work in shifts so you got to enjoy the festival.

Easily took over £5000 per day.

Last festival me & dh went too

Burger £6
Burger with bacon and jalapeño £7.50
Halloumi & salad wrap £5
Waffle with cream and chocolate £4

Dh still has a photo of the sign of the prices, he was outraged 😂

I ran a festival food stall one year and it is extortion the amount they charge. I also started setting up at 7am and didn't pack up until 2am and it was bloody hard work.

It is still a rip off though and when I go to festivals I take pre toasted bagels, a jar of salmon paste and a gas stove to do noodles. Ha!

PinkHeart that's cheap compared to some!

I'd say with a drink with most stalls your looking at a tenner at places like Glastonbury, V, Bestival.

Perhaps £6/7 at Womad etc.

At one venue, run by outsourced event organisers, the organisers make you pay a fee to have a stand there, then they set the prices and then they take a cut of the income. The money is rigourously counted by the organisers minions and then you have to pay up.
The income is checked at various random secret shoppers during the event.
It is like a protection racket.

How about £3 for a paper cup of Tetley tea at the Shrewsbury Flower Show this year? They certainly can't apply a hipster premium there

I worked on a smoothie stall at festivals. Bit of frozen fruit, tiny bit of diluted apple juice, scoop of frozen yoghurt, bosh, £4 thank you very much. If the weather was nice the queue was always huge. Overheads were big but the owner of the stall made enough money to spend all winter in far off lands and just come back to do the season.

My husband applied for a place at a metal festival for his food stall. The paperwork is immense. They ask for a huge fee ( 20k!) for a pitch plus leccy. Then you have staff and normal running costs. Only big traders can afford that much upfront. The independent chippies etc you see are usually part of an overarching business interest with twenty plus vans who run at a massive profit.

Oh that's crazy phlebas! I was of the mindset that I didn't mind too much paying for nice food from indie stalls a couple of times a year, but it all sounds a lot more complicated and corporate.

Try the Green Gathering :) not a rip off at all and entirely ethical and powered by wind and sun :)

And a great line up!

I know at a local county show (small rural county) the food pitch fees are £20,000 for 3 days.

It's a shame because it's only the big companies that can afford to come now, no more local independent shops.

£4.30 for a pint of weak shandy
£6 for a plain cheese burger

A bit of both. They have to pay a fortune to be there, and they have a captive customer base. They don't know how much they're going to sell as there's so much choice, so up go the prices!

'Easily took £5000 per day'.
That must have been a while ago, as judging from later posts, this would not gave even covered the pitch.
We run a food business although we do not do outside catering these days, only retail.
People saying Mac an cheese is made using cheap ingredients haven't got a clue about the economics of running a business.
Costs for an event such as this would include:
Sourcing and buying the raw ingredients
Staff time/fuel to prepare food
Staff time to prep trailer
Petrol to get to/from venue
Staff to run stand
Cost of packaging
The actual food served.
On top of all that, there will be public and product liability insurance, employers liability insurance, rates, food accreditation etc.
And you have to make a profit on top of all that!
It really isn't as simple as taking the cost of the ingredients and deciding someone is making a killing because you could make it cheaper at home!