Typical fee to have a space at Festivals & Events

[lilburnjoe]

What is considered a fair fee to cook at Festivals and Events ? Is it fixed or based on sales.

Thanks

 

[bizznessman]

I don't know that their is a "typical" fee. In our area Festivals charge fees, % of sales or a combination of both depending on the venue. The lowest we have paid is a $50 fee for the space plus electrical hookups. The highest we have paid is $500 for the space + $50 for electrical + 2% of gross sales. We are in a predominantly rural area but that highest amount was from a venue in the Wichita KS area about 5 years ago.

We look at these costs on a basis of what percentage they are of what gross sales we project we will bring in at the venue. We try to keep that percentage around 5%. (i.e if we expect to gross $5K from an event we want the max event fees to be at $250 or less. But that is just a personal decision on our part based on our business plan/model)

 

[Skip]

Your placement in the field, the size of the event, the previous years attendance and the relative price of a spot will all determine your fee. That and the cost of the DOH permitting

 

[sunrise]

We do one farmers market that charges $20 or 10%, which ever one is higher. Then a lot of the other events we do the charges range from 10% to 20% of gross sales. Some of the other markets are charging a flat fee of $35 + 15%, I dont do those as I feel its too much.

 

[acguy]

Average booth fee around here for an event we'd do is about $825 for a 2 day event. We really don't care for events of less than 35k people. Number of vendors varies widely. We do one event that charges 30% of the gross. Over time we have "cherry picked" the most profitable events that we do year after year. There's a waiting list for all the festivals we do. There are less expensive festivals. We used to do an event that charged $425 for both days.