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Need Your Opinion on Vending Quantities

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FireTowerBBQ

Guest
I've got a festival next weekend. It's 3 days. Fri from 5 - 10pm, Sat from 8am - 12am, and Sun 8am - 2pm. There are 10 other food venders, only one of them is BBQ and they are just a church group selling ribs.

I'm selling spare ribs, chopped brisket / pulled pork sandwiches, and BBQ nachos (PP or Brisket). It's not a huge festival, they expect around 3000 people. Saturday being the largest volume.

I know vending is a gamble, but given the information, how much meat do you think I should buy. I'm really pushing the nacho's. They are a good seller. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
 
No way would I go to a festival expecting 3000 people with 10 food vendors and try to offer that many items. I would for sure leave off the ribs since someone else is selling them already. If nachos are the big seller, I would focus on that and plan to serve 300 people or less over 3 days. High cost items like these rarely pay off at events like this in my experience.
 
I'd have about 30 butts and cook 20 and see how far that got me. Cook the rest if needed/ 3-4 briskets would do in my area, not sure about the nacho's.

That said 10 food vendors with 3000 people over 3 days, I'd stay home.
 
Normally I would not do it, but it's 10 minutes from my house. And I always do good at local events. 10 venders is a lot, but most of them are funnel cake, fried pie, popcorn, snack food type items. I think there are only 3 of us selling "real food". Thanks for the advice though. I may decide to leave out the ribs.
 
You havent said what kind of festival? Nobody eats before noon and usually not till evening?
At most your gonna sell to 10% and thats reaching.
Stay home and SAVE money.

YMMV.
 
Bbq Bubba said:
You havent said what kind of festival? Nobody eats before noon and usually not till evening?
At most your gonna sell to 10% and thats reaching.
Stay home and SAVE money.

YMMV.
Click to expand...

Most of our events we have our first customers about 10 am
 
Bbq Bubba said:
You havent said what kind of festival? Nobody eats before noon and usually not till evening?
At most your gonna sell to 10% and thats reaching.
Stay home and SAVE money.

YMMV.
Click to expand...

I've never vended at a festival where I didn't sell until noon. We usually start getting customers at 10 am. From 10 - 2 is usually high volume. Then it picks back up around 5.
 
The best advice has been given....stay home and enjoy the day. :clap:
 
Definitely won't be staying home. I've already committed. I'll give an update on how it goes.
 
FireTowerBBQ said:
Definitely won't be staying home. I've already committed. I'll give an update on how it goes.
Click to expand...

Are you attending the River City Festival in Logansport? If so I think I met you last year in the Holiday event they had down there that sucked so bad. We were the ones selling the BBQ sauce and Cajun Pickles. The lady told me they were expecting around 2500-3000 people.
 
Last edited:
luke duke said:
How did it go?
Click to expand...


We were at the same event as Firetower and it sucked......again. They overbooked food vendors, screwed up our application, and grossly overshot on the estimate of how many people would be attending. After we covered our cost and made a little profit we packed up and left. Won't be going back to Logansport. Burn me once shame on you, burn me twice shame on me. We gave them two chances and they flopped both times. It simply isn't worth our time. The two events we've attended there, it seemed people weren't there to spend money but to simply walk around. Nothing wrong with that, they have that right, but vendors want to go to places where the people spend money.

We spoke to numerous other vendors (both food and craft) and they were not happy either.
 
Last edited:
It went pretty good for us. There were definitely too many food vendors, but we ended up making a decent chunk of change. Definitely glad I didn't stay home.
 
FireTowerBBQ said:
It went pretty good for us. There were definitely too many food vendors, but we ended up making a decent chunk of change. Definitely glad I didn't stay home.
Click to expand...

We talked to the guys directly across from you selling the corndogs and lemon ice drink. They were not pleased at all with how it was organized. He told me they do a lot of rodeos that bring in 7,000-8,000 people and there's not as many food vendors as were at the shin-dig we were at Saturday.

Glad you came out ahead. I'm just happy we cleared our costs and made a little profit. But we won't be going back.

BTW, your pulled pork sammy was excellent. :thumb:
 
Bamabuzzard said:
We talked to the guys directly across from you selling the corndogs and lemon ice drink. They were not pleased at all with how it was organized. He told me they do a lot of rodeos that bring in 7,000-8,000 people and there's not as many food vendors as were at the shin-dig we were at Saturday.

Glad you came out ahead. I'm just happy we cleared our costs and made a little profit. But we won't be going back.

BTW, your pulled pork sammy was excellent. :thumb:
Click to expand...

Glad you enjoyed it. Maybe we'll run into y'all again soon!
 
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