Meal Ticket Allocation for Music Festival Artists and Crews

An often-overlooked aspect of organising any music festival is the allocation of meal tickets for crew and artists. A hungry and disappointed artist may not perform well so organisers should ensure they have robust plans in place for catering arrangements and the allocation of meal tickets well in advance of the live event dates.

Meal planning is a key element in the festival logistics planning and should form part of the advancing process and be automated as far as possible. A good plan will ensure that food wastage is minimised and that sufficient stocks of the right meals are available to keep everyone fed and watered throughout a multi- day festival where several hundred artists and their crews may be in attendance.

Catering Suppliers. 
A reliable catering supplier is essential and specifying types and numbers of meals is part of the brief that should be given to prospective caterers. A formal bidding process is not unusual depending on the size of the event. The decision-making process may be made based on a number of factors that could include menu variety, volume capacity, price and experience. Additional requirements may include checks on health and safety compliance, insurance and the availability of vegan and organic alternatives with evidence that ingredients have been sourced from sustainable farming.

Automated Meal Allocation Systems.
Including the meal ticket options as part of the advancing process is a logical step and very few festival organisers still do their advancing manually. The artists advance can be generated automatically and should include pre-defined fields that need to be completed. A dedicated meal ticket section on the advance will give options for completion. The meal ticket allocation may be simple with just the number of meals required or more complex offering menu alternative like vegan, vegetarian and hot and cold options for example.

On-site Logistics.
When the artist gets their confirmed advance which includes the requested meal allocations a QR coded ticket may be issued which can be exchanged for a scannable wristband that includes access to backstage areas and their meal allocation. However, most festivals still use a separate physical meal ticket which are exchanged with the caterers for the meal requested. The caterers will have already received the meal allocation for all crew and artists well in advance and they will have planned the necessary number of meals matching requests along with the timing requirements.

Challenges. 
The most common issues that caterers face when distributing meals in line with the pre-planned allocation is crew and artists changing their mind about what they want to eat or taking more that their allocated amount. Experienced caterers will have made allowances in their planning for these situations as they are quite common. Having a dynamic approach to the on-site catering can help with the usual issues and bringing in fresh ingredients during the live festival dates should always be an option.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Slonenok via Pixabay

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