Rewind to the noughties and your gastronomic highlight at a festival might have been an uninspiring burger and a warm cider. Today, music festivals put food and drink high up on the bill, serving a strong choice of cuisine. This year a Michelin starred chef will offer up dishes on a long table banquet at Festival No.6 in Portmeirion, north Wales, while in the Oxfordshire countryside diners at Wilderness can prop themselves up at The Chef’s Table, a restaurant under a canopy, or dine on cuisine created by esteemed chefs such as Raymond Blanc.

“Food is an important consideration and arguably just as important as the music and arts programming,” says Paul Reed, general manager of the Association of Independent Festivals. “There’s now such a variety of food – you can have high-end food from celebrity chefs to amazing Goan seafood and everything in between. Customers are now used to this and expect a strong offering at both small and large events.”

This year Standon Calling opened its doors a day early to kick off the Hertfordshire-based festival with The Welcome Feast, an evening of food and drink featuring a pop-up from eastern Mediterranean restaurant Ceru and cocktails from Beefy Melons.

Street food vendors Le Bun collaborated with singer-turned-chef Kelis – who is also on the bill – to create a menu featuring rib eye buns and fire roasted pork arepas. Standon Calling owner Alex Trenchard says the festival has overhauled its food offer this year to focus on high-quality street food. “People’s expectations are higher, they’re interested in provenance, and are willing to pay a little extra,” he says. “Festivals are now not only about seeing acts but about eating really good food.”

This shift in attitudes is helping small traders. At Green Man in the Brecon Beacons more than 75 food traders will be on site at the event in August. “With no corporate sponsorship or big brands on site, we proudly show off our wonderful Welsh food and drink produce,” says Fiona Stewart, Green Man’s managing director. “We have over 100 different types of independent Welsh beer and cider at the festival from 22 independent brewers who we have worked closely with over a number of years – we’re lucky to have a long list of traders who we welcome back each year.”

This year mac ’n’ cheese stall Anna Mae’s plans to rock up at 15 festivals including Camp Bestival and Wilderness. “At the end of the season we’re exhausted, but come January we’re missing them like crazy,” says Tony Solomon, Anna Mae’s co-founder. “The festival season is our bread and butter, but how much we make really does depend on so many factors – how much it costs you to be there, the position of your pitch, the crowd, the weather. You can have a great year at one festival one year, and the next torrential rain can mean you lose money. It’s the risk you take with street food and festival trading, you can never really predict how it’ll work out and you can’t control the weather.”

It’s the second year of festivals for Le Bun, which rakes in sales ranging between £5,000 to £9,000 each day of a festival. “If we hit £20,000 over a weekend, we’re happy with that,” says Tim Talbot, co-founder of Le Bun. Deducting the costs, Le Bun takes away half the sales as profit. Typical costs for a food trader at a festival include stock, staff, the pitch fee, travel and fuel, sometimes accommodation and, depending on turnover, VAT.

However, not all festival traders are happy. Frank Yeung, co-founder of Mr Bao, says he’s unsure as to whether the festival circuit was for him. “It’s been so-so,” he says after trading at Lovebox in London. “We were invited to do it but we’ve made less money than I thought we would. I don’t know if we’ll do another festival. It’s just a lot of effort for a short time.”

Many street food vendors are also vexed at the increasing costs put on them by the festivals. Some charge a set fee, others take a percentage of the takings, while some might take a mix, but rates tend to be creeping up every year.

“Some corporate festivals take a percentage [of takings] essentially and that can be up to 35%. It can absolutely kill your business,” says Talbot. “It’s crazy and unsustainable.” He says he may walk away from working with the bigger corporate players, which he says are guilty of applying the higher rates. “It’s too much work for no gratification and no profit. Upping the fees is a dangerous path to go down. Essentially it comes to a point where people like us will say we’re not taking this and stop. Then you’ll get a return to the days when food at festivals was poor.”

Mark Laurie, director of the Nationwide Caterers Association (NCASS), says that while the body provides advice to traders and event organisers on pitch fees and trader numbers, some traders want to work at the most famous events and are prepared to pay over the market price to do so.

“We can show traders what they should be paying for events and hopefully they will decide not to work at events where they won’t make money or even lose money, but we can’t stop them paying those fees,” he says.

According to NCASS, some commercial festivals can charge over £10,000 for three day pitch, while smaller independents tend to charge between £1,500 and £400 for three days.

Pitch fees are either tendered, set fees dependent on location and food type or a percentage. Some events charge a pitch fee and then a percentage kicks in if a trader hits a certain turnover.

Trenchard says he considers the relationship with the vendors as a “partnership”, adding that he wants to make it attractive for the best food traders to work with them. “It’s damaging your own interests [if you overcharge] as these are the traders that attract more people to the festival. I’m competing against the big corporates, so I’ve got to make a point of difference. What will happen is that ultimately the best traders will come to boutiques if they can’t afford to work at the larger ones.”

While Talbot says Le Bun will focus on restaurants in the future, they’ll definitely make an appearance on the festival line-up next year. Gourmet burgers and chips at the ready, as the battle heats up.

The NCASS advice to food traders:

1. Never work without a contract.

2. Never work unless you know exactly how many other traders will be on-site (this must be written into the contract).

3. A site capacity is not the same as tickets sold, call the local authority and speak to other traders to see if the attendance numbers are provided close to accurate. And, if you can’t get accurate figures, halve the amount told to you by the organiser and then work out if it is worthwhile.

4. Work out your capacity – can you sell enough food during the length of the event to cover your costs and make a profit?

5. Divide the attendance by number of traders – what are your potential sales, will you make money?

6. Consider your product and the demographic, will it sell in enough volume?

7. Never do a big event in your first year. It might be the right event but the wrong time, give it a year or two until you’re ready to produce enough volume of great food.

8. Event organisers are promoters, it is their job to talk up and sell the event. Don’t get caught up in the hype.

9. If it doesn’t feel right – it probably isn’t.

10. If an established event is hiring lots of caterers, why aren’t last year’s traders coming back? Is it because they all lost money?

11. Ask to work on a percentage of revenue if you’re not sure of the event or pitch fees, if they say no, does this mean they don’t believe their own hype?

12. Do your research on the event.

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