Event Merchandise & Concessions Strategy: Full Guide

Event merchandise and concessions can support your event in two key ways:

• Event Marketing
• Event Revenue

With the right strategy and some work, you can add another revenue stream to your event and market your event to a broader audience. We’ll cover everything you need to know to incorporate merchandise and concessions into your marketing and build them as important revenue streams for your event.

Event Merchandise & Marketing

Event merchandise is an exceptional way to market your event – your attendees become walking billboards for your event wherever they go wearing your shirt, hat, etc. Follow these three easy steps:

1. Pick a popular clothing item.
2. Make an eye-catching design.
3. Sell your merchandise.

Additionally, you can also create commemorative merchandise items for a 5-year, 10-year, or other special milestone for your event. This unique merchandise can help you draw more people to your event so they can get the special items and celebrate your event milestones with you.

Event Merchandise & Revenue

Event merchandise is also another revenue stream for your event. As you’re adding another revenue stream, you need to balance quality, design, and pricing to ensure you have merchandise that sells.

Start with what you know about your attendees:

• Age & gender demographics
• Income levels
• Lifestage (single, dating, family, retired)

This information will help you pick clothing items, sizes, designs, and determine what a reasonable price is for your merchandise. Afterall, if your attendees can’t afford your merchandise, they won’t buy it.

Next, you’ll need to get pricing from suppliers. You want to be sure you can add margin to their per-item pricing so that you’re able to generate revenue from your event merchandise sales.

Once you’ve finalized all of your details, you need to figure out your sales strategy. Stride Events makes it easy to manage and integrate merchandise sales alongside your ticketing:

• Event Store Online – Sell your merchandise online year-round. You can set shipping prices, create promo codes, and even offer discounts on shipping only.
• Featured Items in Ticket Purchase Path – Choose which items you’d like to include in your ticket purchase path to grow merchandise sales and increase your typical order size. Even if people don’t buy your merchandise then, they might change their mind later.
• In-person Sales through POS App – Sell items at your event with our integrated POS app. Accept card payments with a reader, cash, or check at your event.

With all of these tools working from the same inventory and order tracking system, you can streamline merchandise operations and grow your merchandise sales.

Event Concessions & Marketing

Concessions are an overlooked marketing opportunity – your concessions offerings can be a big draw for your attendees. People love eating good food and trying new things.

If you’re doing your own concessions, create a signature item for your menu and market it on social media. Think about what makes your event unique and craft a food item around it. Maybe you have a signature hot dog, dipped ice cream cone, or cotton candy flavor. Or, go further to create something totally unique.

If you’re not doing your own concessions, sell vendor booths or contract with local pop-ups, food trucks, and restaurants to offer great food at your event. Once you have commitments from popular food trucks, advertise that they’ll be at your event. You’ll be surprised at how many people your food vendors will attract to your event.

Event Concessions & Revenue

When it comes to turning concessions into a revenue stream, you can take two approaches:

1. Sell Concessions Yourself
2. Sell Food Vendor Booths

Sell Concessions Yourself

If you’re selling concessions yourself, you’ll need to determine your menu, get equipment and permits, buy supplies, find people to work your concessions, and manage your pricing and sales.

Event Concessions Menu Considerations

Consider your costs, pricing, and effort as you're creating your concessions menu.

Keep your own costs low:

• Equipment  
• Energy
• Food
• Staff

You’ll need to buy or rent equipment to keep your food cold or hot and prepare your food. You’ll also need to pay for maintenance costs for your equipment. Alternatively, you could only sell prepackaged goods like chips, trail mix, and drinks to avoid this cost altogether.

You’ll also need to factor in gas or power – whether you have generators or rely on the equipment at your venue. Again, you can avoid this cost with prepackaged foods.

Then, there’s the food itself. You’ll be able to buy in bulk, which will help you get better deals. You’ll also need any serving utensils or plates.

Your last cost consideration – decide if you’re paying staff or using volunteers to handle your concessions stand.

All of these costs affect your pricing, which you need to target toward your attendee audience. How much are your attendees willing to spend on a snack or a meal at your event? The answer to that question will determine the direction you take your concessions.

When it comes down to your menu, focus on food items that are quick and easy for your team to prepare. This approach helps keep your concessions line moving and get orders fulfilled quickly.

Event Concessions Sales

Once you’ve finalized your menu and pricing, you need to determine how you’re going to track all of your orders and process payments. Rather than opting for cash only or relying on Venmo, you can use Stride Events’ integrated Point-of-Sale (POS) app for your concessions sales. You can even accept online orders.

• Online Concessions Orders – Post QR codes and accept orders online. Track orders and fulfillment from the integrated POS app.
• Online Ticket Orders – Feature concessions items in your ticket purchase pathway. When people add concessions to their order, you’ll have better predictions on quantities and you can have orders ready for pickup when they arrive.
• POS Combined Ticket & Concessions Orders – Sell tickets and concessions in the same order at your event.
• POS Concessions Orders – Sell concessions from your stand using Stride Events’ integrated software and app.

With your concessions sales, you can even enable tipping. You can use tips to reward your concessions volunteers.

Recruiting Event Concessions Team Volunteers

If you’re using volunteers to staff your concessions stand, you need to start recruiting earlier than you think. Reach out to local volunteer groups, clubs, and other community organizations to find volunteers.

Stride Events integrates with Come Volunteer to offer free online volunteer sign up forms that you can customize to your event:

• Create Shifts & Jobs – Add all of the jobs you need volunteers to help with and set up shifts they can all sign up for.
• Mass Email Volunteers – Send emails with details about training and reminders about when and where to come for their volunteer shift.
• App Volunteer Check in – Check-in volunteers when they arrive for their shift from an integrated app.
• Autogenerate Promo Codes – Offer your volunteers discounted tickets to your event with their volunteer service.

With these tools, you’ll easily manage your volunteer program.

Sell Food Vendor Booths

If you’re working with local food vendors to supply your concessions, your revenue will come from selling booth space, not directly from selling concessions.

You can use Stride Events’ vendor booth sales tools to make this process easier:

• Booth Invoicing – Send invoices to food vendors who are going to have a presence at your event.
• Interactive Vendor Map – Sell vendor booths online with clickable map, so vendors can choose their spot. You can even price better booth spots higher.
• Director Approval – Require director approval before a vendor can pay for a booth spot. They’ll still be able to request an invoice online.
• Vendor Mass Email – Communicate important event day and event preparation details with your vendors so that everything goes well on event day.

With these tools, you can quickly and easily maintain full control over your event and your concessions area.