Customer Snapshot
- Tickets Sold: 2,600+
- Attendees: 6,000
- Event Days: 2
The Beaufort Oyster Festival started four years ago to help combat the shoulder-season lull many in the hospitality industry experience in Beaufort South Carolina. It’s a two day long festival that showcases food and drinks from a variety of local vendors. Everything is sourced locally, helping keep the dollars in the local economy, providing a much-needed boost for local hospitality businesses during their slower season.
In their first year a couple hundred people attended the festival. In the years since it’s grown to have thousands of attendees. At first, they were able to manage with more manual processes, but as the festival and guest count continued to grow, they knew they needed a more scalable solution.
More ways to sell
In the first couple years of the event, since they weren’t using a ticketing system yet, the Beaufort Oyster Festival team was limited in how they could sell tickets. “In the past we didn’t do presale tickets. We were just selling tickets on site,” said partner and event coordinator Caroline Bowen.
The festival is a free event, but attendees purchase tickets to buy food and drink from vendors. The way it works is they buy a ticket, then go to a check-in station to get physical tickets to use at vendor stations. Doing it that way reduces cash transactions, making it easier logistically for attendees and vendors.
With TicketSignup they were able to create a free website that allowed them to sell tickets beforehand. Having the website also made day-of purchases easier by giving attendees a self-serve option because TicketSignup sites auto generate a QR code people can scan with a mobile device to purchase tickets directly.
“The QR codes were really helpful. People could scan them and buy tickets on their own.” Using the Tickets App event staff could check people in quickly, see how many tickets they bought, and get them on their way to enjoying all the festival had to offer.
Keeping the day-of ducks in a row
Leveraging their website certainly helped curtail some congestion at the ticket booth, but when you’re serving incredible, locally sourced, food and drinks you’re going to have people wanting to come back for seconds. “Even if people bought presale tickets, a lot of them came back to buy more, so it was nice we could sell them on-site, too.”
The way they were able to accomplish this was by using the Tickets App, as well as TicketSignup’s Square integration. Essentially they made preset ticket batches people could purchase – which they could sell through the Tickets App.
From there, they could process credit and debit card transactions using a Square reader. All they had to do was set up the integration and plug the card reader into a mobile device using the Tickets App and they had a mobile register.
They also displayed menus with food and drink pricing at the ticket tent to make things even easier for attendees. “We had all the vendor menus at the ticket booth so people could figure out how many tickets they wanted to buy. ”
A helping hand
As impressed as the Beaufort Oyster Festival team were with the product, they were equally impressed with the service they received. “I got a response immediately any time I reached out to the TicketSignup team.”
Since this was Caroline’s first year with the festival, and first time using TicketSignup, their sales rep set aside time to help her get comfortable with the product, too. “I was new to the platform, so it was great that Jake took the time to walk me through building the website, and setting up the store. It was really helpful.”
Along with helping out with the initial set up, the TicketSignup team was ready to help out right away when an issue cropped up just days before the event. “Two days before the event I was struggling to get the Square integration set up and they jumped on a call right away and helped me get every set up.”
Moving forward
We at TicketSignup are thrilled to be along for the ride as the Beaufort Oyster Festival continues to grow and serve their community. Organizations like theirs are a big part of what excites and motivates us to continue developing great products and offering top-notch service to those who choose our platform to help them host outstanding events.
If you’d like to learn more about the Beaufort Oyster Festival, you can do so here. You can also create your own free event on TicketSignup here.