category Festivals

After all the excitement of St Tropez and the ‘Made in Chelsea’ TV location shoot we were involved in fixing and catering, Red Radish are now packing our flight cases to leave the sunny French Riviera and heading back to Hampshire in the UK where we will be getting ready to organise all the Crew and artist catering at yet another big UK Green field Festival production. We are pleased to have been booked by one of the biggest event organisers on the European Festival Industry, Brand Events . The team at Brand are reponsible for organising shows like Taste, TopGear Live and scores of  other great productions so it really is a great honour for us to be involved with these guys.
Our Chefs and crew will be feeding  as many as 500 people a day during the peak days of this great new festival and can’t wait for the challenge of doing all this from our own field kitchen and catering marquee. As well as the production team, we will be catering for everyone from ticketing, to security, sound, light, the guys responsible for the TV footage, bands like Razorlight, The Feeling and Texas plus even the great man himself, event organiser and Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans.

A backstage rider is presented to promoters by every worldwide or UK touring act and lists specifications on everything from stage design, lighting and sound systems to an individual artist’s wish list which would generally include everything from travel and billing, right through to dressing room details, accommodations and meals. Many backstage catering companies fear the dreaded rider but at Red Radish we literally love every one!

The rider was apparently made famous by Van Halen’s contractual demand that every brown M&M be removed from the group’s sweetie bowl and it seems the bigger the fame the bigger and often more complex the rider. Think Eminem and you are looking at Chateau Petrus, Jumbo shrimp and 25kg dumb bells, whilst Dollar (2013) and David Van Day will get away with an old hairdryer and a packet of crisps. Many elements of these sometime awkward riders often end up in the Red Radish inbox as their frantic management team wonder who will be able to keep their precocious charges happy and stop them spittimng their dummies out. We might play hard to get initially but secretly  the more obscure the rider the better the challenge. Just don’t tell their production guys we said so!

Read about your fave band’s quirky rider requests here at ‘The Smoking Gun’.