Matcha Fest Chicago - BIG FAIL - Disappointed
Went to Match Fest at SeatGeek Stadium today and honestly it was one of the most poorly organized festival experiences I’ve been to.
Tickets were $15 each (closer to $20 after taxes/fees), plus another $15 for parking. Fine…festivals and events like this cost money. But the ticket basically just got you access to stand in lines all day.
We got there around 12:30 PM and left around 3:30 PM. In THREE HOURS, we managed to get exactly ONE matcha.
The biggest issue was the setup. Instead of sample pours like literally every beer/wine/food festival does, vendors were making full-sized drinks for everyone. Sounds nice in theory until you realize every line was 80+ people deep and moving painfully slowly because baristas were hand-making full café orders. Most waits were easily over an hour.
There also wasn’t really anything else to do while waiting:
- No workshops
- No tastings comparing matcha grades
- No demos about preparation techniques
- No educational sessions
- No activities
Just a DJ playing on the field which is wild because matcha culture has a lot of potential for interactive experiences. Teach people about ceremonial vs culinary grade. Explain whisking technique. Do mini flights. Talk sourcing and quality. There was none of that.
The layout made no sense either. The concourse area was cramped and overcrowded with vendors packed together shoulder-to-shoulder, while the field itself felt weirdly empty except for scattered booths and the DJ. Why not move everything onto the field and spread people out properly?
There wasn’t even decent signage or a directory, so half the time people were wandering around trying to figure out what the vendors were even serving. And I hadn’t heard of any of them, why not have local Chicago shops be a part of it versus whoever they had?
Overall it felt like the event massively oversold attendance without designing the experience around throughput or crowd flow. The concept was good, but execution was non existent.
I would not recommend to anyone going to the other cities it travels to.