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Not to beat a dead horse, but OffBeat just did their jazz fest redux, and i think it's behind a paywall for subscribers. This is from the first blurb. I post it only because it describes the vendor paying 22.5% of the gross to the festival as fact, not rumor.
One of the biggest changes this year was the fallout of going cashless. Although the Jazz Fest indicated that the new system was being used to be more in line with other festivals, the change, in our opinion, was more for accountability. Some cash transactions could have (and probably have) fallen through the cracks, but it’s impossible to overlook the cashless ones. The new system consequently created substantially increased food prices (some at 30 percent or more), and tax was added to the total. In previous years, prices of food and beverage did not have taxes added to the total paid by the consumer; vendors were responsible for paying tax. To make matters worse, rather than making a tip optional, tipping was requested on each transaction at the buyer’s discretion. What was a “cash” business is now 100 percent transparent. Vendors had to increase prices to account for the 22.5 percent of gross sales that the Jazz Fest retained as a booth fee, to cover increased food and labor costs and also to cover a fee of 3.25 percent per transaction for running credit cards. That’s almost 26% of the vendors’ gross sales. There were several long-time vendors who dropped out this year (most notably, the Crawfish Bread and Cracklins), most probably due to the increased expense of operating the booth in the cashless system. And another annoying result for consumers was that the time needed to process transactions per customer basically doubled, causing long lines. We were told by several Fest attendees that they purchased less food this year, compared to other years. However, cashless is here to stay, so prepare to spend a lot more money on food and beverage at future Jazz Fests. You can bet that the city is clapping its hands in joy for the additional (guaranteed to be correct) tax revenue, and the Jazz Fest can now evaluate vendors performance while at the same time gain over a fifth of all vendors’ gross revenue. If the market will bear the increase in food prices and the vendors still make money, it’s a win…but not necessarily for buyers who saw their Jazz Fest food increase in price by a shocking amount.
One of the biggest changes this year was the fallout of going cashless. Although the Jazz Fest indicated that the new system was being used to be more in line with other festivals, the change, in our opinion, was more for accountability. Some cash transactions could have (and probably have) fallen through the cracks, but it’s impossible to overlook the cashless ones. The new system consequently created substantially increased food prices (some at 30 percent or more), and tax was added to the total. In previous years, prices of food and beverage did not have taxes added to the total paid by the consumer; vendors were responsible for paying tax. To make matters worse, rather than making a tip optional, tipping was requested on each transaction at the buyer’s discretion. What was a “cash” business is now 100 percent transparent. Vendors had to increase prices to account for the 22.5 percent of gross sales that the Jazz Fest retained as a booth fee, to cover increased food and labor costs and also to cover a fee of 3.25 percent per transaction for running credit cards. That’s almost 26% of the vendors’ gross sales. There were several long-time vendors who dropped out this year (most notably, the Crawfish Bread and Cracklins), most probably due to the increased expense of operating the booth in the cashless system. And another annoying result for consumers was that the time needed to process transactions per customer basically doubled, causing long lines. We were told by several Fest attendees that they purchased less food this year, compared to other years. However, cashless is here to stay, so prepare to spend a lot more money on food and beverage at future Jazz Fests. You can bet that the city is clapping its hands in joy for the additional (guaranteed to be correct) tax revenue, and the Jazz Fest can now evaluate vendors performance while at the same time gain over a fifth of all vendors’ gross revenue. If the market will bear the increase in food prices and the vendors still make money, it’s a win…but not necessarily for buyers who saw their Jazz Fest food increase in price by a shocking amount.
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