How to plan a coffee festival in your local community

Whether you’ve worked in the coffee industry for years or simply class yourself as a serious aficionado – planning a coffee festival could be a really rewarding move.

This quick guide takes you through some of the most important steps you’ll need to take to do so – with tips from people who’ve successfully set up their own thriving coffee festivals.

Let’s go ☕. 

Define your target audience 

As a first step it’s crucial to understand the type of people you expect to visit your coffee festival.

“Know who you are doing it for and why,” advises Steven Moloney from Nordic Coffee Fest. “This seems simple, but having this really clear from the beginning – and built into all of your goals and internal communication – helps so much when you have to start compromising and prioritising money, time and staff.” 

To define your target audience, it’s important to think about not only who you envision coming to your festival – but what they expect to gain from it. 

One way to do this is to reach out to your local community. “We spent about three months talking to everyone we could about what they felt was missing from an event like this, what they would hope for, what they didn’t want and a bunch of other questions,” explains Steve. “It was important for us to understand the problem that people wanted solving before we established if a festival was the right solution and if we were the right people to do it.” 

Start to plan what shape your coffee festival will take

Once you’ve defined your target audience and carried out some market research, you’ll have a much better idea of what shape your coffee festival should take. Through speaking with your local community, as Steve recommends above, you should be able to find out things like:

• What kind of coffee varieties people would like to see at an event like yours.
• Whether people expect additional entertainment, like live music.
• What kind of location or venue would work well for your community. 
• Whether or not people expect there to be food at your festival – and what kind.

Of course, it’s likely you have your own ideas for what makes an awesome coffee festival, too. This is your area of expertise, after all. And, while market research can help you hone these ideas and ensure they’re viable, it’s also important to stay true to your own creative vision.

Joana Vieiralves Wood from Bristol Coffee Festival advises:

“Don't let your mind trick into simply copying other festivals. Create things that you believe in – and people will come.”

Wise words, we say! 🙌

Create a budget for your festival – and be vigilant over it

Next, it’s time to get stuck into the financials of your event. Defining how much you plan to spend in the earliest planning stages will ensure your costs don’t spiral. To create a budget, list out all the areas you’ll need to spend money on, and carry out research into the potential cost of each item on your list. For a coffee festival, your list might look something like this:

• Your venue/festival site
• Décor and the general cost of setting up your site
• Event permits
• A/V and other electrical equipment
• Staff to work your festival
• Amenities – like parking and portaloo hire
• Water and power
• Marketing
• Insurance
• Security staff
• A contingency fund in case anything goes wrong

Joana explains that it’s also important to, “Make sure that you invest your money in the right support. For me,” she explains, “That means investing in a production company that can give us support with all the technical aspects of our festival.”

And on the topic of budgeting, Steve highlights that, “When you produce a bigger event that has many costs involved, a lot of the financial success of the event is not just about making money but also being smart about keeping those costs low when you can. This can be through fostering better and smarter relationships with suppliers or just having a really clear idea about your priorities and what you want to spend that time and money on.”

Make a clear plan for how you’ll handle all the logistics of your event

A lot of different elements go into planning a successful coffee festival. With so many spinning plates to handle, you’ll need a reliable team who can help keep things on track. If you’re not in the position to hire a decent sized team, it’s important to keep your festival plans small, so you can handle all planning aspects with a limited amount of help. Alternatively, if you plan on raising money for a good cause through your event, you might be able to hire a team of volunteers. 

💡Tip: Learn how to recruit amazing volunteers in our quick guide >

“One of the most challenging aspects of planning our coffee festival is simply the overwhelming number of things to think about and do,” Steve explains. “From toilets to ticketing to communications – there are a million things that need to happen for the experience to be great for everyone who comes. Managing all of this requires either a lot of people and time – or to start small and slowly and build up elements as you go from year to year.”

Joana also talks about the difficulty of handling the logistics of a coffee festival. “There are so many details to think about,” She says. “You need to post on social media, set up tickets, sell stands, make sure that people are aware of the event and be careful to not spend too much money in case you don’t sell out. It’s a lot! I manage to stay organised with spreadsheets, post-its, endless lists, and working long hours.”

Secure your festival venue, date and time

Next up, it’s time to source the perfect venue for your festival. This might be an outdoor or indoor site. 

When choosing a venue, some things to think about include:

• The size and general feel of the venue – will it allow you to bring your coffee festival vision to life, and accommodate all of your exhibitors and attendees?
• Practical elements – e.g. is there access to electricity and enough power outlets?
• Weather factors – will it be too hot, too cold or not sheltered enough for the time of year you want to host your event?
• Amenities and transport – how easy will it be for your attendees to get to the location? Is there parking or close public transport links?
• Availability – does the venue have ‘good dates’ available? (See our points on choosing the perfect date below 👇.

When choosing a date for your festival, it’s important to consider:

• Are there any similar events going on on the same date or close to your date? If so, potential attendees may not be as interested in your event.
• Are there any major clashes that could impact the success of your event? For example, hosting your coffee festival on the same weekend as, say, Glastonbury festival (if you’re in the UK) may not be a wise move. Likewise, it’s best to avoid clashing with any major cultural/historical happenings.

Source your coffee exhibitors 

This should be where things start to get fun! Your coffee festival is all about the amazing varieties of coffee you choose to exhibit – so now’s the time to start building relationships with exciting vendors who can bring your vision to life.

It may be that you already have a strong network of potential vendors around you – say, from working in the industry. If not, you’ll need to focus on reaching out to potential exhibitors and explaining why they would benefit from taking part in your festival. 

Either way, you should be prepared to provide anyone who may want to get involved with your event with the following information:

• Whether or not it’s free to take part in your event – if not, how much will they have to pay for a stand?
• What you expect the footfall of your event to be (so they can work out how much profit they can expect to make).
• What amenities you’ll provide – for example, electrical outlets, water supply, storage, waste disposal.
• Important information about your venue/location – for example, parking availability, toilets, exits and entrances.
• How the stalls will be laid out and whether or not vendors get to choose their spot.

Secure any necessary permits

Most events need at least a handful of permits to be able to take place. These might include things like food permits, park use permits, electricity permits, and alcohol permits. The best way to work out what permits you might need is to contact your local council.

Take a multi-pronged marketing approach 

Another crucial aspect to get right when planning your festival is actually getting the word out about it. 

“One of the most challenging things to get right when planning a coffee festival is to actually get people to come,” Steve explains. “Because all of that work is really for nothing if it’s just you standing in the room. Part of this comes from marketing, communication, partners, and exhibitors but for me the most important and most difficult thing is to make sure you understand who you are creating the festival for, what they are looking for and how you are going to communicate and then deliver that for them. If you can do that then you should have a successful festival.”

So, how exactly does Steve and the team behind Nordic Coffee Fest go about marketing their event?

“We spend a lot of time on word of mouth based marketing and direct marketing. So there is a big focus on email marketing and social media and on leveraging the amazing people and companies that come to the event to help spread the word to their followers, customers and friends. When their market is also your market, it can go a long way to have them be ambassadors for the festival – which is why we spend a lot of time on relationship development with our partners and exhibitors. We also do some old school stuff like flyer runs.”

When it comes to marketing your own coffee festival, aim to focus on a variety of avenues for best results. These might include:

• Social media marketing
• Placing flyers and posters around your town or village
• Working with your exhibitors and ensuring they have the right materials to market your event through their own channels
• Engaging with your local community – whether via social media groups or in person

Set up event registration for your coffee festival

Finally, you’ll need to set up a way for people to buy tickets to your festival. 

🎺Time to blow our own trumpet a bit…

Ticket Tailor is packed full of useful ticketing features designed specifically to help festivals go off without a hitch. Plus, we’re one of the cheapest platforms around thanks to the fact we’re independent, and genuinely care about keeping things affordable for event creators. 

📣See what Steve has to say about ticketing his festival through Ticket Tailor:

“We’ve been working with Ticket Tailor since back in 2017 or so. We’ve always loved the simple, low-cost pricing model and have been constantly impressed with the growth and addition of features. But above all else it’s Ticket Tailor’s values that keep us with them. The fact that they haven’t turned into a super expensive, cash-grab company like other tech solutions and that they’ve been so progressive with environmental policies, measuring carbon emissions, and getting B corp status makes us proud to be a partner of Ticket Tailor.”

💫 Feeling inspired? Find out more about how Ticket Tailor can help turn your coffee festival dreams into reality with thoughtful, low-cost ticketing for festivals >