Most directories start with a good idea and a bad habit: someone has to pay. The organiser pays a booking fee, or the caterer pays a commission on anything they win through it, or both. It sounds like a sensible way to fund the thing — right up until you notice what it does to the listings.
A van that's already booked solid doesn't need a directory. The vans that need one most — new to the trade, building up a diary, working a patch that isn't well known yet — are exactly the ones who feel a commission or a listing fee hardest. So they don't sign up, or they sign up and drop off once the fee bites. The directory keeps the vans who can afford to be on it, not the vans who actually cover the county. An organiser searches it, finds three options where there should have been fifteen, and goes back to ringing round and asking in Facebook groups instead. The directory that was meant to save everyone time has quietly made itself not worth checking.
That's the spiral we built Eventibites to avoid. It's free to list, and it stays free — no commission on anything you book through it, no contract, nothing that switches on once you start getting work through the site. It's free to search too, with no booking fee added on top and nothing taken out of the price an organiser and a caterer agree between themselves. The organiser gets in touch with you directly. Nobody sits in the middle taking a cut of a job they didn't cook.
We think that's the only way a directory ends up complete enough to be worth using. Free on both sides means there's no reason for a van to hold back from listing, and no reason for an organiser to look anywhere else first. A directory only earns the second half of that — organisers actually checking it before they start ringing round — once it has enough of the first half to be worth checking. That's the bit we're honest about: we're building it out now, county by county, and it's early days. We'd rather say that plainly than dress up a new directory as something it isn't yet.
What that means if you run a van, a trailer, a coffee unit or a mobile bar is that right now is the best time to be on it. An early listing in a county is the listing an organiser finds first, for as long as that county stays thin — and it stays that way until more caterers list, which is exactly what we're asking you to help with. A listing takes about five minutes: your counties covered, the event types you take on, your food type and a way to get in touch. No card details, no contract to read first, because there isn't one.
If you organise events — festivals, weddings, corporate days, agricultural shows, whatever the caterer this month needs to be — the same logic runs the other way. Search by county, cuisine and event type and you deal with the caterer directly, with nothing added to whatever you agree. If the van you need isn't listed yet, that's worth telling us too — it's the fastest way we find out where the gaps still are.
A free directory isn't a promotional gimmick here; it's the whole design decision. Charge either side and you've built a smaller, patchier version of the same thing, and a patchy directory isn't a directory anyone bothers to check twice. Free is what lets it become complete, and complete is the only version worth having.