Summer Festivals Reveal Mobile Coffee Van Benefits

Having a coffee van instead of a fixed café means you have a very different approach to custom. In the latter case, you will be relying on steady trade, often from regulars who you get to know, or from a high volume of passing trade, such as people working nearby in the business district of a city or visiting the vicinity for leisure and tourism reasons.

While the latter may be largely lucrative, one snag is that it can be inconsistent. A café in an area dominated by offices will be quiet at weekends. Some tourist hotspots will be seasonal. A location near a football ground can do a roaring trade on match days but not at other times, especially in the summer.

A coffee van, however, can offer more flexibility as you can move around to where people are gathering. This is never truer than during the summer music festival season, when there will be many events across the country.

Leading the list are some of the biggest and most prestigious music events. Glastonbury is the most famous and thousands of people gathered this year to see a star-studded line-up, featuring big names like Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, Arctic Monkeys and Blondie.

Anyone with a coffee van at the Worthy Farm site will no doubt do a roaring trade, but the great news for anyone in the South West is that the summer will bring many more events across the region. There is Barn on the Farm in Gloucestershire, NASS in Somerset, Womad in Wiltshire, and Boardmasters in Cornwall.

This is just the situation in one region of England. Those in the North- West, for instance, have already had Parklife in Manchester, with Blue Dot at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and Kendal Calling at Lowther Park in the Lake District still to come.

Other big festivals include Reading / Leeds, Green Man and others that have already taken place, such as Download and the Isle of Wight Festival.

All this will provide loads of opportunities for coffee van owners during the summer. But there will also be a vast number of much smaller festivals. Events that may not attract vast tent cities, world-famous names, or stampedes for tickets, but which nonetheless will be well attended and enjoyed by many, often because, rather than despite, their smaller size.

Many people love such festivals. Indeed, Quirky Campers has its own web page dedicated to them, featuring lesser-known events such as Elderflower Fields, the Purbeck Valley Folk Festival, Glastonbudget, Bearded Theory and Tropical Pressure.

Of course, these are just the music festivals. There are so many more wonderful events that make up the great British summer that you can get along to. There are flower shows, summer sporting events, local carnivals and fairs, all adding to the opportunities.

Some of these may be close enough to cafes for the owners to cash in on them. But with a coffee van – and a bit of forward planning – you can make sure you are in the right place every single time, providing great coffee to make these events even more fun than they already are.