A food festival in Italy cut food waste by 42% and increased revenue by 20%.
The solution wasn't complicated—it was ditching the paper stock list.
The €2,200 Mistake That
Happens Every Weekend
A chef throws away 220 sandwiches. That's €2,200 in the bin.
It happens every weekend at festivals across Italy. The chef ordered 400 sandwiches on Thursday. By Saturday midnight, he'd sold 180. The rest? Garbage.
And it's not because the food was bad or the crowd didn't show. It's because he guessed wrong when the supplier needed numbers.
Industry data from Lime Venue Portfolio shows the average event wastes 15-20% of food produced. At large festivals, the Skift Meetings Report found food waste can hit 60% of the total waste stream.
The culprit? The paper stock list. That clipboard system every festival vendor uses to "forecast demand."
Here's how it works at 95% of events:
The vendor looks at last year's sales (if they kept records). They factor in the weather forecast. They guess how the lineup will affect traffic. They add 10-20% as a safety buffer. Then they write it down and hope.
The problem is that demand at live events is unpredictable. A surprise rain shower cuts foot traffic by 40%. The headliner goes on late, and half the crowd rushes to the stage. A food truck three stalls down runs a promotion that steals your customers.
You can't predict any of this on Thursday. So vendors do what makes sense: they over-order. Better to have surplus than to sell out at 9pm and lose revenue.
Except surplus doesn't just sit there. It becomes waste. And waste becomes margin erosion.
In 2024, we ran a pilot with Mercatino del Gusto, a prestigious food festival in Puglia that draws 40,000 attendees annually.
We focused on the premium segment—3 exclusive restaurants running high-ticket chef dinners and tasting experiences in private villas. We're talking €140 average order value, not €8 sandwiches. Different economics, same waste problem.
We also ran a pilot with 5 food trucks out of the 40 on-site. But the real results came from the restaurant partners.
The hypothesis was simple: if vendors knew exact order quantities 2-3 days before the event, they'd waste less and earn more.
Here's what happened when those 3 restaurants switched from paper stock lists to PickEat's pre-order system:
Food Waste Reduction: -42% Vendors received confirmed orders 48-72 hours in advance. They prepped exactly what was sold. Zero guesswork.
Revenue Increase: +20% No more conservative ordering. Vendors who knew demand could scale up without risk.
No-Shows Eliminated: 100% Pre-payment plus confirmation messages meant every order placed was an order collected.
Revenue Per Restaurant: +197% Average revenue jumped from €934 (without PickEat) to €2,770 (with PickEat).
Pre-Event Cashflow: +93% Money hit the bank account 2-3 days before the event. Vendors could pay suppliers upfront and negotiate better terms.
In 2025, the restaurants ran two more events:
Salvatore Santese, President of Mercatino del Gusto, put it this way:
"We were able to increase food sales by 20% thanks to PickEat, but more importantly, we were able to cut costs and food waste by 42% because we were aware of the attendees' orders in advance."
The most telling comparison wasn't in the numbers—it was in what happened next.
The first event (with PickEat) sold out 2 days early. The restaurant hit capacity and stopped taking orders. Revenue secured before a single panino was made.
The second event (without PickEat) was canceled. It didn't reach the minimum attendance threshold, and the organizers pulled the plug rather than risk losses.
Same venue. Same market. Same chef. Different systems.
Pre-orders gave the first event certainty. The second had a clipboard and hope.
The Mercatino case isn't unique—it's replicable. The mechanics work at any event where:
That's food festivals, concerts, sports events, conferences, weddings—basically the entire live events industry.
The paper stock list isn't a charming relic of analog hospitality. It's a broken forecasting tool that costs vendors real money every single weekend.
Pre-orders solve this. Digital, confirmed, prepaid orders that give vendors the one thing they need most: certainty.
If you're running a food festival or managing vendors at live events, here's the math:
The Mercatino restaurants didn't just waste less—they earned more. Because when you know demand, you can meet it.
Want to calculate how much food your event is throwing away?
Run a free assessment at assessment.pickeat.it