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Secret Garden Party preparing alcohol pre-order system

By | Published on Monday 9 January 2017

Secret Garden Party

The Secret Garden Party festival has responded to a reported ban on any alcohol being brought onto its site by ticket holders at its 2017 edition, reports which followed a since deleted change to the event’s website last week.

Having spotted that reference before its removal, Efestivals reported that the festival had announced an outright alcohol ban, instead implementing a pre-order system allowing punters to pre-order their booze from the festival itself “at supermarket prices” for collection once they arrive on site.

This information was subsequently removed from the festival’s website, and organisers issued a statement to Efestivals explaining: “We are considering a pre-order off-licence system so people would be able to order and collect, exactly as you would at a supermarket, and at competitive prices rather than money being spent at the local Tesco superstore which cleans up every year – apparently describing the weekend as ‘bigger than Christmas'”.

“We were not trying to slip this past anyone”, it continued. “We are finalising the logistics behind the scheme, and preparing to release the pre-order system. For this to work it would have to be fully publicised, but we put a note in our ts and cs, initially more as a marker, with more info to come. Admittedly we could have been clearer here”.

It concluded: “Our intention was, yes, to make a little more money from alcohol sales that we can put back into the party but also for the sake of our gardeners, who would no longer have to lug warm beers from their cars or the bus to their camping sites, rather get cold ones on site when they’d arrived”.

On-site alcohol sales are, of course, often what makes the difference between a festival breaking even or running at a loss. So it possibly makes sense for SGP to attempt to get a cut of the action on the alcohol that lines its campsites, as well as from sales in its bars. If a success, it will be interesting to see if other events roll out similar options.



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