New to the pizza industry and our restaurant is considering getting a booth at an outdoor 2 day street festival. Have any of you done anything similar??? They say estimated attendance is about ~70,000 (i’m sure it’s exaggerated, but still going to have to pump out pizzas like crazy. I’m concerned about logistics. The festival will be about 3 blocks away from the restaurant so I can make them there and deliver them to location. What kind of equipment do I need to rent? Can i make pizza’s there or is better to make them all at restaurant? I have 2 deck ovens in the restaurant. Any kind of information regarding this will help and is greatly appreciated.
The first thing you need to do is contact the heath department and find out what their requirements are. I did two of these last year and because they were each in a different inspectors district the requirements were different. One inspector required a handwash station with hot running water(in the middle of a ball diamond) and the other allowed the use of hand sanitizing lotion.
Another requirement was the pizzas had to remain in the safe zone until being served. I did this by using a heated display cabinet powered by a portable generator.
I sold only three kinds of pizza and only by the slice to keep things simple. When the booth was down to three pizzas left they would call the store for more to be delivered. The first stock level was 8 pizzas as that is what the warmer would hold. I had the pies premade at the store so when the booth would call it would only take 7 or 8 minutes before they could be sent out.
One event had an estimated attendance of 10,000 and sold 70 14" pies in the 12 hours we were there the other had 3000 and we sold 50 pies in 8 hours.
In addition to the pizza we sold canned soda. (If there is a sponcer like Pepsi or Coke they may require you to buy from them on site and sell at their designated price).
There are propably more things I have forgotten than I have remembered but this is a start.