It all started with a duck wrap. It was Friday afternoon and we’d just arrived, filled with the unique mix of anticipation and excitement that only a weekend festival can inspire. Before even checking out the stages, we had one thing on our minds: food. But what should have been a comforting meal instead set the tone for a question we asked each other, repeatedly, over the course of the weekend. ‘When did festival food get so expensive and… sad?’
The meat was greige and lukewarm, with a slightly sweaty middle. The lettuce was limp, and the tomato so watery it was almost translucent. And the cost? An incomprehensible £16.
Sadly, this isn’t a unique experience: a Reddit thread titled ‘Festival food prices are becoming absolutely insane in the UK’ attracted more than 1,000 interactions, with people also lamenting the diminishing quality of the food. Research by Opinium, a strategic insights platform, shows that almost one in three (29%) people have cut back on buying food on-site at festivals as a result of price increases, while another study revealed food prices rose between 8% to 10% on average across festivals in 2025. Everyone I spoke to for this page seemed to have their own story of depressingly portioned chips, or rice-heavy burritos with no sauce, from a similar event in the past year.
So, what’s happening exactly? Experts say it’s a combination of things – from the rising cost of utilities to the overarching companies who run the festivals increasing their cut. John Rostron, the CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals, tells us, ‘The cost of everything has gone up, so traders are caught in a pinch. They’ve got to get their prices right, and also want to get their quality right, but what’s going to happen to those margins? Something gets squeezed. All costs in festivals – except marketing – have gone up since the pandemic and Brexit.’
The owner of a burger joint, who wanted to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, added, ‘It doesn’t come from the greediness of traders. It comes from the amount of fees the festival organisers charge us. One of my non-negotiables was never to sell bad food, but it’s a constant battle – I know of six or seven [vendors] who went bankrupt last summer, despite us working our asses off. There is just no profit to be made after you finish paying everyone – the cost of goods, staff, electricity. So many can’t afford to operate.’
That said, she knows that corners do get cut. ‘I will never forget one Sunday at Glastonbury, I bought a pork baguette and it tasted like it had been brought to the site a month before.’ As a result, people are having to find their own way to make things work; whether it’s the return of the festival Pot Noodle or seeking out the reliable, brilliant stalls they know and love.
‘If [the vendors] Goan Fish Curries are at a festival, I am definitely going to be eating there at least once or twice,’ John adds. Sounds like you just need to know where to look - and it’s not the duck-wrap van.
Dusty Baxter-Wright is an award-winning journalist and the Entertainment and Lifestyle Director at Cosmopolitan, having previously worked at Sugarscape. She was named one of PPA’s 30 Under 30 for her work covering pop culture, careers, interiors and travel, and oversees the site’s Entertainment and Lifestyle strategy across print, digital and video. As a journalist for the best part of a decade, she has interviewed everyone from Louis Theroux and Channing Tatum to Margot Robbie and Ncuti Gatwa, while she has also spoken on Times Radio and BBC Radio. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram here.
