It is now smack dab in the middle of food festival season, and if you have a penchant for making good business moves for your restaurant, you should be out in the middle of it. A food festival can offer many benefits for the savvy restaurateur. A strong festival showing can be one of the most powerful marketing tools available, bringing in new customers and presenting opportunities to make connections with other purveyors, farmers, and people in the industry. So when it comes to knocking the next food festival out of the park, there are a few essential things to remember.
To begin with, you need to take a look at who your restaurant’s target customer is, and then think about what kind of food festival that person would be inclined to go to. It would do absolutely no good to have a vegan, thai-french, fusion concept with a booth at a bacon-fest in Dubuque, Iowa. Targeting your restaurant’s customer is key for making sure the money spent making your booth happen, is actually going to produce returns.
Next comes the basics of a food-fest. If it is your first time going through the trouble, then it is important to remember that the success of your booth will hinge on your preparation. Everything should be ready to go with minimal prep work when your booth opens, so that you have as much face-time as possible with your customers. Also think about what you are serving, items that are simple to put together yet also delicious and easy to eat are probably going to be what you are shooting for.
Besides your choice in food, you also have to take your choice in staffing into account. The biggest thing to remember when you are being swamped by one of the thousands of people at these festivals is to remember that every single person going through your line is a possible customer. If you can take 15 more seconds and have one of your staff make a customer feel taken care of, that is the difference between the time and effort being worth it or not. Think of every single customer-facing staff member as a representative of your restaurant. They all should be ready to sell your business as much as sell your food.
Whatever you make, whoever you staff, and wherever you go, make sure to have fun. Food festivals can be a huge and stressful undertaking, but a positive attitude will do wonders to make the whole experience an enjoyable and rewarding one. A successful food festival booth is one of the greatest resources around for drumming up excitement and new business for your establishment, so get out there and make it happen.
w business for your establishment, so get out there and make it happen.
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