Global Gathering Food Guide

This weekend was Global Gathering. At 50,000 visitors officially our biggest festival so far. There are road closures, the traffic grinds to a standstill all around it. Stepping through the gates you enter a bubble of dance music (with your hands in the air like you’ve taken too many pills) and away you go for the weekend, stopping only for breakfast on Saturday to try and work out where you left your other flip flop and why the Pikachu onsie was a solid fashion choice.

I’d probably use the word messy. From the aisles of gentlemen peeing thoughtfully against the wire fence to the mud-soaked lost souls of Saturday night after the downpour to the lady who dangled herself over a picnic table and threw up on her friend. Dance music festivals are not for the faint-hearted.

The main arena is a seething mass of waxed chests and dubious smells in the sun or plastic ponchos and abandoned footwear once the rain came down. The discarded remains of hundreds of high-volume meals litter the ground like a paper carton and napkin war-zone, and everyone is having, what I can only assume is – from the wide grins and impromptu shouting – a lovely time. This is not your natural home for street food.

Except that through a gap in the barrier walls, if you are in possession of the correct wrist band, there is the VIP area: People who have shelled out extra for a space larger than a single breath of stale air to pitch a tent and for toilets that actually flush. These people have upgraded to a field of comparative calm away from the carnage, and are there in much smaller numbers.

A main arena pitch at one of the major UK festivals will set you back several thousand pounds. It will also mean that you spend your entire weekend shouting at your customers and selling food as fast as you possibly can. This is where we realise that we are not event caterers. We cannot bosh out a toastie every 6 seconds, and to be honest I wouldn’t want to.

I love this job because even in the thumping music you can have a random exchange which results in fist-bumps all round and a guy describing Barny as having Swag. You can have earnest conversations with people about WHY this is the best toastie they have ever eaten (twice). You can serve lots of toasties, which is great, but you can sell them at a speed that means they are still made properly and taste nice.

VIP trading also means you need a wrist band that will get you into that area, and the crew areas. It turned out that this Production Wrist Band happened to also have back stage access, which our two lovely helpers E and D discovered when they presented it to security and asked where it could get them. Bonus.

The perception of most music festivals is that you don’t really know or care what you’re eating when you’re sleeping in a tent and wearing someone else’s Pokémon pyjamas. I’m not actually sure that’s true. We made most of our money off repeat trade that weekend, and heard a whole load of rants about the food elsewhere on site. While I’m pretty sure that most festival goers really are just there for the music and and perfectly satisfied with whatever is closest, there is a market, hidden away amongst those who have realised that a hand sink is something to be cherished, that does just fancy a delicious toasted sandwich. Hopefully, that is where you will find us.

Thanks very much to D & E for your help. We really could not have done it without you.