Vending first festival, a few questions

I've read through the threads here, and have seen how people are coming up with total number of customers, (In my case, organizer says 5000-7500 people, so I'm using 6000, divide that by 2, and then divide that by number of vendors (6) for a total of 500 servings)

So I have potentially 500 servings. We're planning on doing PP sandwiches, PP plates, and PP nachos. How do I determine how many of each product to plan for, and how do sides figure into it?

I'd much rather sell out than bring food home.

Thanks for any help!

Anyone?

rgrizzle said:

I'm in the same boat as you. Trying to figure it all out also for my first festival.

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I was keeping on eye on your thread hoping someone would respond to yours.

Bbq Bubba said:

Your numbers are not bad.
May i suggest losing the nachos and plate and just sell sammies with a side option?
Lower food cost, less waste and a faster flowing line.

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We had to give a menu in advance, so it's too late to change that now. Since we have the 3 main products, is there any way to figure out how many of each item to prep for, or is it as simple as dividing total number by 3?

Great info! Thanks for the help!!

Thanks for the additional tips. The good thing about the beans is that we're going to cook them one can at a time, so we'll never have too much. If they don't sell, we just won't make anymore.

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centexsmoker said:

Good call. that works. Good luck! I can tell you one thing for sure, you are going to need a nap after and your feet are going to hurt like hell for about 3 days

Good times though

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Lucky for me, I'm just the cook. I've got other people serving! I get to sit!

An update from this weekend's vending event. This was a one day competition/festival, with sales starting at 5 and going until 11. We borrowed a concession trailer equipped with a fryer and a griddle, which we planned on using to make fries and keep the nacho cheese sauce warm.

We get there and setup, and the woman running the festival tells us we can't use the generator on the trailer because it would be too loud (even though we told them exactly what generator we had beforehand) so she let us borrow her smaller generator. The only problem was that we couldn't use the fryer, so no French fries.

Once we got into the thick of it, the griddle was waaay to hot and the cheese wasn't warming up so we decided to scratch the nachos and only sale PP sandwiches and plates. We were planning on 300 total sales, and we ended up selling just over 200. Sales were very strong for about 2 hours, then it started to rain, so things slowed down pretty quickly. Around 9, we were all out of slaw, buns, and chips for sides, so we decided to call it a day.

All in all, not a terrible day, we ended up making about $1200 profit, plus we won 2nd place ribs, people's choice pork, and grand champion for the competition (it was unsanctioned).

We'll be vending our second contest at the end of the month, so this was a great learning experience.