Pre- ordering Food and Drink at Music Festivals is the Future

The queues for food and drink at any music festival can be one of the top complaints made by festival-goers. What technology initiatives can festival organisers take to reduce the queue times for food, beverages and merchandise enhancing the overall festival experience for visitors.

Long queues for food and drink detract from the overall festival experience and can attract adverse publicity in the media. Apart from customer dissatisfaction long queues can make the festival look disorganised and chaotic. The solution that many organisers are turning to is utilising technology to enable pre-ordering for food, beverages and merchandise reducing queue times to a simple collection and pick up process. How can organisers implement this technology to benefit both festival-goers and vendors.

Pre-ordering Technology. 
The technology that enables pre-ordering is straightforward and works in the same way as any restaurant online ecommerce system. Customers scroll through the menu items available and select what they want. Pre-payment is required to confirm the order along with delivery details. For food and beverage vendors that are participating at a festival a link can be provided on the festival's own website to enable pre-orders to be taken in advance of the event dates. The key difference will be the specification of time and date for collection along with confirmation of the vendor’s location on a festival site. Many vendors have created their own mobile apps which enable pre-ordering allowing users to order on-site but with hundreds of vendors this can become a time consuming and frustrating process for festival-goers.

Integration.
The preferred methodology would be to integrate vendor pre-ordering capability into the festival’s own app. This provides a one stop solution for festival-goers who now only need a single app to browse and pre-order food and drinks. Festival organisers will need to work closely with vendors to ensure that all menus and prices are uploaded to the integrated app along with indicative images of products available. When integrating the vendor details into the festival app it is wise to add the location of each vendor on the festival site map which ensures that festival-goers know where to collect their pre-ordered food and drink. Some additional integration will be required to ensure that payment gateways operate in an efficient manner so that payments made go directly the vendors.

Advantages.
The key benefit for festival-goers is the reduced queue times and vendors can process orders more efficiently. Vendors know in advance what ingredients to purchase and when to cook food. This helps reduce food wastage and can increase the profit margins for vendors too.

Challenges.
Festival-goers may change their mind about what they ordered days of weeks before leading to food wastage. Integrating hundreds of vendors into a single app may be challenging for festival organisers but there are numerous technology companies who can help if necessary. There will undoubtedly be resistance form some festival-goers so adoption of pre-ordering may take time to gain acceptance and traction.

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.

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