We bring brands to life at festivals and events with interactive sampling, including hot food, drink and product activations.
Festival and event sampling is the practice of activating your brand at live, high-footfall experiential environments — from major consumer festivals and live events to outdoor shows and experiential roadshows. It’s all about taking your product directly to engaged audiences, creating memorable brand interactions, and driving trial in a lively, social setting.
Unlike in-store sampling, these activations connect with enthusiastic crowds who are already in discovery mode, open to new experiences, and ready to engage with brands in an authentic, face-to-face way. Food festivals, in particular, are a prime opportunity to showcase taste-led products and build lasting consumer awareness.
Typical campaigns can include:
Mobile kitchen vans, hot food sampling stations, tasting zones or live demo stages
Multi-location roadshows, pop-ups and outdoor activations
Collaborative tie-ins between food, drink and lifestyle brands with live entertainment
Real-time data capture (QR, tablets, opt-ins) with live analytics and ROI reporting
We deliver full-service sampling at festivals and live events from end to end.
Here’s a list of festivals ideal for sampling campaigns with audience stats and why they matter.
Taste of London
Foodies Festival
Big Feastival
Other key events & festivals
If you have an idea for a food festival, music festival or events sampling tour, get in touch. We’ll help you navigate the minefield of the best value festivals — which ones to do, which ones to miss, and how to do it. Get in touch using the form below.
Food festivals get booked up fast. Most are fully booked with just 3 months to go. Ideally we’d book the actual space at the festival 4-6 months in advance. Typically 12-16 weeks is recommended to secure prime location, build booth, arrange logistics and staff training. Shorter lead times are possible but may limit booth choice and increase cost.
Food and drink brands launching new SKUs, seeking trial, building brand awareness, or entering new regions. Also lifestyle and consumer brands using food-centric environments as a hook.
It can be more expensive due to stand build, logistics, event fees, staffing and power and water requirements but the audience quality, dwell time and social amplification often deliver much higher ROI.
We design capture touch-points for ease and speed: quick QR scans, tablets with one-click opt-in, incentive giveaways to boost sign-ups, short surveys.
Yes. We include content capture (photo, short video, UGC) as standard. You’ll receive a content pack and social assets after activation.
Yes. We have nationwide staffing, logistics network and modular booth builds that scale across cities and events.
Tofoo Summer Sampling Tour
Fire & Smoke Sampling Van
We worked with iMP on stands for two different events and were thrilled with the quality of the items we received. The team executed our brief to a fantastic standard, working to a tight turnaround to deliver all materials required for both events, and were extremely supportive and quick to respond to any questions we had throughout the process. Thank you iMP for your work on this project to ensure we had incredible activations at both of our events!
Brand Manager, BOL Foods
We partnered with iMP Sampling & Experiential for a summer campaign with one of our clients, and we couldn't be happier with the results. They executed a total of 42 in-store events nationwide, and their team's expertise in sampling and experiential marketing truly shone through. The staff were great at engaging with customers and helping us to achieve our goal of increasing footfall and participation at each event.
Account Director, CreativeRace
Had a wonderful experience working with David and the whole iMP team for an event this summer! David went above and beyond to help wherever possible and the branded ice cream van turned out beautifully. Hope to work with iMP again soon!
Brand Manager, ETTG
We worked with iMP for our event stand and staffing of the Ideal Home Show. David and the team were fantastic, our stand was incredible and we had so many compliments on it. The staff were great, they are really high energy and engaged our consumers at the stand. I would highly recommend if you are looking to run any sampling or experiential events for your brand.
Brand Manager, Snuggledown
David and team at iMP are the real deal - kind, personable, dependable, professional, and offer a craftsmanship that rivals any agency I've encountered in my career. We will absolutely be using iMP again for any future UK activations (if they will have us) and highly recommend for any companies seeking an incredible experience - ESPECIALLY if you're a US-based team like us, and need an expert on location.
Brand Director, Life360
Hiring iMP for an event I was leading on for a new client was a great decision. They turned around a high quality sampling event and promo vehicle with a very short turnaround time, and their staff on the day were incredibly enthusiastic and professional. They made the process easy and the client very happy, we'll definitely be working with them again.
Brand Director, Lee Kum Kee
