Your guests have arrived and come on empty stomachs just for the occasion. The choices you’re providing look good enough to eat, no pun intended. The prices make things look even more appetizing. However, with each passing minute, people are still planted in lines with their stomachs becoming impatient.
After not being able to stand it anymore people start heading for the exits, hungry and frustrated. In terms of what can go wrong with the food and drink event you put on, this is the most dreaded outcome for sure.
The anticipation of being able to chow down on some great food is the sole reason they invested the time and energy to show up. The deserts, the meats, the exotic wines, etc.
In order to keep this dreaded outcome at bay, we’ve prepared some common mishaps that can happen with a food fest. We’ve also outlined what you can do in order to control the risk of any of these coming to fruition.
Here are some of the common mishaps to be aware of:
Not knowing what vendors require
People enjoy food festivals and food trucks, but the problem with these (particularly food trucks) is that there can be logistic concerns. For instance, a certain level of power might be needed in the case of food trucks or special connectors. Are you prepared for these issues? If not then you’ll be in for serious problems.
The best course of action here is to be sure that as far as logistics go that you’ve worked this out with all vendors beforehand. There should be no surprises that risk ruining your event.
Trying to decorate with no regard to the budget for the event
You want your event to be aesthetically appealing of course, but you don’t want to waste money on things that just aren’t important. You want most of your event budget to go towards the actual food.
Understand that people come to these types of events for the food and this is what will remain with them once they leave. Fancy dishes aren’t important. Fancy napkins aren’t important. Essentials are the name of the game, just make sure the quality is good.
Offering too many tickets and not having enough food to feed everyone as a result
It’s understandable that you want to make a profit. You just don’t want to do this with the risk that your actual event will suffer as a result. If you go overboard with selling tickets, then the quality of your attendee’s experience will surely be hurt.
What you want to do is be very strategic with how you price tickets. As far as offering free tickets go, you’ll want to be careful with this as well. Free tickets come with the risk of no-shows.
Decent ticket prices along with premium ticket options can really help you out here.
Being stubborn about adding flair to the food choices offered
These days there are endless food trends out there and more and more people have some form of diet restriction. What does this mean? It means people are going to require versatility. People will arrive expecting for virtually any tastes in food they have to be quenched. If this is not the case then people will leave disappointed.
Protecting against this is tougher, trying to appease every type of diet out there is extremely difficult. However, you can make sure there are plenty of choices for various palates. For example, you’ll want to be versatile with options for those who are vegan’s, making sure to not just provide generic salads and fruits.
You’ll want access to vendors who can provide alternatives to meats, while at the same time not sacrificing taste. The purpose you should have here is to be open, not rigid with food options you offer. Classics can be provided, but shouldn’t be over-relied on.
Super long lines that make the juice not worth the squeeze
If a certain food has a cache about it, then Americans are open to the idea of waiting several minutes, usually about 6-10. So if there’s a line for a popular food item with a certain truck and it’s really long, then this can lead to irritability.
What you can do in order to prevent against this is run the numbers. If you have a certain amount of booths in order to handle a certain amount of people, then there can only be so many people serviced through a given booth.
You’ll want to think about getting more food vending options, but if this can’t be done, then speak with the ones you already have in advance in order to see if they can handle more than one line. Two lines would be ideal for each vender because this way long lines can be minimized.
Your food event can go off without a hitch indeed, but the name of the game is superior preparation and risk management. Make things easy for vendors and focus on a superior experience for guests.