Avoid Running Dry: One of a festival producer’s worst nightmares is an empty tap or bottle with eager attendees still in line. Whether it’s a boutique vineyard gathering in New Zealand or a massive wine & food expo in California, running out of product mid-session can sour the entire experience. Proper planning around sampling agreements, depletion forecasting, and product returns is crucial to keep the wine (and other beverages) flowing. This article distills decades of festival production wisdom into practical steps so that no booth goes barren and no guest goes thirsty, no matter the festival’s size or location.
Sampling Agreements: Aligning Vendors and Expectations
Before the first cork is popped or keg is tapped, festival organizers should have clear sampling agreements in place with all beverage vendors. What’s a sampling agreement? It’s a mutual understanding – ideally written – between the festival and the vendors (wineries, breweries, etc.) detailing how product sampling will work. This ensures everyone prepares sufficient supply and follows consistent practices:
– Sample Sizes and Limits: Specify a standard pour size (e.g., 1 oz or 30 ml wine tastings) and enforce it. Uniform sample sizes prevent over-pouring and help vendors accurately gauge how many pours they can get from each bottle or keg.
– Quantity Commitments: Agree on how much product each vendor should bring based on expected attendance and their beverage’s popularity. For instance, a boutique winery from France may plan fewer samples than a local favorite winery that will attract bigger lines. Communicate your attendance projections so vendors can stock accordingly – if 5,000 attendees are expected, vendors must know to bring far more wine than if 500 attend.
– Cost and Compensation: Determine who covers the cost of the sampling stock. In some festivals (common in the US and UK), vendors consider samples as marketing and bear the cost by giving product for free tasting. In other cases (like certain Asian or European events), the festival might purchase product or attendees pay per sample. Whatever the model, make sure it’s agreed upon so vendors aren’t surprised. If the festival is buying the wine, arrange orders early and consider a consignment deal (paying only for what gets used) if available.
– Legal Compliance: Different countries and states have different laws on alcohol sampling. A festival organizer in India or Singapore, for example, may need special permits for free samples, while in many U.S. states, unlimited tasting for one ticket price is permissible under festival licenses. Ensure your agreements comply with local laws (e.g., minimum drinking age checks, sample volume limits) and that vendors are informed of these rules too.
– On-site Refill Protocol: Include a plan for on-site stock replenishment. If a winery’s table runs low, is there a festival stockroom or nearby refrigerated truck with their backup cases? Clarify how vendors can quickly grab more inventory during the event (some festivals employ “runners” or golf carts to ferry extra cases from storage to stalls). This agreement point ties directly into depletion planning – you want vendors to feel supported in keeping their booth supplied.
By setting these expectations early, you align all participants toward the common goal: every attendee gets to taste what they came for. A well-constructed sampling agreement not only prevents conflict or confusion, but also signals to vendors that the festival is professionally run, making them more likely to participate year after year.
Depletion Planning: Forecasting Pour-by-Pour
Once agreements are set, the next step is depletion planning – essentially, predicting how much wine (or beer, cider, etc.) will be consumed and ensuring you have slightly more than that on hand. Calculating this requires looking at your event’s specific context:
– Attendee Numbers & Drinking Habits: Use ticket sales and past attendance data to estimate crowd size. If your wine festival in Spain expects 2,000 attendees and each attendee usually samples 10 wines on average, that’s ~20,000 sample pours to plan for. Always err on the higher side of estimates to be safe. (Remember, it’s better to have a few unopened bottles left over than to run dry an hour early!)
– Session Length: A longer session or multiple sessions in a day will obviously see more total consumption. A 3-hour tasting afternoon might allow perhaps 5–8 samples per person, whereas an all-day festival might double that (with food and water breaks in between). Consider offering fewer sessions of longer duration versus more, shorter sessions – the latter can sometimes help manage supply because each session has a finite cap on pours per guest.
– Pour Size: Standardize it, as noted. If each sample is 1.5 oz (about 45 ml), one 750 ml bottle yields ~16 pours. A winery bringing 9 liters (a standard case of 12 bottles) has about 192 pours available. You can work backwards from anticipated pours: e.g., if a vendor expects 500 tastings of their wine, they need roughly 32 bottles (which is ~3 cases). If they serve from kegs (common for some wines-on-tap or beer at mixed festivals), know the equivalents – a 20-liter wine keg holds ~26 bottles worth of product, and a standard US beer keg (~15.5 gal) holds about 165 12oz servings (nearly 7 cases of beer). Converting all beverages to a common “sample pour” unit can help you and vendors speak the same language when planning stock.
– Vendor Popularity Variance: Not every booth will get equal traffic. A famous label or a country’s national pavilion (say, Italian wines at an international festival) might attract a line all day, while a lesser-known brand might see slower pick-up. Encourage vendors to prepare for success – bring enough to handle being one of the popular hits. One approach is to look at vendor size and fan-base: if you have data or intuition (or even ask the vendors for their own festival experience), allocate a higher expected number of pours to big names. For example: at a beer festival in Australia, guidelines suggested small craft breweries (tiny booths) might go through 1-2 kegs a session, whereas major brands might deplete 5-6 kegs in the same time (www.gabshub.com). Translating that to wine: a small boutique winery might need only a few cases per session, but a renowned winery or champagne house could require several dozen bottles ready.
– Environmental Factors: Don’t overlook external influences. Hot weather can increase drink consumption (as people may drink more white wine, rosé, or beer to cool off), while a colder day might reduce overall drinking or shift interest to reds and fortified wines. Additionally, if food options are sparse, attendees might drink a bit less versus a festival with plenty of salty snacks encouraging extra sips. Adjust your plans for climate, food pairings, and even time of day (afternoon crowd vs. evening crowd behavior).
After weighing these factors, do the math and come up with target volumes for the event and per vendor. Many veteran festival producers use formulas to sanity-check their plans. One simple formula for tasting events is:
Estimated Total Ounces Needed = (Event Minutes) × (Total Active Pouring Stations) × (Pours per Minute per Station) × (Sample Size in oz)
This might seem abstract, but it forces you to consider pour speed and attendee flow. For instance, if you have 50 vendor stations pouring, a 240-minute session, an average of 2 pours/minute happening at each (accounting for some idle time or talk), and a 1 oz sample size, you’d need 50 × 240 × 2 × 1 = 24,000 oz of wine/beer combined ready to serve. That’s about 947 bottles (750ml) in total! You can tweak the “pours per minute” factor depending on whether you expect rapid-fire tasting or leisurely conversations. The key is to avoid underestimation. Seasoned festival organizers will tell you anecdotally that it’s common to over-buy by 10–15% just in case. In fact, official festival playbooks reinforce this: “It’s always safer to slightly overestimate than be caught short.” (www.gabshub.com)
Finally, work closely with your ticketing platform and vendors on depletion planning. Share ticket sales updates with vendors in real time (a platform like Ticket Fairy makes this easy with live dashboards and analytics). If you see a late surge in ticket purchases from, say, a tour group in Mexico or a wine club in Canada, let your vendors know immediately. It’s far better they shove an extra case or keg in the van last-minute than to have nothing left to pour. One cautionary tale comes from a beer festival where its organizers under-communicated: they told brewers to expect 1,000 people, but sold far more tickets. The result? “They oversold tickets and it was crazy. Everyone ran out of beer.” (discussions.probrewer.com) Avoid such fiascos by planning based on actual data and generously rounding up your estimates.
Backup Stock and On-Site Contingencies
Even with projections in hand, wise festival organizers arrange backup stock and contingency measures. Think of this as your safety net – if anything unexpected happens (a vendor’s shipment gets stuck in customs, a particular wine is a surprise hit and kicks early, or a heat wave makes people drink double the water or beer), you have a Plan B.
– Backup Cases/Kegs: Aim to have at least 10-15% extra stock beyond the calculated need for each product. For example, if calculations say a winery will likely pour 20 bottles, have them bring 24 (2 cases) or more. Encourage vendors to keep some reserve inventory nearby but not all at their booth (to avoid clutter and temperature issues). If the venue has secure storage or reefer trucks, vendors can store extra kegs or cases there until needed. In an international festival like those in London or Singapore, where shipping logistics are complex, ensure imported products have a backup plan – perhaps local distributors can provide a few additional cases if the shipment runs low.
– Session Splitting: For festivals with multiple sessions or days (common in big events in the US, Canada, Australia, etc.), allocate stock per session. Never let vendors pour everything in session 1 and leave nothing for session 2. It sounds obvious, but excitement can lead to over-pouring early on. Instruct vendors on a per-session rationing plan if needed (e.g., “stick to pouring X bottles this session, then re-stock from your reserves for the next”). Between sessions, staff can help vendors restock and ice down fresh supplies. If one session has lower attendance, that’s your chance to preserve stock for later sessions or the next day.
– Emergency Alternatives: Consider having a small central stash of similar products as an emergency fallback. For instance, keep a few generic red and white wine cases (or a keg of common beer) that aren’t tied to a specific vendor to deploy if a stall completely runs dry and attendees are cranky. These could be sponsorship-provided beverages or extra from another event. While you ideally never tap into this, it’s a crowd-saver if, say, a headline winery’s booth goes dry and you can at least offer something else to their disappointed queue. Similarly, have spare non-alcoholic drinks and water – if people can’t get wine, at least they can hydrate (which is anyway important).
– Communication Radios/Apps: Equip your team and vendors with a way to call for backup before crisis hits. An example from major festivals in New Zealand and the UK is to use a messaging app or radio channel dedicated to stock requests. A vendor noticing they’re down to their last keg can send a quick message to the festival stock team, who then hustle over with a replacement or coordinate an alternative. The GABS beer festivals (Australia/New Zealand) use a “festival command” network for exactly this purpose – vendors message for restocks and are advised not to wait until they’re completely out before asking (www.gabshub.com). Early warning and quick response can prevent an outage that attendees would notice.
By building slack into your supplies and having a rapid response system, you greatly reduce the chance of guests encountering a dreaded “sorry, we’re out” sign mid-event. It’s like carrying a spare tire in your car; you hope you never need it, but if you do, you’re immensely grateful it’s there.
Quality Control: Setting Pull Thresholds
Planning inventory isn’t only about quantity – it’s also about quality. Festivals should deliver great experiences, which means every pour should taste as intended. This is why setting quality thresholds for “pulls” (removing a product from service) is important. In simple terms, decide in advance when a bottle or keg should be pulled out (stopped from serving) for quality reasons:
– Wine Freshness: Once opened, wines (especially delicate whites and sparklings) can start to oxidize or lose character over hours. A good rule of thumb: if a bottle has been open and half-empty for more than a couple of hours in hot conditions, consider pulling it from the tasting lineup (replace with a fresh bottle) to ensure newcomers get a fresh pour. Some festivals use wine preservation tools (like argon gas) to extend open bottle life, which is great, but staff still need to taste periodically. If an open bottle tastes off, instruct the vendor to stop serving it immediately. It’s far better to “waste” half a bottle than to give a guest a bad sample that leaves a poor impression of the winery.
– Beer and Cider Quality: For any breweries or cideries serving, foamy or flat pours are signs of trouble. If a keg is pouring mostly foam and basic fixes (adjusting pressure or temperature) don’t solve it, have a threshold (say 5 minutes of persistent foam issues) after which you swap that keg out for a backup. Similarly for an almost-empty keg that’s sputtering – don’t try to squeeze out every last drop while people wait; switch it before the glasses coming out turn 50% foam. Also, maintain proper temperature – a keg that’s gone warm can taste “off”; if it can’t be chilled, better to pull it and not serve than to give a subpar warm sample. This level of quality control shows attendees that your festival cares about the experience, not just stretching inventory.
– Spoilage and Flaws: Corked bottles (with TCA taint), contaminated brews, or any obvious flaws must be pulled immediately. Train pouring staff to flag anything weird (smell/taste) and have a supervisor with authority to approve pulling that product. If possible, have a replacement ready (even if it’s a different batch or a similar style beverage) so the booth isn’t empty. For example, if a particular vintage of a wine is discovered to be flawed, perhaps the winery can pour a different vintage of the same wine from their reserve stock instead.
– Serving Vessel Issues: Sometimes the problem isn’t the liquid but the vessel or lines – e.g., bits of cork in the wine, or a dirty tap line causing off-flavors. Part of your quality threshold plan could be, “if we see more than X number of complaints about a product’s taste, or something visible like sediment/cloudiness that shouldn’t be there, we pause service at that station to troubleshoot.” Have spare clean glassware, filters, or even an extra jockey box (portable tap system) on hand so you can quickly swap equipment if needed to fix quality problems.
– Communicate the Policy: Let vendors know beforehand that it’s okay to pull a product for quality reasons and it will not reflect poorly on them. Some vendors might hesitate to stop serving because they fear losing sales or wasting stock. Emphasize that protecting their brand’s reputation is priority – it’s better to say “sorry, that keg went bad so we stopped serving it” than to serve hundreds of bad-tasting samples. Work out who they should notify (e.g., an event floor manager) if they do pull something, so that manager can assist (maybe helping them tap a fresh keg or announce a substitution).
By defining these thresholds, you essentially give permission for quality over quantity. Festivals in wine-savvy cultures like France or Italy know that one oxidized pour can turn away a connoisseur – so they vigilantly monitor what’s being served. The same goes for craft beer festivals in Germany or Belgium; an off-tasting beer is quickly removed from the lineup to maintain overall quality. Your festival’s standard should be no different: strive for every sample to be a good one.
Returns and Post-Event Leftovers
After the last attendee has headed home (perhaps with a souvenir wine glass in hand), you may be looking at a pile of unused inventory. Efficient returns and leftover management will salvage value, reduce waste, and set you up well with vendors for next time.
– Pre-Arrange Return Policies: Before the festival, negotiate return terms with your suppliers or distributors. Many alcohol distributors have a “sale or return” policy for large events – meaning you can return unopened cases or untapped kegs for credit or refund. Not all will do this, but it’s worth asking, especially for costly wines or imported stock. For example, if you bought 20 cases of a particular wine and only used 15, being able to return the remaining 5 saves significant money. Make sure to only return items in sellable condition (unopened, labels intact, not heat-damaged).
– Keep Whole Units Intact: A smart tip during the festival is to avoid opening more bottles or cases than necessary toward the end. If it’s the final hour and a vendor has one sealed case left, they might manage pours to avoid cracking it unless needed. Whole, unopened cases are much easier to return to stock than a case that’s had even one bottle taken out. Distributors typically only accept full cases (www.beeradvocate.com). Similarly, an untapped keg can often go back to the brewer or distributor, but a half-empty keg is usually a loss (you’ll still return it, but only for deposit, not credit). So, when monitoring supplies, try to consolidate usage such that you maximize complete units leftover.
– Document the Depletion: Post-event, have vendors report what they used versus what they have left. Compare against your initial forecasts – this is invaluable data for planning the next festival. Perhaps you overestimated the popularity of Spanish wines and underestimated the Australian ones; next time you’ll adjust orders accordingly. Also note any vendor who did run out early or had to dip into emergency stock – that’s a sign to increase their allocation in the future.
– Use Up or Donate Leftovers: For products that cannot be returned (partial cases, opened bottles, etc.), plan a use to avoid waste. Some festivals host an informal staff/volunteer appreciation gathering after closing, where leftover open bottles can be enjoyed in a responsible way (abiding by liquor laws, of course). Another option is donating untouched products to a local charity auction or community event – many non-profits would gladly accept good wine or beer for their fundraisers (check legality and quality before donating). In Mexico, for instance, some wine festivals donate excess wine to culinary schools for training purposes. The idea is to turn excess into goodwill if you can’t recoup it financially.
– Asset Recovery: Don’t forget to return physical assets as well – keg shells back to breweries (make sure all rented kegs are collected so you don’t get hit with fees), tap equipment to suppliers, unused glasses or merchandise back to storage, etc. Doing a thorough sweep ensures nothing gets lost. This also ties into cost management: if you rented cooling units or tubs, returning them on time avoids extra charges.
By effectively managing returns and leftovers, you demonstrate professionalism and fiscal responsibility. Vendors will appreciate getting back untapped kegs (so they can sell them elsewhere) and seeing that you’re not negligently wasting their product. It strengthens relationships and often they’ll be more willing to be generous with supply at the next event, knowing they won’t be left holding the bag for excess stock. Plus, your budget will thank you for not paying for alcohol that ended up sitting in a warehouse unsold.
Real-World Reflections
To tie it all together, let’s reflect on how these practices manifest in real festivals across the globe:
– At the Vancouver International Wine Festival in Canada, festival organizers coordinate hundreds of wineries and saw around 42,000 bottles of wine poured for 25,000 attendees in one week-long festival (wineindustryadvisor.com). This massive scale is only possible through careful supply logistics – each winery is advised on how much to pour per session, and the festival has meticulous tracking to avoid any booth running dry despite the huge number of samples. They’ve learned that a combination of good data and vendor communication yields a smooth experience even at high volume.
– In emerging wine markets like India and Indonesia, festivals are newer but growing. Organizers there often face a challenge of convincing vendors to bring enough product (due to import costs or conservative estimates). By implementing formal sampling agreements and sharing successful case studies from other countries, they are overcoming hesitancy. For example, an event in Mumbai, India, found that after assuring wineries that unused wine could be returned or would be handled properly, the wineries were willing to ship in extra cases. The result was an event that impressively never ran out of any varietal, building attendee trust in a region where wine festivals are still gaining credibility.
– Conversely, lessons sometimes come the hard way. A well-publicized beer festival incident in the US saw popular taps run dry within the first hour due to poor planning. Attendees, some of whom traveled from abroad, were furious. The takeaway for the festival’s organizers was to never assume a light turnout and to always have fallback kegs. The next year, they radically changed their approach – doubling stock estimates, staggering special releases throughout the day (so one keg kicking didn’t leave nothing fun to drink), and investing in better cold storage so quality was maintained. Redemption was achieved as that subsequent event not only avoided outages, but actually ended with a surplus which was donated to a local brewery tour charity event.
– Even at small local festivals – imagine a quaint wine & cheese weekend in a town in France or a craft beer afternoon in a Californian county fairground – these principles apply. The scale might be modest, but the expectations of attendees are the same: they paid for a festival experience and will be disappointed if a particular booth says “come back next year, we ran out.” One French village wine festival started requiring each vintner to bring 20% more wine than they thought they’d need after one year where an unexpected influx of visitors from Belgium drank the cellars dry. Since then, they’ve boasted zero outages, and yes, a happy (if slightly tipsy) crowd.
In essence, festivals that flourish are those that plan for the best-case scenario (huge demand) and worst-case scenario (something goes wrong) simultaneously. As a mentor might say: prepare like a pessimist, so you can celebrate like an optimist! By rigorously planning your sampling agreements, monitoring depletion, keeping backups, enforcing quality, and smoothing out returns, you pave the way for a festival that runs like a well-oiled machine (or well-poured wine).
Every culture and country may have its unique twist – from Germany’s beer stein-fests to New Zealand’s vineyard concerts – but the fundamentals of supply management are universal. The next generation of festival producers who master these will not only avoid calamities but create legendary events where the only thing attendees remember is the great time they had (rather than the cabernet that ran out at 2 PM).
Key Takeaways
- Plan Generously: Always estimate slightly higher consumption than your best guess. Running out costs more (in refunds or reputation) than a few leftover bottles. Use formulas and past data to guide you, and then add a safety margin.
- Solid Sampling Agreements: Set clear terms with vendors on sample sizes, expected stock, and who covers what. This alignment prevents miscommunication and ensures vendors bring adequate product and understand festival policies.
- Monitor and Communicate: Keep tabs on ticket sales and crowd flow, and share that info with vendors. A great ticketing system (like Ticket Fairy) provides real-time insights. Don’t hesitate to adjust plans on the fly if you see trends – better to redistribute or slow pours than to go dry early.
- Backup Supplies Are a Must: Have extra cases/kegs in reserve and a system for quick resupply during the event. Plan per session so each time slot is fully stocked. It’s insurance against surprises, from surges in consumption to unforeseen losses.
- Never Compromise on Quality: Empower vendors and staff to pull any product that isn’t up to standard. Attendees will forgive an unavailable item more than a bad-tasting one. Maintain temperature control, taste test periodically, and swap out anything that falters.
- Arrange Returns & Reduce Waste: Work out returnable stock with suppliers ahead of time and avoid opening everything if it’s not needed. After the festival, return unused inventory where possible and smartly repurpose or donate leftovers. This saves money and builds goodwill.
By following these guidelines, a festival producer can confidently say they’ve done everything to keep the wine (and beer, cider, or spirits) flowing. No matter if it’s a small regional fair or a giant international expo, the goal is the same: delight your attendees without any “dry spells,” from the first pour to the last!
22nd September 2025