Been to a few festivals /events recently and started thinking about running one of these little food tents, anyone know of the costs involved? seems you can get the hardware for about £4k, how much do pitches cost? (i know it varies, but some examples would be good!)

ta

I don’t know first hand, but speaking to a guy I used to work with who ran a jacket potato stall , it could be anything from a few hundred pounds to nearly £1500 for a weekend pitch.
He a said he always turned down the higher quotes, and they would come back to him later with a revised price that could be 50% cheaper dependant on how desperate the pitch sellers became to fill the quota.
Said he always made good money though, and that he could make as much profit with hot / cold drinks as he did with the food

Vaguely knew the guy that organised pitches for a lot of festivals and events, mega wealthy and dodgy as hell.

If you pi55ed him off you would end up miles away or downwind of the toilets.

Quite a closed shop from what I could gather.

Don’t you need to be handy with a baseball bat!?

Depends on the quality of the food and your plans.

Cambridge for example has a couple of places where vans can gather or cook in public places i.e. at bars/coffee shops with no food and also ‘food park’ where someone arranges a gathering on farm land or similar.

There’s a burger van I won’t mention the name as it’s already popular enough (and I don’t like to share) that anchors outside a coffee shop in town and has a second van too. There’s always a wait for the food and they only sell burgers and fries and very little else. But once you have one of their burgers you’ll realise a) why it costs about £7, and b) that you will forever be disappoint in any other burger you eat as it won’t be as good.

Festival only, you need to make good food these days as there’s plenty of competition!

I make great food!
Closed shop and baseball bats? Is it a bit like the old ice cream vans?

I knew the bloke who did the food tent at the first few Mountain Mayhems. His profit was around £5k for the weekend he told me once, as he’d bought a 2nd hand van with the profit. Staff were on decent pay – £200 a day iirc, but they did 14-18 hours.
He also attended the local CX league in the winter, he probably went in a lay-by during the working week.

There’s a few food events you can do too, Digbeth Dining Club in Birmingham for instance. I know a couple of van owners there have gone on to open real restaurants, Original Patty Men being one who do a damn fine burger.

I’ve always thought there’s a niche in the market for quality pasties from a van. Like proper steak-laden beauties of a good size. £6 seems a good price I’d pay.

That’s been more of a A-road van thought though; sure there are plenty of hipsters selling artisan hand-throttled-cow-pasties with crusts formed by the butcheeks of virgins for a tenner.

I’m talking a real pasty; 30% melty chunk steak, thick and crispy pastry, with a nice gravy within. Nom.

Mmmm, pasties.

I used to work selling stuff at shows,travelling between each one. The hours are insane, as is the weather. Money was amazing as a student it paid for my postgraduate year in 1 summer.
Couldn’t do it now though but depends whether you can leave festival and go to local bars, in Spain u can so the festival food is ok business but the best business is the local bar.

I’ve always thought there’s a niche in the market for quality pasties from a van. Like proper steak-laden beauties of a good size. £6 seems a good price I’d pay.

£6 for a pasty? Where’s this, Chelsea?

my neighour does this. His wife runs the bricks and morter restraunt side of the business and he does the sreet food. Now has a 3-4 stalls each week doing festivals, farmers markets etc with staff manning the stalls and turning over serious (high hundreds) profit from each stall.