Nanny Bill's on why F+B is more important than ever at public events
Written by
Hugo Campbell
Co-Founder
As one of Togather’s co-founders and an ex-journalist, Hugo pairs his event expertise with his experience building a business from scratch to contribute to event trends and guides.
He is no stranger to the front lines of events, having assisted with load-in and load-out at many of Togather’s early events, and now attends as many of Togather’s public events as possible.
Published on Thu 4 April 2024
We speak to Darren, the founder of Nanny Bill's and one of the UK’s most popular independent festival food suppliers, about why high quality food at live events is more important than ever.
Nanny Bill's have over 600 events under their belt including Glastonbury, Pride and Big Feastival and will be at Togather events including The Royal International Air Tattoo and Pride in London this summer.
What trends are we seeing in festivals' attitudes towards F+B?
Historically when it comes to food options, festivals have focused on specialist high output traders - you'll recognise them as large unattractive set ups that churn out portion after portion, and steered away from branding and quality.
Now there has been a shift in consumer behaviour and they strongly favour suppliers that prioritise branding and quality, and because there there are so many events to choose from, they will make choices of the events they attend based on publicised food options.
We get plenty of messages pre-event telling us people are coming along because they’ve seen us on the bill and and event organisers are recognising what a competitive differentiator well known food options can be for them.
Why is it so important to make sure events have food suppliers who take sustainability seriously?
As there should be, there’s now an expectation around sustainability from event attendees. Millennials and Gen-Z will accept nothing less than brilliance. If they see any bad practices it will put them off from going back to an event and ultimately damage its reputation.
This has never been too much of an issue from our perspective because it’s something we take incredibly seriously at Nanny Bill's, but you’ll see more and more events building it into their ethos and proposition. At this point it makes sense to embrace sustainability from both an ethical and business perspective, and it's not impossible that sustainability targets will be set by the government for events going forwards.
How can food help with a post-event social halo?
We get tagged in hundreds and hundreds of posts throughout or following the events that we serve at, which is great for Nanny Bills, but it also serves to boost the profile of the event as well because our large social following will see the event, know we're associated with it, and consider coming along the next year.
We are constantly getting people saying they’ve come back to an event because they’ve seen that we’re serving there. Further, as a brand with a large following ourselves, we go into these events like a partnership and love to publicise the event itself- it’s in everyone’s benefit.