FESTIVAL CONCESSIONS
One of the top 5 features that will make or break your festival experience — and bottom line.
OVERVIEW
Food and beverage isn't just a requirement — it's a brand statement, cultural touchpoint, and one of your festival's top revenue streams.
We curate the optimal mix of brands, vendors, pricing and placements to elevate your patrons' experience.
From strategy to sourcing, setup to executing, we deliver an impactful concessions plan that maximizes revenue and rave reviews.
We've done this for decades — now let's do it for you.
DELIVERABLES
We design the perfect mix of food and beverage offerings — tailored to your locality, audience, seasonality and sales goals.
- Revenue goals and strategy to reach them
- Concessionaire sourcing and partnership agreement
- Vendor permitting, licensing, tax, and insurance coordination
- Curated F&B lineup matched to geography, audience, and seasonality
- Placement strategy for optimal vendor flow and sales conversion
OUTCOMES
REVENUE
Maximize sales from your #1 on-site income stream — often the difference between profit and loss.
EXPERIENCE
Delight guests with food and drink options they will remember — and come back for more.
EFFICIENCY
Reduce operational overhead, liability, staffing needs and constraints.
BRANDING
Craft a signature F&B identity through a thoughtful food and drink strategy.
JK MCKNIGHT
Your point of contact — and the experience leader behind AOI.
JK McKnight has spent 25 years in festival development. He founded Forecastle Festival, growing it from 50 people into a 75,000-person destination event and one of America's most critically acclaimed festivals. He later worked with AC Entertainment (Bonnaroo, Big Ears, High Water, Railbird and more). Today, he helps founders design, produce, and grow world-class festivals through proven strategy, specialized expertise, and decades of firsthand experience.
Read JK's full bioFrequently Asked Questions
The engagement focuses first and foremost on designing the optimal strategy to achieve your concessions goals and objectives. From there, we support your team tactically with concessionaire sourcing, vendor selection, permitting and licensing, placement strategy and more.
Yes. We can evaluate your existing relationships, retain the partners that make sense and identify gaps or opportunities to strengthen the overall mix.
Yes. A new festival has the opportunity to build the optimal concessions model from day one, while an established festival can use the engagement to optimize its operation — boosting revenue, improving efficiency, enhancing the guest experience and more.
The strategy portion typically takes four to six weeks, so earlier is better — especially if there’s a need for concessionaire sourcing, new vendor relationships, a new site, permitting or other operational considerations.
Take your festival to the next stage
Schedule a free discovery call with our team. We’ll assess where you are, where you want to go, and exactly how we can help you get there.