Last Updated: September 25, 2024
We put together this complete guide to organizing a food festival to make sure you’re equipped to hold the best food festival in your state. And since there’s so much to remember, we made a handy checklist you can download to keep track of all the moving parts!
The Steps to Organize a Festival
1. Plan Your Event and Reach Out to Food Vendors
Research Your Audience
Look into past events in your area as well as cultural demographics and regional delicacies to get a feel for what your community is hungry for.
Not sure what type of new food festival will interest people in your area? Try creating a survey or poll with SurveyMonkey or Google Forms and posting it in local Facebook groups or other social media channels.
Choose a Unique Theme
Picking a theme for your food festival can help it stand out from others in your area and get people excited to attend, especially if there isn’t a similar type of food festival where you live. Take the National Peanut Festival or Wing & Rock Fest for example!
Going fully in on food trucks? Learn how to organize a food truck festival.
Carefully Select a Location
Look for a festival venue spacious enough to accommodate the number of vendors as well as the number of people you anticipate attending the festival. It should also have access to all the amenities you’ll need, like electricity, running water, bathrooms, and so on.
Set a Date
Ideally, you should pick a date no sooner than 6 months out so you and your vendors have sufficient time to prepare. Picking dates that coincide with holidays like Independence Day can be a boon to turnout since people are more likely to be out and about.
Determine Your Budget and Pricing
Use an event budgeting template to calculate how much to spend on your festival, factoring in your expected revenue and expenditures.
Your expenses should have a buffer of around 10–20% for contingencies. Expected revenue should include your admittance, application, and vendor participation fees as well as sponsorship packages.
Open Vendor Applications
Reach out to vendors directly and invite them to apply. Include information about the event that might be a deciding factor in whether they want to participate (theme, number of anticipated attendees, application fee, etc.).
The more vendors you can advertise, the easier it will be to attract potential sponsors and attendees. Not sure who to reach out to? One way is to research prior local events, invite vendors who participated, and offer early bird pricing to get them to commit early on.
Posting in local food vendor or food truck Facebook groups is another great way to get the word out and spread awareness of your upcoming event. And don’t forget to add it to your website and make it downloadable!
2. Partner With Other Local Businesses
Organizing a food festival requires you to spend money before realizing revenue, and it can be an expensive endeavor. Securing business sponsorships is one way to offset your upfront costs.
Entice businesses to partner with you by letting them know things like:
- How many people will be attending
- The expected audience demographics
- Sponsor perks and opportunities for gaining exposure (like being featured on your website, social posts, or emails, being represented on signage, contributing to branded giveaways, contests, etc.).
Having sponsors can also help you get the word out. Equip your business sponsors with marketing messaging and collateral — like digital badges they can display on their websites, flyers they can distribute, scripts and images for social posts, email templates they can send out, and so on.
3. Get Necessary Licenses and Permits
Paperwork isn’t the most enjoyable part of food event management, but ensuring you’re legally allowed to host your event is important. The last thing you want is to get shut down and fined.
The exact requirements will vary based on the location where your event will take place, and whether a venue already has a blanket permit.
Typically, the types of permits you need include:
- Permits needed to hold an event (such as public assembly, health, public safety, and parking/transportation)
- Business-related requirements (like a business license, liability insurance, sales tax permit, etc.)
- Venue-related permits (including temporary electrical, tents and structures, noise, temporary signage, environmental, etc.)
Keep in mind that you will also need to require your vendors to obtain their own permits, including:
- Business licenses
- Vendor permits, which legally allow them to sell to the public
- Proof (copy of certificate) of vendors’ food liability insurance
- Sales and use tax permits
- Food handler’s permits
Pro Tip: Work with the city’s special events office or an event planner to determine exactly which permits you need. Get them in place as early as you can to make sure you’ve met all the requirements by the time of your event.
4. Start a Marketing Campaign
According to internal research of over 1,400 policyholders, 71.3% of people considering vending at festivals say it’s a red flag if the event has little to no promotion. 69.5% said they won’t bother participating in events that have low attendance.
All this to say, promoting your food festival is critical to its success!
Here are some ways to market your festival and draw in eager, hungry crowds:
- Give it a strong, memorable brand identity
- Build a website with info about your event and ticket sales
- Develop a social media presence and build hype by posting regularly
- Send promotional and reminder emails leading up to event day
- Partner with local influencers and politicians
- Reach out to traditional media like radio stations and local TV networks
- Advertise on Facebook and Instagram to target vendors, sponsors, and/or attendees
Pro Tip: Offering sponsors email placements, social media exposure, and other positioning in your marketing can be an effective way to attract or entice them to a higher sponsorship tier.
5. Require Festival Liability Insurance
You already know you need insurance to run your event, but should your vendors each carry their own liability policy as well? Yes!
When you make insurance mandatory for your vendors, you can also require them to add you to their policy as an additional insured. This protects your insurance policy from having to pay out for accidents they cause — instead, that claim would be covered by their policy, leaving your coverage limits unaffected.
Make getting insurance for your vendors easy and stress-free by partnering with Food Liability Insurance Program (FLIP).
We’ll create a custom webpage where your vendors can purchase food festival insurance, and you enjoy pain-free vendor management. Some of the biggest benefits you’ll enjoy when partnering with us are:
- You’ll be automatically listed as an additional insured on your vendors’ policies
- You can view and verify your vendors’ Certificates of Insurance (COIs) for free online
- You won’t have to manage different insurance policies across all of your vendors
Learn more about partnering with FLIP and make sure your vendors have the coverage they need, all from one convenient place!
Festival Organizer FAQs
Hiring professional security and working with local law enforcement is important for keeping your food festival safe. Having clear entry and exit points with easy-to-read signage will help control foot traffic, but you should also have a clear plan in place for emergency evacuations.
- Attendance numbers
- Social media engagement
- Revenue generated
- Media coverage
Send out post-event surveys to vendors and attendees to gauge satisfaction levels. Keep track of what people liked, what they didn’t like, and what they felt indifferent towards.
For example, if you notice that the majority of attendees or vendors were unhappy with the location of the venue, that’s a good indicator that you should find a new spot next time around.
Reviewed by: Kyle Jude
Kyle Jude is the Program Manager for Food Liability Insurance Program (FLIP). As a dedicated program manager with 10+ years of experience in the insurance industry, Kyle offers insight into different coverages for food and beverage business professionals who are looking to navigate business liability insurance.
Updated By Alex Hastings
Alex is a Marketing Copywriter at Food Liability Insurance Program (FLIP). In her free time, she enjoys reading, birding, traveling, and finding any excuse to get brunch.
