The irrepressible rise of Greek food, plant-based eating doubling and onsite spend up 18%. These were just some of the facts Togather has revealed from analysing F+B trends from this summer’s festival season.
The company, which curates the F+B at over 80 major events and festivals including The Long Road, GALA Festival and Love Supreme, analysed over 930,000 transactions and 1.7 million items sold to see what changed between 2025 and 2026.
The findings point to some key changes. Greek food has overtaken barbecue to become the most popular cuisine overall, while burgers remain the best-selling individual item. Indian food was the fastest-growing cuisine of the year, rising by 16% in year-on-year sales, while plant-based food doubled in popularity.
Past 10pm, chips outsell any other item, while churros fell behind crêpes and waffles in the dessert stakes.
Perhaps most importantly, the average spend on F+B onsite at events rose 18%, from £27 to £32.
Hugo Campbell, Togather Co-founder, said: “I wasn’t surprised that Greek was on top after seeing its popularity first-hand at our events, but I was pleased to observe the rise in plant-based eating at events. I don’t think this is necessarily about a rise in veganism or even environmental consciousness, although both are important, but more a recognition of just how good the vegan dishes our suppliers make are.”
These stats come ahead of Togather’s full annual trend report, which will be released at the end of the year.
10 KEY STATS
- Greek food is king. The cuisine overtook barbecue to become the most popular food in 2026, making up 8% of all sales. Within the cuisine, the most popular item was a chicken souvlaki wrap.
- Burgers remain the most popular individual item. Despite slipping 16% in overall sales, burgers make up 6.6% of all food items sold, followed closely by hot dogs (5%) and chicken souvlaki wraps.
- The fastest-growing cuisine was Indian, up 16% in year-on-year sales. The best-selling dish within the cuisine was a masala dosa.
- Plant-based eating doubled. Vegan items made up 8.4% of all sales, up from 4.2% in 2025, spread evenly between cuisines.
- Post 10pm, chips outsell everything else, making up 25% of all sales.
- Both crêpes and waffles overtook churros. Churros dropped to 4th in the dessert list at 5.3% of sales, overtaken by waffles (6.9%) and crêpes (12.9%). All fall far behind ice cream at 70% of dessert sales.
- The most popular hour for orders is 6-7pm, making up 12.4% of all orders. Sales between 9-10pm doubled year on year to 3.1% of all sales.
- The highest individual order was £262, for 8 margherita pizzas and 8 pepperoni pizzas, plus four soft drinks and two waters, from Made of Dough.
- Iced coffee grew again. Nearly one in four coffees sold on site in 2026 was iced (23%), up from one in six in 2025. Iced coffee sales rose 32% while hot coffee fell by 20%.
- Spend per head rose to £32, up from £27 in 2025 and £21 in 2024.
This study analysed 1,738,477 individual items sold across 933,789 separate transactions at Togather’s festival F+B operations. Togather provided food and drink at over 100 live events this summer alone.
Events featured in Togather’s festival data include: Love Supreme, The Long Road Festival, Rock Oyster Festival, Blenheim Palace Festival, Kew The Music, GALA Festival, Krankbrother, Maiden Voyage, Boiler Room & The Jazz Cafe, Country on the Common, Nocturne, Pride in London, Battersea Park in Concert, Bike Shed London, Rally Festival, Royal International Air Tattoo, The Game Fair, Windsor Great Park Illuminated, Great North Run, Affordable Art Fair, JCB LIV Golf and Canada Day London.
Togather is one of the UK’s largest live-event F+B partners, connecting festivals, stadia, venues and organisers with a curated network of more than 2,500 independent food, drink and catering operators. Togather works across many of the UK’s best-known festivals and live events.
Author: Sam Hyland
Sam is the assistant content manager for Event Industry News (EIN). Sam is involved in publishing news stories, videos and podcasts. Sam also collates the latest stories for the EIN e-newsletter. If you have a press release or story you think we might be interested to know about please email features@eventindustrynews.com
