Dining aficionados can find a way to any corner of the world if you give them the taste and experience they are looking for. This unbeatable combination has always been a crowd puller, be it for event ideas like Oktoberfest or a wine tasting festival. If you’ve been on the lookout for inspiring ideas to organize your own food and drinks festival, your search ends here!
Here is our curated list of 10 food & drink festival ideas
1. Mexican Food & Drinks Festival
The burritos, tortillas, and tacos with a mild spice in them can get your attendees craving for more. Host a Mexican food and drink festival and tie up with your local brewery and let the beers flow. You can either host a single-day event or a two-day event depending on your response’s response while promoting your food network event.
2. Seafood & Wine Festival
Be it shrimps or oysters, people love seafood and will flock from any part of the state to enjoy the festival. Along with wine tasting, you’re sure to get your event sold out. Keep a variety of fish, so your attendees get to try multiple delicacies at your event.
Do you want to make your festival popular? Host a contest to open oysters at your event and watch the fun or keep it classy, your choice.
3. Chef’s Palette
With a few renowned celebrity chefs, you can host a great food and wine festival. That way, the chefs get to promote their food or restaurant and make your festival a big hit in the community. The chefs could make their signature dishes or go with a specific theme for the event. Combine it with cocktails and turn it into the best night with some music at your event.
4. A Mini Oktoberfest
Hosting a local Oktoberfest will surely make you popular in no time. Since it’s a German folk fest, you can either choose to have German food like pretzels, pork knuckles or go with what your attendees love to eat. Beer festivals are incomplete without beer tents so try to organize multiple tents serving different types of beer or maybe just one single tent with live music and liters of beer.
To know more about how to host a local Oktoberfest, read our blog – “A Presenter’s Guide to Hosting a Local Oktoberfest“.
5. Food Tasting Festival
You don’t necessarily need to call Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson to host this festival. This can be more of a local town event, wherein you can invite the best of the chefs/home cooks to present their food and let your attendees taste the dishes to decide who’s the winner. Such events offer attendees a great experience and they get to try multiple dishes at your event.
Learn How You Can Host The Best Food Festival in Town.
6. Dessert & Drinks Festival
Break the stereotypes while people always try food fests. You can give your attendees a unique experience by hosting a desserts and drinks festival with S’mores and fried twinkies along with chocolate cocktails. You can also offer a combination of desserts and drinks through liquor-infused chocolates.
7. Barbeque & Beer Fest
If you’re missing the wild wild west and you want to incorporate the Texan theme, you can host a classic BBQ and beer fest. Set up multiple barbecue stations with different meats and sauces accompanied by fresh green salads. Yes, our mouths are watering as we write this. You can have burgers and sausages, along with the steaks so your attendees have multiple choices to try.
Alternatively, you can set up multiple popular food trucks and photo booths at your event. Offer your attendees bundled tickets that will include the cost of 1 meal and a pint. Family-friendly meals would also be a hit.
8. Healthy Dining Festival
As the name suggests, this one’s for the health-conscious(or the ones pretending to be) event attendees. You can have grilled meats with olive oil accompanied by salads. Instead of beers, you can have one section of mocktails like Jasmine ginger iced green tea or grapefruit cinnamon soda. Your guests will look forward to a detox event like this since it’s unique and offers health benefits along with taste.
9. China Town
Host a Chinese food festival in your city or neighbourhood. Whether it’s the Crab Rangoon or the General Tso’s Chicken, your attendees will love to try Asian-inspired cuisine full of flavor. Incorporate soups and salads in your menu along with fried dumplings and egg rolls to drive the foodies to your event. Bring life to your event with live chuigushou and people serving dishes in traditional Chinese Qipao
10. Quirky Foods & Local Beer
While you may find chicken and waffles, chitterlings, and scrapple to be weird dishes, your attendees may want to try all of them. You can have strange & quirky foods from all around the world, so people coming to your event have a reason to be a part of it. Serve the drunken shrimps or the Escamole from Mexico with some local beer and get ready to be in the limelight for the weirdest dishes you’ve served your attendees.
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