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\n A member of staff at the Phat Cow food truck preparing a burger. The Phat Cow<\/p>\n
IRELAND\u2019S BIGGEST MUSIC festivals are demanding 22-25% of food trucks\u2019 takings, in a move vendors say is driving up prices.<\/p>\n
Many attendees at All Together Now in Co Waterford last weekend noted how expensive the food was, with pizzas priced at about \u20ac20 and a burger and chips coming in at \u20ac18, while a can of soft drink or bottle of water cost \u20ac4 at many outlets.<\/p>\n
Food businesses who were there, and who have also worked other festivals across the country this summer, said the fees demanded by organisers of the biggest events are forcing them to charge more.<\/p>\n
Whereas an upfront \u201cpitch fee\u201d was previously the norm in Ireland, four of Ireland\u2019s biggest festivals \u2013 Electric Picnic, Kaleidoscope, Beyond the Pale and All Together Now \u2013 have moved over the past three years to a percentage model that is widely used in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Journal spoke to five food businesses this week who said event organisers took 22-23% of their revenue at All Together Now and this will also be the case at Electric Picnic later this month. At Beyond the Pale and Kaleidoscope, which took place in Co Wicklow in June and July respectively, the cut taken by the organisers was 25%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The event organisers now require food businesses to transact all sales through proprietary card machines, allowing them to track and control takings. Food businesses said a card transaction fee of 1.5% is levied on these festival-owned card machines, which is higher than normal. Event organisers also charge the food businesses a fee to rent their card machines.<\/p>\n
All of these costs are ultimately passed on to hungry festival-goers.<\/p>\n
\n A member of staff at the Phat Cow food truck preparing a burger. The Phat Cow<\/p>\n
The Phat Cow\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t like doing it, but it\u2019s the only way we can be there,\u201d said\u00a0Max Marden of The Phat Cow restaurant and food truck, of charging customers more.<\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers would be complaining to us, and what can we say? We look like the bad guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Phat Cow charged \u20ac16 at All Together Now last weekend for the same burger using premium beef that it can sell for \u20ac14 at its restaurant in Tramore, Co Waterford.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFood is too expensive, for sure,\u201d said another food vendor, who asked not be named because he is worried about a backlash from event organisers.<\/p>\n
He said he charged \u20ac17 at All Together Now for a meal he could have sold for \u20ac14 if the event organisers had not imposed such high charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people are happy enough to pay for it \u2013 I mean, you haven\u2019t got much choice. You\u2019ve got to eat. You\u2019re at a festival in a field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we priced a can of soft drink [at All Together Now] at four euro, which I just couldn\u2019t stomach paying myself. It\u2019s just crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third food vendor agreed that water and soft drinks are particularly difficult to price reasonably when a percentage of revenue has to be handed over.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re paying [VAT] to the government and then you\u2019re paying [the event] 25% and you\u2019re charging a Re-Turn fee. It balloons very quickly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There is \u201ca bit of blowback\u201d from customers, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not as bad as you might expect, but it depends on the event. At Kaleidoscope, [customers] find it very difficult because you\u2019re going up with two adults and maybe two children. And Kaleidoscope took 25% of gross. It adds up very quickly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A fourth vendor said he believes most customers \u201cjust accept they are being shafted\u201d, and the fact that everything is transacted by card helps to grease the wheels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is that mentality that when you\u2019re spending with your card, you don\u2019t think about it. They [the festivals] are really manipulating that fact,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A fifth food vendor, who asked not to be named so as not to damage his relationship with people in the festival industry or his livelihood, said he charged about \u20ac18 at All Together Now for a meal he could sell for \u20ac14 at a small festival earlier in the summer.<\/p>\n
He added that he has been able to pay his staff better at smaller festivals that charged only a pitch fee this year.<\/p>\n
However, he and other food vendors acknowledged that paying a pitch fee can mean food businesses end up taking on considerable risk. If footfall is low it can be difficult to recoup this upfront cost, which can be over \u20ac4,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fairness, when you\u2019re paying a percentage, it\u2019s quite good if you don\u2019t do so well \u2013 you\u2019re paying 22% of nothing. If you have paid a big pitch fee of \u20ac6,000 and you have an absolute nightmare you can lose quite a bit of money,\u201d the second vendor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Food businesses also acknowledged that there are other factors affecting their viability, including the amount of food stalls that festivals put in, as if there are too many it can be difficult for anyone to make a profit.\n<\/p>\n
Future direction<\/p>\n
Food businesses said they fear the cut demanded by big festivals in Ireland will increase to 30% in the coming years, which is now the norm at festivals in England.<\/p>\n
If this happens, \u201csmall food traders will be washed out and it will be all large companies\u201d serving \u201cbog-standard packaged food with no quality left\u201d, said Marden, of The Phat Cow.<\/p>\n
To turn a profit while paying a large cut to the event organiser, businesses need a high volume of sales, meaning corporate operators with multiple units selling different types of meal are likely to take over the festival food sector, small businesses fear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third vendor said: \u201cI have a lot of friends who do UK trading and over there it is being [taken over] by two or three large concessions that could have 40-plus units. That\u2019s the way it will go here. It will be basically just them, and they will charge what they like.\u201d<\/p>\n
We put the food vendors\u2019 comments to the four festivals in question this week. None responded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRELAND\u2019S BIGGEST MUSIC festivals are demanding 22-25% of food trucks\u2019 takings, in a move vendors say is driving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[120524,79,18,11985,264437,10454,19,17,16258,6165,1923],"class_list":["post-626394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-all-together-now","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-electric-picnic","tag-expensive-picnics","tag-food-prices","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music-festivals","tag-small-business","tag-the-morning-lead"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117057599982238333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}