Festival help

Boy, there are alot of unkonws here. How many others will be selling food, and what type of food will they be selling.

How much risk are you willing to take.

We have done a few events. Last year we did 36 racks of ribs, and four brisket, along with beans and hashbrown casserole. Beans were $1.50, and the hashbrowns were $2.00 Ribs $2.00 per bone, and the brisket was $6.00 per sandwhich. We sold out, and took about 6 hours. But others were selling pulled pork, and I didn't wnt to just be in the pack. But the brisket made us standout. This was a rib event, and some sold as many as 200 racks of ribs. The weather was good, and there were about 9000 people there.

Now what will your conditions be.

RandyE

This festival is a three day festival. Approximately 7,000-10,000 people will go through the festival in the combined three days. In previous years, there has been another lady selling pulled pork and brisket sandwiches. Her food is terrible, at best. There are a few other food vendors there who sell typical festival food (corn dogs, hamburgers, navajo tacos, etc...)

The weather typically is in the low to mid 80's.

I'm willing to take a risk as this festival can be used as an excellent way to establish our reputation.

Are you planning on pre-cooking or doing on site? We cooked on site, then let the smokers run all day on low to put out alot of smoke. Many of the other teams just brought the food in a reheated. Good food will get passed around by word of mouth.

If it is a friday saturday and sunday, I would be leary about doing too much food the first and last days.

Does the crowd have money to spend, or are they buying beer all day?

Good food, we did a few samples to people who had never tried brisket. Sold a sandwhich to everyone of them. We could only sell food. The event sold all the drinks.

RandyE

I love fry bread tacos. But I do love BBQ. Got a friend who makes the best fry bread, and she hits alot of powwows. Keep telling her she needs to do pulled pork tacos???


RandyE

We will be cooking on site. There will be a lot of beer drinkers, but there will also be a lot of non drinkers/families.

You need to decide what sells in the area. Do you want to compete against her and sell BBQ (I guess the answer is yes, because you're using a 500)

Then the question becomes what are you good at. Go with what you do well first and develop a following.

ARE you wanting BBQ? Then you have to decide type (sandwiches, platters, what) Carry food, plate food?

I agree with Smokin and Randy. Do what sticks out in the crowd and what you are good at. I cook in an FEC500 and we are doing pulled pork sandwiches and plates. Also the same with brisket and a boneless turkey breast we started getting from our supplier. All are easy to smoke and we offer only 2 sides with slaw and smoked baked beans. We also offer assorted potato chips and drinks. We sell pork sandwiches w pickle for $6.00, Turkey $7.00 and Brisket $8. Plates w 2 sides $2 more.
Its a numbers game. It nice if you can get 5-10% of the crowd. If your the only game in town maybe more. After you do one you'll learn alot. Keep track of your numbers.
Good luck and try to have fun. I always enjoy talking with the people especially when they like your food.
Thanks,
Mike L.

I agree with everything said so far, but absolutely cook onsite if at all possible, or at least have the smoker there belching smoke. There is no better advertisement and smoke drives people crazy.

Also, get in touch with someone that vended there last year. Find out what their customer count was and when their peak hours were. You don't want to be sitting there at 10am with a smoker full of meat and then not see a customer until 4pm. The promoters will usually promise you a big day, but it ain't always so.

Staffing and staffing cost might be an issue too. Slicing brisket to order takes the full attention of one person if traffic flow is good, so doing a chopped beef BBQ in sauce that can be held and served quickly might be a good way to go.

Ribs are moderately fast to cook, but some people flinch at the price you've got to get to make it worth your while.

Chicken leg quarters can be cooked quickly and nicely marked up.

Butts and shoulders take more time. I would think you'd need some pork, and since its promotional for your business it has to be good, but unless you have a way to dispose of it the next day you don't want to over do it.

I try to structure things like this so that at the end of the day I'm out of everything. But not until the end of the day. From open to late afternoon I might have three meats, then run out of brisket, then later run out of pork, and then replenish the chicken until close. But again, this is my method of waste reduction.

If you have a profitable means to dispose of any left overs, then waste isn't an issue and you can keep the menu rolling all day.

Since there will be families there, I would serve nachos and/or turkey legs. I use a drip pan(see webstaurant supply) and three deep third pans as a functional steam table if you have a side burner available. It can hold your nacho meat, the cheese, and beans for the nachos(or go with half pans).

If you have a fryer, you can smoke wings ahead of time and fry quickly to order/temp. And you could also do fish if you think there's a market. Whiting(skin on) is around $2 a pound around here, and a couple of pieces with slaw and a slice of bread will bring $8-10 for a really good food cost.

Lastly, I serve most things in a large french fry tray. I usually offer a choice of 1 side(slaw, beans, or potato salad), a slice of bread or roll if its a sandwich, and then their choice of meat. I need $8 per person. I'd prefer $10 but it's hard unless you can sell them drinks. If you can sell drinks, take lots of water. People buy more of it than anything else it seems.

Ribs are a whole different thing, so price accordingly.

^^^^^^^ He knows his stuff.

Hi Pags.

This type of question has been on my mind a lot lately.

The town I live in, Greensboro NC (just down the road from where my signature says) is going food truck crazy. The only problem is that at the current rate soon well have as many food trucks as people that want to eat at them. This town would barely support 2-3 trucks, but as of last Friday we have 28 registered with more in the pipeline. We just don't have a "foodie" culture here, and the area's economy is still so bad that even office workers are taking walks for lunch or brown bagging it. Just not enough money to spend.

I'm advising a new group that just formed a non-profit to promote food trucks in town, and they are an enthusiastic bunch. They're also mostly young and haven't done their math to see what it will take to make a profit. And having never owned a restaurant, they have no idea why Joe's Downtown Pizza calls the police and writes mean letters to the newspaper every time they set up outside the office building 100 feet from his door. The city is trying a program where they will allow only 4 trucks per weekday to operate, but even then other restaurants are pissed and the trucks "live" for their chance at a Friday slot. Weekends are open season, but try convincing the guy that bought a crepe truck that at $350 total sales for the day(maybe $1000 for the week), by the time he pays for food, fuel, maintenance, insurance, and access to a licensed kitchen to make it legal, that he would be better off staying home.

This is probably off topic, but I was using it to illustrate how difficult food vending can be, and how the challenges can vary from one day to the next, from city to city, and from event to event.

The $200 dollar fee the OP mentioned is pretty reasonable for an established event with the numbers promised. Around here it would be maybe $400-1000+ per day depending on the event, and that's a big hole to dig out of when you look at your pre-event food cost and the labor you'll incur. The $200 for 3 days actually sounds too good to be true to be honest. I look at festivals in several states every year, and most would be charging $200 per day for an event that draws 10K people. The advertised fees are actually pretty consistent around the country for similar events, so I would really strongly advise you to talk to as many previous vendors as possible unless you're willing to chalk the weekend up to experience and marketing, should things not turn out as promised.

I did this event( Peakfest) for years and oddly, as the event grew, business got worse. Their fee is about $750 for one day, and they do get a large crowd(15-20Kpp), but people don't spend the way they used to, and location is key too, even though you have no control over it. The corner locations are best BTW. The organizers limit food vendors to about 12, but there are about 5-6 restaurants in the four block area where the event is held, and several churches that are on the same street do fish frys and BBQ as well. And lots of cotton candy, snow cone, pretzel, and nut vendors that aren't limited by the vendor cap. So you still end up with smaller numbers of buyers than you want.

Ideally, you need $8 per person with a food cost of around $2-2.50 to make it work. So start by looking for things you can plate at that price and work backwards until you have a menu that looks like a good value to you, and hope it looks good to the festival goers too.

Sorry its so long and rambling.

Just some math. It's an oddly warm and rainy day here, so I'm amusing myself. Hope this helps.


Pork @ $1.59 per pound @ 55% yield= 2.31 per cooked pound

4oz meat = .58 meat cost
Large bun cost =.25
Slaw (condiment)= .10
Side = .30
Pellet cost = .02 (???WAG)
Sub Total $1.25

Fry tray, fork, sauce, napkin .25

Total Food Costs 1.50 food cost

Assume 100lbs raw weight cooked each day for 55lbs servable product or
For 220 sandwiches @ 6.00 each (25% FC) for total potential sales of $1320.00

That’s 28 sandwiches per hour from 10am-6pm (If you do more than this you’ll need additional help, and you might need more help anyway depending on how strong your bladder is, how well you stand the heat, etc.)

Deduct $67 for one days fees
Deduct $200 for labor (assuming 2 people @ $10 per hour x 10 hour day)(8 hour service day plus 1 hour ea for set-up/breakdown)
Deduct $330 for food costs (1.50x220)
Deduct $25 for your water to drink and gas to get to event

Total hard costs = $622
Less total sales = $1320
Net profit = $698.00

So if you don’t worry about insurance, depreciation, taxes, maintenance, etc., you can pay yourself something extra.

Now the question is, can you serve 660 people per day? Will they show up? If they do, can you handle the flow, because they will not show up 28 per hour? If you add a second meat, will it add to your total business of just dilute/split the ASSUMED 660 customer count, meaning you'll need to adjust amount cooked of each meat?

Assuming 10Kpp per event for 3500 per day and just 2 other vendors, if they’re using the same assumptions, together you’ll serve 1980 people combined per day(660x3), or 57% of all attendees per day. Is this possible? I don’t know.

Big assumptions here I know, but the questions that I see are “what is your time worth”, “is there value in this endeavor other than just profit”, and as Randy asked, “what is your risk tolerance”?

IMO, you will need an additional helper for this event if you see yourself doing 660 per day. At 28 customers per hour you'll need 1 person just to take money and talk to folks. Since they won't come at the perfect flow rate, you'll have hours where you'll do 100+ people, followed by hours where you think they might have called the event off you're so slow.

Additional info (from Festival Info ):
· Nearly four-fifths of people buy a drink when they visit a concert, although most people spend less than £10 on average. Visitors to rock/indie concerts are the most likely to buy drinks and they are also the heaviest spenders, with nearly a fifth spending more than £21.
· Half of all concert-goers buy food and the same proportion buy merchandise. The biggest spenders on food are visitors to pop concerts and festival-goers, the latter reflecting the long dwell time on site. Merchandise buyers are slightly more likely to be men than women.

Wow Todd. That sounds complicated enough.

My math is a lot easier. All cost. No profit. Friends eat for free.

I’d say Todd and Pags is right on.

Our church runs a concession stand for 1 week each year during the county fair. Besides the carnies I’ve seen a lot of operators come and go, each with their own plan of making a good profit.

We make decent money during the fair each year which we use to support various mission projects. Our volunteers put in well over 1000 man-hours during the week, and if they weren’t volunteers we would have gone broke a long time ago.

Our fair-stand puts us out in front of the community at large and many people have made it a tradition to stop by with their families to eat and visit with us. The reality of it is if everyone in our congregation donated and extra $20 we could support the extra mission projects without the fair-stand. But alas we’ve been doing this since sometime in the 40s and it has become a true labor of love.

quote:

Originally posted by Todd G.:
Total Food Costs 1.50 food cost

Assume 100lbs raw weight cooked each day for 55lbs servable product or
For 220 sandwiches @ 6.00 each (25% FC) for total potential sales of $1320.00

Deduct $67 for one days fees
Deduct $200 for labor (assuming 2 people @ $10 per hour x 10 hour day)(8 hour service day plus 1 hour ea for set-up/breakdown)
Deduct $990 for food costs (1.50x660)
Deduct $25 for your water to drink and gas to get to event

Total hard costs = $1282
Less total sales = $1320
Net profit = $38.00

Shouldn't the net profit be $698/day?

You sold 220 sandwiches = $1320 but your food cost is for 660 sandwiches $1.50*660 = $990. Food cost should be $330

Thank you Andy for catching my mistake. I knew the numbers were tight, but I was surprised when I worked through and saw just a $38 profit.

Thanks for catching it. I changed the post to reflect the proper numbers.

The biggest thing is to make a profit on everything you sell, and then to not over produce so that you eliminate waste.