Event Day
Day BookHow many have to go out of the window before the pitch is paid.
A pitch fee arrives as a single number in July and gets answered on instinct. Nobody works out how many plates it actually costs, because that means knowing what a plate contributes after what went into it — and that figure lives in four places, none of them together.
Somebody offers you a pitch for the weekend. This works out how many have to sell before the day has paid for itself at the mix you expect, draws where that sits against the day you are planning, and costs the prep that does not sell at what it cost you rather than at what it would have made.
About this tool
What Event Day solves
A day at a festival has one piece of arithmetic in it and almost nobody does it. Everything sold contributes its price minus what that one cost to make. The pitch fee, the fuel, the propane and the extra pair of hands do not move with sales at all. So the day breaks even at the fixed cost divided by what a unit contributes — and with more than one thing on the menu, a unit means one unit at the mix being expected, which is an assumption this states on the page rather than burying. It rounds that number UP, because half a plate does not pay half a pitch fee and a break-even that has not broken even is worse than none. Prep that does not sell is costed separately and at what it cost, never at what it would have sold for, because that money was never anybody’s. It is the only tool here that draws its answer, and the line is straight because the arithmetic is — nothing is fitted, smoothed or projected. It forecasts no crowd, suggests no price, and will not tell you whether to take the booking.
Yours would be built the same way.
This one runs on made-up data. The version built for your business runs on yours, and you own it outright. Builds start at $2,500. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins. The first conversation is free.