Booking Us for a Fair or Festival
This page is for organizers. If you are running a fair, a festival, a street event or a fundraiser and you are putting a vendor list together, here is what we will ask you, what we need on site, and what makes an event work for both sides.
If you are planning a private event where you pay for the food, that is catering and it works differently.
The five things we will ask
Every one of these is asked for a reason, and knowing the reason usually helps organizers answer better.
- The event name and dates. The first check is whether it clashes with something already on the books.
- Where it is. Distance is a real cost for a rig this size, and it is a bigger factor for a single day than for three.
- How many years it has run. Not a filter. New events can be excellent and we work them. It tells us how much of the attendance figure is history and how much is hope, which changes how much food we bring.
- Attendance you can verify. Gate counts, ticket sales, a previous vendor’s numbers, a police estimate. A figure you label as a guess is more useful to us than a confident number nobody can source, and it will not count against you.
- How many other food vendors will be there. The question organizers are most often surprised by, and frequently the one that decides the answer. Eight trucks at a two-thousand-person event is a different proposition from three.
Send those five in your first message and you will get a straight answer quickly rather than a chain of follow-ups.
What we need on your site
- The trailer is 22 feet long and is towed by a full-size Chevy van, so it needs a route in and room to maneuver into the spot.
- Solid ground. A trailer this heavy will sink or get stuck in soft ground, and that matters most after a wet week.
- Nothing else for catering or a one-day festival. We are self contained.
- For festivals of two days or more, a 50-amp RV-style outlet within 50 feet, and access to potable water.
The line that catches people out is the multi-day one. For a single day we are self contained and need nothing from you. From two days onward we need a 50-amp RV-style outlet within 50 feet and access to potable water, and “there is power in the building” is not the same thing. If you are not certain what your site has, say so early and we will work it out rather than finding out on the Friday.
Space and access
The trailer is 22 feet and is towed in by a full-size van. We unhook on site, always for events of two days or more and usually for a single day, so the van does not need to stay in the footprint.
What we need is a route in that a long vehicle can take, room to maneuver into the spot, and ground firm enough that a heavy trailer does not sink. Field events after a wet week are the classic problem, and it is worth telling us which gate to use.
Events shorter than half a day
Worth raising because a lot of vendors will not take them. We will look at anything from about two hours upward.
The reason is service speed: we are set up to serve quickly. An event with a two-hour window and a few hundred people is a shape we are built to serve, and short intense events are worth asking us about rather than assuming.
Winter and bad weather
There are not many winter festivals around here, and the ones that exist are any-weather events. We sell at them exactly as we would in June. Rain does not cancel us and cold does not either.
What we sell
Loaded baked potatoes and pasta bowls, built to order, from a menu of seven. Pulled pork and chicken slow-roasted in the truck, a house-made four-cheese sauce, real shaved ribeye. It travels well as festival food because it is eaten standing up with one hand and a fork, and it is filling enough to be somebody’s meal rather than their snack.
More on the category, and why it works at an event, is in what a loaded potato bar is.
Terms
Vendor terms vary far too much between events to put a policy on a web page, and any figure published here would be wrong for most events. Tell us the five things above and we will tell you where we stand on yours.
Getting in touch
Call 931-271-7455, email nicholas@itsloaded.com, or send the five answers straight through. Booking early helps, because spring and fall weekends fill first.
We cater across Middle Tennessee, North Alabama and North Georgia, bounded by Nashville to the north, Huntsville to the west, Dalton, Georgia to the south and Cookeville to the northeast. Selling at events of other kinds, including sports and markets, is covered in event vending.