Festival catering checklist Ireland (Electric Picnic + more)
Festival catering is feast-or-famine for Irish food trailer operators — six weeks of Electric Picnic / Body & Soul / All Together Now / Forbidden Fruit / Indiependence / Vantastival / Beatyard / Big Grill in the summer can match an entire café's annual revenue. But festivals are operationally unforgiving: you trade for 12-18 hours a day, 3-5 days straight, off-grid, with weather and queue surges and gate-in checks. This checklist is built from what experienced Irish festival vendors actually carry — print it, laminate it, tick it off the day before load-in.
Paperwork (gate-in checks)
FSAI registration + EHO contact, RGI gas cert (annual), public liability insurance certificate (minimum €6.5m for Irish festivals), product liability, employers' liability if staff, food handler / HACCP certs for everyone serving food, casual trading licence from your home council, festival vendor contract + invoice, bank/payment terminal account details. Keep originals on the trailer in a waterproof folder.
Power (generator sizing)
Most Irish festival vendor pitches do not include power — you bring your own. Coffee trailer baseline: 3-5 kVA silent diesel generator (run-time vs noise tradeoff; festivals enforce noise limits especially overnight). Food trailer with fryers + grills + refrigeration: 5-8 kVA. Bring 50% more fuel than you think you need — diesel runs hot in summer + idle hours in queue downtime add up. Spare extension leads, RCD-protected hookups, headlamps for late shifts.
Equipment (the boring but essential)
Espresso machine + grinder (for coffee trailers), fryers + griddles + plancha (for food), refrigeration (under-counter + a chest freezer for a long weekend), sink + hand-wash + waste tank, gas bottles (bring 1.5x what you think — refills at festivals are slow), takeaway packaging (3x normal weekly volume — single biggest underestimate), bin bags + waste bags, paper towels + blue roll, sanitiser, gloves, aprons, hairnets, cleaning supplies, basic tool kit, gaffer tape, cable ties, spare bulbs.
Stock (the maths is brutal)
Festival sales run 3-5x normal day at peak hours, with deep lulls during headline acts. Coffee trailer at Electric Picnic (50,000+ attendees): 10-20 kg coffee beans per day for a small 1-group setup, 30-50 kg for a 2-group machine. Food trailer: 50-200 portions per hour at peak. Ingredients planning is the make-or-break of festival weekends — running out of mince at 8pm Saturday burns reputation that takes a season to repair.
Payments (cash is dying)
Most Irish festivals are now 70-90% card. Bring 2-3 SumUp / Square / Revolut / Vivawallet terminals — battery-powered preferred. Have a cash float of €200-€500 for the few cash customers + change for vendor neighbours. Test mobile signal at your specific pitch before the festival opens — Sunday in a wet field with no signal is a disaster waiting. Most festival sites now provide site Wi-Fi for vendors; arrange access at gate-in.
Logistics (load-in to load-out)
Read the festival's vendor pack TWICE. Note: load-in time slot, gate access route (some festivals have separate vendor gates), pitch dimensions, water access (sometimes nearest tap is 200m away — bring extra hoses), waste-collection schedule, fire-extinguisher requirements (1× CO₂ + 1× foam standard), nearest WC for staff, neighbours, restock vehicle access (most festivals require restock during off-peak hours). Pre-festival: full deep clean, full water tank, bottle change-out, NCT/CVRT current, tow-vehicle insurance covering trailer transport.
Festivals to know — Irish summer calendar (typical dates)
Forbidden Fruit (Phoenix Park, June bank holiday); Bloom in the Park (Phoenix Park, June); Body & Soul (Westmeath, June); Vantastival (Louth, June); Bare in the Woods (Kildare, June); Beatyard (Dún Laoghaire, August); All Together Now (Waterford, August); Indiependence (Cork, August bank holiday); Electric Picnic (Stradbally, Laois, end of August / start of September); the National Ploughing Championships (rotates, late September); Listowel Races (Kerry, September); Galway International Arts Festival (July); Galway Races (July/August); Dingle Food Festival (October). Application windows for following-year vendor pitches typically open October-January.
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