Secrets of Family Style Food Festival’s Success

Back in 2019, Miles Canares teamed up with the creators of cult Streetwear company, The Hundreds, to co-found the Family Style Food Festival, a day-long event where killer chefs and cool kids’ clothing brands deliver a feast for food and fashion fanatics alike.

The Festival was acquired by Complex last year, and, as it gets ready to roll out on Saturday, September 13, in Los Angeles State Historic Park, Canares shared his insights on building and growing an event brand that keeps audiences and vendors coming back for more.

1. Think of your vendors as your headliners.

Whether it’s your food, music, and AV, content, signage, merch, invite, or even security or cleaning crew, I always tell restaurants during my courting process that this is like a music festival, and they’re our headliners. Event producers often depend on vendors from different industries to share how they want to be briefed on the project, but the secret is to create a universal way to communicate your vision, what the user experience should be, and any other context.

We provide chefs with a storytelling framework, content suggestions, and we even help them manage their marketing and merch creation. And why did I include security and cleaning? I learned this from my mentor, Aaron Levant, the CEO of Complex, who led the acquisition of Family Style. He would walk around his old events, and literally plot where every trash can was placed, what the security guards looked like, what the room smelled like, etc. I thought he was a freak at first, but it turns out these small details, especially as you scale up your audience, can add to larger problems or ideally to seamless execution where the people and the product are the focus.

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2. Find out what else your core audience is into.

Event management is community-building, and the most important way to expand your addressable attendees is to find crossover audiences that are a fit for your offering. I noticed this early on — the same people in line for two hours at the Supreme drop were the same people in line for two hours at Howlin’ Rays hot chicken. These two crowds, while on paper are completely different in nature, blend so well together that it’s now a sub-industry of its own. Be the one to bring them together, and you’ll not only win your core audience over, but you’ll also introduce a whole new crowd to what it is you’re doing.

3. Give your attendees bragging rights.

People love being the first to find something. At Family Style, we love to highlight restaurants that are either brand-new or completely under the radar. Attendees walk away saying, “I found them before everyone else.” That feeling creates evangelists who promote your event or your business long after it’s over. We also sell collab tees that they can’t buy anywhere else and food dishes that exist for one event only. Think about car unveil events — they always remove the sheet. Every event can make history in little (or big) ways. This can even apply to business, networking, or trade events. Have a unique industry member speak or co-host, over a sneak peek at a product, or introduce a new team member.

4. Post-event is where word of mouth is made.

While pre-event is about logistics and securing attendance, if you’re looking to turn attendance into commerce and ongoing engagement, your post-event strategy is actually the largest moment of truth. Ask yourself: how can your event live after the last guest leaves, or as we say, the gates close? After Family Style, we’ll sometimes do things like have the L.A.-based restaurants run the festival-only menu items for delivery the week after, then it becomes a high-value sponsorship item. It keeps the conversation alive and extends ROI for everyone involved.

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5. Assign one person to manage all of the visuals.

This year, we brought in Japanese artist Verdy to lead our visuals at Family Style, and it elevated not just how the festival looks, but also how sponsors and audiences perceive it. Good design isn’t optional—it’s what makes people care. I know that for a standard company or industry event this might seem like it’s not a part of the core scope, but assigning an intentional strategy to the look of the event doesn’t have to be a big undertaking so you can delegate it to another team member and sometimes a light color or lay-out theme can differentiate it, which is the most important outcome you can achieve.