How to Create a Hospitality Rider

How to Make a Hospitality Rider

The hospitality rider is one of the most important pieces of the show day puzzle.

It’s part of the touring experience that is often not thought about until it’s not there. When food hasn’t arrived on time, or the order is wrong, you definitely notice. When the tour is hungry, performance suffers in all departments.

An artist’s performance can be adversely affected if they haven’t eaten properly. Ultimately, this can affect the fan experience. The goal is to avoid ever reaching this point.

To create an environment on the road where the artist can shine, you have to put emphasis on making sure people are fed nutritious, high-quality meals, on time.

What is a Hospitality Rider?

A hospitality rider is a subsection of an artist’s tour rider that outlines the dietary requirements of the touring party. It rides alongside the technical rider and details specific requests for the artist and their team.

It details the who, what, when, and where of all things relating to show day eats. Tour riders that are detailed go a long way in helping to set expectations and avoid miscommunication.

Why is it Called a Rider?

In the context of the music industry, a rider document is added to the main performance contract to outline additional terms and requirements. This document rides on the contract. Basically, it’s just contractual slang.

Who Pays for the Hospitality Rider?

The short answer is that, well, it depends. Generally, hospitality is considered a show cost up until a certain agreed-upon amount. In this case, the promoter is paying for it.

Beyond that amount, it becomes an artist cost. The amount of the hospitality budget is decided by the booking agent and the concert promoters long before a tour manager ever becomes involved.

If a show is anticipated to go into points, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the hospitality budget. Obviously, make sure people are taken care of, but also be mindful that additional requests are coming out of the artist’s performance bonus.

If you are a supporting artist on a tour, the hospitality you receive is carved out of the headliner’s budget. Good camps will always make sure to take care of support.

What Should I Put On My Rider?

That depends on the dietary restrictions of the band and crew you’re traveling with, along with the show’s budget.

During the onboarding process, a good practice is to gather everyone’s dietary preferences, allergies, and special requests and compile them into one cohesive hospitality rider template.

From this rough sketch, you are able to start drafting what the tour rider should actually look like. This will eventually become the document that you include with your advance that is sent out to venues.

What is a Buyout?

A buyout is an amount of money received in lieu of a hot meal. If there is catering provided at the gig, you would not receive a buyout. The amount the buyout is for will vary based on the hospitality budget, the region you’re in, and the number of people on your tour.

There are two types of hospitality-related payments that performers may receive while on tour: a buyout and a per diem. However, it’s important to note that they are not the same thing.

A buyout comes from the show’s hospitality budget, while a per diem is issued by the tour. In terms of payment, a buyout is typically given in cash, while a per diem can be in cash or sent via direct deposit. It’s also worth mentioning that neither a buyout nor a per diem is taxable.

Unrelated but very important – make sure to always include your drivers in buyouts, per diem, and aftershow food. Take care of your drivers!

What is Bus Stock?

Bus stock just means items that will stock the bus. *mind blown*

If you’ve ever gotten on a bus before the first show, and there is a fully stocked front lounge with snacks, cutlery, and kitchen roll then you have experienced the extravagance of someone having the foresight to advance bus stock.

On a smaller tour, this might involve the tour manager going to the grocery store before the first bus call. If a tour is flying in to meet the bus, the tour manager can advance bus stock with the tour bus driver.

As an aside, festivals generally won’t fulfill bus stock requests.

Want to digitize bus stock list creation for your hospitality runners? Try checking out the BusStock app.

How to Create a Hospitality Rider

Creating a hospitality rider is an essential part of any live performance. Here are some tips and basic questions to ask yourself when preparing your tour riders.

  1. Determining the Needs of Your Group
  2. Creating a Shop List
  3. The Hospitality Stage Plot
  4. Ordering Food for a Group
  5. Time to Load Out

1. Determining the Needs of Your Group

How you approach hospitality will largely be determined by the size of your tour, the venues you’re performing at, and the available hospitality budget. An arena tour will have far different requirements compared to a club-level tour.

How Many People Will You Be Feeding?

Add up the number of people on your tour. This includes the artist, band, crew, drivers, and support. Then break this down into specific meal counts for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and aftershow food.

If certain touring personnel aren’t going to be in until closer to lunchtime, no need to include them in breakfast meal counts. If you have additional people coming in for certain gigs, make sure to include them in counts.

Dietary Restrictions, Allergies, and Special Requests

This information needs to be collected as you are onboarding touring personnel. This can greatly impact how food is prepared or what restaurants you order from.

You might have vegetarians or vegans in your touring party or folks with real-deal celiac disease where gluten is truly not their friend. Or maybe you are touring with an artist who has religious requirements regarding how food is prepared.

Whatever the scenario, make sure it is accounted for and clearly brought to the attention of those responsible for shopping the rider or preparing food.

2. Creating a Shop List

A shop list is just a grocery list of the hospitality items you need the venue to purchase for that show day. Most venues will request this 48 – 72 hours in advance.

If it’s your first time putting it together, price out what each item costs and total it up so you have a rough idea of where the total is coming in at. Remember that you still need to leave enough to cover catering or a meal buyout.

Keep in mind that an actual person is having to shop for the rider, so it’s important to pay close attention to how the tour rider gets designed.

Once you have all of your requests compiled, consider running your shop list through an AI which will organize your requests by the section of the store they are found in. IE: Produce, Deli, Alcohol, etc.

This will help to save time at the store, which will help to free up your production runner for other tasks.

Being Specific with Requests and Quantities

What does “quality red wine” mean to someone that knows nothing about wine? Be specific as possible, and provide any relevant information for niche-type items.

Also, be sure to use numbers to describe quantities versus using indefinite language. IE: A whole lot of… A bunch of.. etc.

Identifying Substitutions

If you already know that certain items are going to be difficult to find, consider including substitutions to help make the job of the production runner easier.

If a specific item is truly a deal breaker, many artists will have their team make special arrangements well in advance.

Minimizing Waste

Do you really need that 8th box of throat coat? Keep an eye on what is actually being used to help save money and waste. If an item isn’t getting used on a day-to-day basis, change how often you are requesting it, or strike it from the rider entirely.

Another thought in this category is to request large jugs of water and have everyone on the tour use a water bottle to reduce single-use plastic waste.

Offering a Variety of Options

Consider creating an alternative shop list that you can swap out to add some variety to your day-to-day.

For example, on shows that occur on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday you will instruct the venue to shop from the A list.

If a show occurs on Tuesday, Thursday, or on the weekend, then tell them to shop from the B list.

Always get your must-haves, but sometimes it’s nice to add some variety to a long touring cycle.

Additionally, you could request “a local favorite” or “regional specialty.” Set an amount of what you want to spend, and see what comes back.

3. The Hospitality Stage Plot

The layout and configuration of the backstage area will have a considerable impact on how your hospitality plan flows day to day.

Essentially, you are taking your core plan and customizing it day-to-day to fit the parameters of the venue you’re in.

With club-level touring, you encounter a variety of environments with varying levels of amenities and backstage accommodations.

Where Do Items Need To Go

As you create your rider, think of this as the stage plot of hospitality. Decide where certain items need to be delivered by the local production runner or hospitality person.

  • Artist Room
  • Band Room
  • Crew Room
  • Production Office
  • Stage
  • Front of House
  • Support Dressing Room
  • Radio Room

An example might be having cases of water dropped off on stage, or maybe your folks at front of house enjoy an energy drink before the set. You’re making sure that items end up at the appropriate location so the right people can access them.

Staying on Schedule

Want to make a bunch of hungry band members and roadies happy? Have meals ready to eat at their regularly scheduled time. This ties back into communication and setting expectations.

If the day sheet says that lunch is going to be up from 12:00 – 15:00, do everything in your power to make sure that happens. Keep people fed and minimize any hangry outbursts.

Additionally, if you have a load-in that’s on the earlier side, it can be a good idea to have a runner pre-shop the hospitality rider versus having them shop it day of show.

If you’re in a pinch and trying to juggle runs, Instacart is an option for freeing up the runner.

Dressing Room Requirements

It’s important to specify what is needed in the different dressing rooms as far as amenities.

Imagine this part of rider preparation as a blank slate and you get to paint in what you need based on what the tour requires.

Some examples include – full-length mirrors, access to a private bathroom, clothing racks, lighting, tables, chairs, couches, trashcans, steamers, irons, kettles, lockable doors, etc.

For reasons not understood, there is always a lack of a trash can backstage.

Handling Non-Food Requests

Some venues will refuse to fulfill certain rider requests. Generally, this includes socks, t-shirts, and tobacco products. This isn’t always the case, so it doesn’t hurt to ask. If it’s something for the show, the venue is usually more than happy to accommodate within reason.

4. Ordering Food for a Group

Group Size: Ordering In vs Catering

Beyond a certain number of people, trying to place a large group order becomes cumbersome for a number of reasons.

It’s time-consuming for tour management to collect orders if there is no production assistant, local restaurants should not be expected to fulfill 20+ person orders on the fly, and if you have anyone in your party with dietary restrictions or allergies you risk an order not coming back right.

There is often a gray area in show budgets of a tour consisting of 15-20 people, and trying to bring in local catering can sometimes be cost or space prohibitive based on the venues you’re in.

If you are able to hire local catering, ask the venue for suggestions of their favorites when advancing your show to find a solution that will meet your needs.

Larger tours will often carry tour catering to add consistency to their day. Once you’ve experienced Dega catering, life is forever changed. *chef’s kiss*

Tips for Ordering Food for a Group

On a mid-level tour, you’ll often be given a buyout in lieu of proper catering.

This money puts the onus on the tour to figure out where to source food. On smaller tours, getting a buyout and having people walk away from the venue to grab a bite is no issue, assuming you’re in a walkable area with food options.

But what if the band and crew are too busy to walk away, or what if you’re in the middle of nowhere and you can’t just walk somewhere?

Gone are the days of transposing a group text into an online food order. Uber Eats, GrubHub, EZCater, and other food delivery services have really made it much easier to bring in small group orders.

Request that the kitchen label the food order with numbers that correspond to whatever someone ordered instead of using their name. Saves time and is more discreet.

Weather and space permitting, a favorite move is to toss a grill into the back of the truck or under the bus. Parking lot hangs? Yes, please.

5. Time to Load Out

Checking for Travel-Readiness and Odor Control

For items that are going to end up on the bus, it’s a good idea to request snacks that are compact, resealable, and travel well.

Bus fridges are fickle creatures. Don’t lay heavy items on their side inside of the fridge if they can roll. They have a way of becoming projectiles that launch out of the fridge door and explode in the front lounge.

Also, what may smell and taste good to you, may not smell and taste good to others. Before adding durian and sardines to the rider, have a good long look in the dressing room mirror, and ask yourself if this is a good idea.

Icing Down The Bus

Ensure that you drop off ice at the buses before the band gets off stage. A good tour manager, who loves their band and crew, will actively have beverages chilling during load out.

End of Show Bus Stock Shuffle

Consider picking up some reusable grocery bags somewhere along the way to help in transferring dressing room items out to the bus. Sometimes the bus is not parked close to the venue for any number of reasons, and this becomes an absolute slog if trying to hand carry.

What is After Show Food?

After-show food is simply food that shows up after the performance.

Some artists don’t like to eat prior to taking the stage. It can inhibit their ability to perform for any number of reasons. They like to have their meals after the show.

Some tours have the budget to coordinate aftershow food for the entire touring party. Consider seeking out local, healthy options versus getting another round of after-show pizza.

Sample Catering Requirements

TOUR prefers healthy locally sourced or locally inspired fare when possible. Foods that typically work well are “American New”, Thai, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, or Indian but we are adventurous and up for suggestions. There are 2 vegetarians, 2 intolerant to cheese, 2 gluten-free, 1 intolerant to foods high in acidity such as tomato-based pasta sauces, citric glazes, etc.

BREAKFAST: Hot scrambled eggs or omelet station; roasted potatoes; 1 protein such as bacon or breakfast sausage; 1 vegetarian protein such as veggie sausage; fresh whole fruit such as bananas, apples, melons; fresh whole berries such as blueberries, raspberries, strawberries; croissants, toast; oatmeal or grits; Plain Greek yogurt.

LUNCH: Two hot protein entrees: 1 vegetarian and 1 animal protein other than red meat; fresh green salads; AVOCADOS; fresh vegetarian grain salad such as quinoa or couscous; deli tray with sliced turkey or chicken, sliced deli cheese, fresh bread, garnish, and condiments; fresh whole fruit; healthy snack options such as fruit or snack bars; light dessert option such as fresh baked cookies

DINNER for up to fifteen (15) people Two hot protein entrees: 1 should consist of grilled chicken or grilled fish, and 1 vegetarian protein; 3 vegetables; fresh vegetarian salad or grain salad; dessert. Everything that is not a primary animal protein should be vegetarian-friendly.

AFTERSHOW for up to fifteen (15) people consisting of grilled chicken or fish and fresh salads (no pizza.) Open to suggestions.

What is a Festival Style Rider?

Festival hospitality operates differently compared to a standard club show. Instead of fulfilling each and every artist’s specific tour rider, they will review everyone’s hospitality riders and create a generic rider that they will serve to all dressing rooms.

Then, they will ask you for a handful of must-have items. These are the mission-critical items that your artist or team must have. Find out what these items are and request away.

Most major festivals generally have the ability to accommodate a variety of diets, but it’s still a good idea to do due diligence and make sure they are going to be able to cover your needs.

Further Reading: Band Rider Examples

One of the best online resources to take a look at example riders is from The Smoking Gun. They have a number of different samples of various artists’ riders.

Conclusion

As you can see, a lot goes into preparing hospitality on any given show day. The goal is to make things feel effortless for the band and crew. Removing and reducing food-related headaches and complications goes a long way in keeping tour morale high. Keep people fed, and play great gigs.

The longer you tour with a group of people, you’ll begin to learn the ins and outs of everyone’s habits, what they like to eat, and what they stay away from. Decide what systems you need to implement in your show day to make for smooth sailing for all.