The Shift to Cashless: Speed vs. Service
Cashless payment systems have rapidly become the norm at festivals worldwide, and for good reason. Going cashless can significantly speed up lines at food festivals by eliminating the time spent counting change or swiping slow magstripe cards. In a busy food festival environment – whether it’s a boutique street food fair in Singapore or a massive multi-day culinary expo in California – every second saved per transaction means shorter waits and happier attendees. Digital payments also boost hygiene and security, reducing germ spread from cash handling and cutting risks of theft or lost money.
However, the transition to cashless must be managed carefully. A seamless transaction experience shouldn’t come at the cost of staff earnings or attendee satisfaction. Some event organizers have been tempted to simplify payment flows by discouraging or disabling tipping (thinking it might speed up transactions), but such moves risk shorting staff who rely on gratuities. The key is finding a balance: deploy technology that accelerates sales without removing the personal touch – like tipping – that rewards great service.
Learning from Real-World Experiences
Experienced festival producers emphasize that technology is only as good as its implementation. There have been both success stories and cautionary tales when it comes to cashless festivals:
– Success Story – Smoother Operations: In 2022, a large food and entertainment festival in Singapore went fully cashless and saw transaction times plunge. By using a robust cashless payment solution across all its food stalls, the event virtually eliminated long wait lines (qashier.com). Attendees could tap a card or wristband and move on in seconds, and vendors reported higher sales volume since people weren’t deterred by massive queues. This case underlined how integrated cashless systems can handle thousands of transactions efficiently when done right.
– Cautionary Tale – Tech Failure Chaos: On the other hand, the importance of system reliability was painfully demonstrated at a UK music festival that attempted an all-cashless system in 2015. The festival’s new RFID “cashless” payment system crashed early on, leaving attendees unable to buy food or drinks and stuck in hours-long queues (www.efestivals.co.uk). Worse, festival organizers had told guests not to bring cash, so there was no fallback option when the tech failed (www.efestivals.co.uk). This fiasco became a legendary lesson: never go cashless without a backup plan or offline capability. It showed that rushing into a digital-only solution without proper testing and contingency planning can wreck the attendee experience and vendor revenue.
These examples highlight a core lesson for festival organizers: embrace innovation but plan for failure. A cashless system can be transformative, but only if it’s reliable and supported by solid policies (like backup payment methods and clear communication).
Choosing a Reliable POS System for Festivals
Selecting the right Point-of-Sale (POS) system is one of the most critical decisions when going cashless. Festival producers should seek out battle-tested, reliable POS solutions that can handle high-volume, outdoor event environments. Here are key features and considerations:
– Rugged Hardware: Food festival vendors might be operating in tents, food trucks, or outdoor booths. POS devices should be durable (able to withstand heat, cold, or an occasional spill) and have long-lasting batteries for all-day operation. It’s wise to supply backup battery packs or generators so no terminal dies mid-event.
– High Throughput Performance: Look for systems proven to process transactions quickly even at peak times. A slight delay per transaction can snowball when hundreds of customers are in line. Systems that support contactless payments (tap-and-go credit cards, NFC payments like Apple Pay/Google Pay) can speed things up compared to chip & PIN or cash.
– Multiple Payment Methods: International festivals attract diverse attendees, so ensure your POS can accept major credit/debit cards as well as mobile wallets popular in your region (for example, support for PayWave, PayPass, Alipay, WeChat Pay, or UPI depending on the country). The more options, the more customers can pay quickly with what they already use.
– Integration with Festival Systems: Ideally, the POS ties into your overall event management platform. For instance, an all-in-one platform like Ticket Fairy can integrate ticketing data with on-site sales, providing real-time dashboards of spending across vendors. Such integration means the festival producer can monitor revenue in real time, track inventory, and even flag popular booths to redistribute crowd flow if needed. It also reduces technical headaches by using one coherent system from ticket purchase to on-site POS.
– Vendor-Friendly Setup: Make the system easy for your food vendors. Whether you have 5 vendors or 500, provide them with a user-friendly interface. Offer training sessions before the festival so every vendor knows how to operate the devices, issue refunds if needed, and troubleshoot basic issues. When vendors are comfortable with the POS, lines move faster and there’s less chance of human error delaying transactions.
In evaluating POS options, be sure to ask providers about their experience with festivals or high-traffic events. A system that works fine in a small café might not survive the strain of a 50,000-person weekend festival. Scalability and reliability under load are paramount – you want the system that “just works” when the pressure is on.
Offline Mode: Keeping Sales Flowing Despite Network Woes
No matter how good your internet setup is, festival sites are notorious for connectivity issues. Crowds of attendees with smartphones can swamp cell networks, and remote or outdoor venues may have patchy signal. That’s why enabling an offline mode for your cashless POS is absolutely essential.
Offline mode means the POS can process transactions without immediate internet access (www.atvenu.com). For example, if the Wi-Fi blinks out or the 4G network drops, the system will continue to accept card taps or wristband scans, and simply queue the transactions to sync when connectivity is restored. From the customer and vendor perspective, nothing changes – the sale still goes through in a normal few seconds (it’s off to the next customer, no delay). Later, once back online, the data uploads to the server and any card charges are finalized.
Key considerations for offline mode:
– True Offline Capability: Be cautious – some POS providers advertise “offline” functionality that actually has caveats. Ensure that all payment types (credit cards, mobile pay, RFID/NFC wristbands) are supported offline, not just cash transactions. The offline mode should not require calling support or manual hacks; it must seamlessly kick in whenever connectivity drops.
– Transaction Limits & Risk: Understand any limits. Many systems will allow offline card transactions up to a certain amount or volume to mitigate risk of declined payments later. Work with your payment processor to set sensible limits. Generally, the risk of a few failed charges is worth taking compared to shutting down sales entirely during an outage.
– Local Servers or Sync Strategy: Some advanced festival POS setups use a local server on-site (for example, a central hub in the production office) that all terminals connect to via a local network. This way, even if the venue loses external internet, the devices still communicate internally. If that’s not feasible, ensure each device can store hundreds or thousands of transactions offline. Test it: simulate a network drop during training and see that transactions still register and later sync correctly.
– Backup Connectivity: While offline mode is the safety net, also invest in robust connectivity as the first line. Hire an event Wi-Fi/cellular provider if budget allows, to bring in dedicated portable cell towers or high-bandwidth satellite internet for your site. Have redundancy – e.g., POS devices with dual SIM cards from two carriers, so if one network fails the other might still function. This double-layer (strong network + offline mode backup) ensures you never have to stop selling food and drinks due to technical difficulties.
By having offline-capable POS systems, you effectively disaster-proof your revenue stream. The moment a payment system goes down, lines grind to a halt and frustration soars. With offline processing in place, attendees often won’t even realize if there’s a connectivity hiccup – their experience remains seamless. For the festival organizer, this is peace of mind that even in the middle of a field with spotty reception, the show (and the sales) can go on.
Cashless Tipping: Keeping Staff Happy Without Slowing Lines
Tipping can be a delicate topic in a cashless environment, but it’s a vital one. At food festivals in countries like the USA, Canada, Mexico, and parts of Europe, tipping is an important part of food service culture – those extra few dollars can make up a significant portion of a vendor staff’s income. Even in regions where tipping isn’t traditional (such as Japan or Australia), you may still have international guests or certain vendors (like craft cocktail bars) where tips are welcomed.
The challenge is to enable tipping digitally without bogging down the checkout process. Here are strategies to achieve that:
– Integrated Tip Prompts: Use POS software that allows customers to easily add a tip as part of the payment flow. Most modern systems will display preset tip suggestions (e.g. 10%, 15%, 20%) on the customer-facing screen when paying by card or mobile. This quick selection method adds only a second or two to the transaction. It’s important these prompts are clear and easy to skip as well – forcing a customer to navigate a confusing menu will slow things more than it helps. The goal is a one-tap tip option that feels natural.
– No-Signature, Low-Friction Process: Configure your payment settings to eliminate signatures for small transactions if possible (many card networks don’t require signatures below a certain amount). If a signature or PIN is needed, ideally that happens after the tip selection on the same screen, not as a separate step. The fewer device handovers between staff and customer, the better. Some devices allow the vendor to enter the sale, flip the screen to the guest for tip and approval, and that’s it.
– Communicate Tip Inclusion When Applicable: If your festival or specific vendors choose to include a service fee or gratuity by default (to simplify things), make sure it’s clearly communicated via signage (“10% service charge added – no additional tipping necessary”). This approach, used in some European events and upscale festivals, can speed up each transaction since guests aren’t prompted for a tip at all. But it only works if staff wages are adjusted to compensate and customers understand the policy. Otherwise, staff might feel short-changed and guests might be confused. Transparency is key if using an auto-service charge model.
– Encourage Contactless Tipping Alternatives: In certain scenarios, a festival might provide alternate ways to tip without cash. For example, a vendor can display a QR code at their booth that links to a tipping app or Venmo account for their team. A quick scan by the attendee and they can tip even after the purchase. This isn’t as seamless as integrated POS tipping, but it can be a useful supplement – especially if you have international visitors who might prefer to tip from their phone wallet. Ensure any such QR codes or instructions are easy to follow and placed where customers can use them without blocking the line.
Above all, festival producers should cultivate an environment where cashless tipping is encouraged but not cumbersome. Attendees often appreciate knowing that their tips will directly support the chefs, servers, and staff who made their food festival experience great. A short message on menus or via the MC announcements like “Don’t forget, you can tip your servers even with cashless payments!” can nudge customers to use those digital tip options.
Fair Tip Distribution and Staff Morale
Setting up the technology for tipping is only half the battle – the other half is ensuring a fair tipping policy behind the scenes. In a festival setting, this can get complex: you might have dozens of independent food vendors (who each handle their own staff tips), as well as festival-employed bar staff or volunteers who might be pooling tips. Consider these best practices:
– Define Tip Policies Per Vendor or Station: Work with your vendors ahead of the festival to clarify how tips will be handled. Many vendors will simply treat tips from card payments the same as a cash tip – e.g. pooled among the booth staff or allocated to whoever served the customer. Some high-volume bar operations at festivals pool all tips and split them at end of day. There’s no one-size-fits-all, but make sure every vendor has a plan and communicates it to their workers to avoid confusion or conflict.
– Transparency and Trust: In recent years, there’s been increased scrutiny on employers to ensure 100% of tips go to staff. Some countries (like the UK and Ireland) have passed laws guaranteeing workers the right to their tips and banning businesses from skimming any portion. Even if your locale doesn’t mandate it, the festival should set an example of fairness. Let staff know that digital tips are being recorded and will be given out in full. For instance, if using a centralized cashless system managed by the festival, provide each vendor with a report of tips earned at their stall so they can distribute it to their team accurately.
– Timely Payouts: One downside of cashless tipping is that staff can’t take home their tips in cash at the end of their shift. To keep morale high, arrange for quick tip payouts. This might mean the festival organizer advances the tip amounts in cash at the end of the day (since you have records of what each vendor earned in tips) and then settles with the vendor or recoups when credit card settlements come through. If that’s not feasible, aim to get tip money to vendors or staff within days, not weeks. Some modern services even allow instant tip disbursement to employee bank accounts at the end of a shift – a perk that could make workers eager to staff your future events.
– Avoiding Tip Theft or Loss: Cashless systems eliminate the risk of someone physically stealing cash tips, but there is still a need to secure the digital tip funds. Use reputable payment processors and keep an audit trail. Internally, ensure that whoever has access to the tip data or payouts (e.g. a concessions manager) is trustworthy. A checks-and-balances approach (like two supervisors verifying tip reports) can prevent any tampering with the numbers. This also protects the festival’s reputation – nothing would spread faster on staff social media than an accusation of management pocketing tips or “losing” tip money.
– Recognition and Staff Support: Finally, emphasize to your team that the move to cashless is meant to benefit everyone. Share success metrics post-event, such as “digital tips totaled $X, which is 25% higher than what we saw in cash tips last year” or “with faster checkouts, each vendor served 20% more customers per hour.” When staff see that a new system helped them earn more and please more guests, they’ll buy into these innovations rather than view them skeptically.
Happy, fairly-treated staff are the backbone of any great festival. When your cooks, servers, and cashiers know that the festival organizer has their back regarding tips, they’re free to focus on delivering amazing service and food – creating a win-win scenario where attendees, staff, and vendors all leave smiling.
Communication, Training, and Attendee Preparedness
Rolling out a cashless POS and new tipping procedures at a festival isn’t something to spring on everyone at the last minute. It requires thoughtful communication and training for both vendors/staff and attendees:
– Train Your Vendors and Staff: Well before the festival, host a training session (or provide detailed guides) for all participating food vendors on the POS equipment and software. Ensure each vendor knows how to run a sale, add a tip, handle voids or errors, and what to do if the device goes offline. This training can prevent panic at the booth when the rush hits. If possible, do a mock setup: have staff simulate a busy hour of sales on the devices so they become comfortable under pressure. Also clarify the support process – for example, if a tablet freezes during the event, is there a tech support tent or a hotline? Giving staff a fallback contact will reduce stress on the ground.
– Advertise the Cashless System to Attendees: Surprises at the gate are unwelcome. If your festival is going largely or fully cashless, shout it from the rooftops ahead of time. Use your website, social media, and pre-event emails to tell ticket buyers that they should “bring credit/debit cards or download XYZ mobile wallet” because the event won’t be accepting cash for food and beverage purchases. Highlight the benefits (“faster lines, safer transactions, no need to carry wads of cash”). If you have an official festival app or info booklet, include a section on “How to Pay for Food & Drinks” explaining the simple steps. The more people prepare, the smoother day-of operations will be.
– Onsite Signage and Announcements: At the event, make sure signage reinforces the message. At entry points and around food areas, put up signs like “This festival is cashless – pay with card or mobile for all purchases. Yes, you can add a tip digitally!” Clear, friendly signs can preempt a lot of questions. During the festival, the MC or DJ can periodically remind folks: “Having a great time? Don’t forget you can easily tap to pay at any vendor here – no cash needed – which means more time to enjoy the food!” These announcements set expectations and also promote usage of the system.
– Cash Accommodation (if needed): Despite best efforts, some attendees will still show up with only cash, especially at community-focused food festivals or in regions where digital payments aren’t yet universal. Plan a solution for them so they aren’t stranded. One approach is setting up a cash exchange booth where people can load cash onto a festival prepaid card or wristband (which they can then use at vendors). This is essentially acting like an on-site ATM replacement. If you provide this, ensure it’s staffed and fast – you don’t want a long line at the exchange booth either. Alternatively, you might allow a few vendors to accept cash as an exception, but this can complicate the overall system and reporting. Many festivals find a controlled exchange or top-up station is preferable for maintaining a mostly cashless site while not alienating anyone.
– Customer Support: During the event, have a clearly identifiable help point for payment issues. This could be the same as the exchange booth or a separate “Customer Service” tent. If someone’s card isn’t working or an attendee is confused by how to use the wristband payment, staff at this help point can assist without holding up the food lines. Equip the help team to check transaction logs, resolve duplicate charges, or add balance to accounts as needed. A swift resolution turns a potentially angry customer into a happy one again.
By thoroughly preparing everyone involved – from the kitchen crew to the festival-goers – you create a culture of confidence in the cashless system. People arrive knowing what to expect, vendors start the event day ready to hit the ground running, and any hiccups can be triaged calmly. Good communication is the “grease” that lets your high-tech solution run smoothly in the real world.
Adapting to Festival Size and Culture
Every festival is unique. A neighborhood chili cook-off with 1,000 attendees has different needs than a gourmet food and wine festival drawing 100,000 visitors from around the globe. It’s important to tailor your cashless POS and tipping strategies to the scale and cultural context of your event:
– Small-Scale Festivals: For smaller food festivals or local fairs, you might not need an extravagant RFID wristband system. Simpler solutions like tablet-based card readers (e.g. Square, Zettle, SumUp) for each vendor can do the job. Many small event vendors already have their own card readers – your role might be mainly to coordinate and ensure reliable internet coverage. Encourage them to use the offline mode on their devices (for instance, Square offers an offline mode that lets vendors accept chip and tap payments even if they lose signal temporarily, syncing later). In tight-knit events, also consider the demographic: if you have an older audience or a community that still prefers cash, a hybrid model (cards and cash accepted) might actually work best. The goal at this level is to slowly introduce cashless benefits without alienating anyone.
– Large-Scale Festivals: For a massive festival with dozens or hundreds of booths, a unified cashless system brings huge advantages. It centralizes oversight – you can see all sales in one dashboard – and tends to be faster than each vendor using disparate payment devices. At high volume, even slight efficiency gains per transaction add up to thousands more people served. Large festivals can also leverage sponsorships to offset costs: for example, partnering with a major bank or mobile payment service to be the festival’s official cashless partner (they might supply equipment or promotional top-up bonuses for attendees who use their app). At this scale, investing in professional network infrastructure on-site is worthwhile, as is having a dedicated tech team monitoring the system throughout the event. Big festivals often do a “soft launch” on Day 0 or during vendor setup day – powering up the whole cashless system in advance to catch any issues. This kind of full-scale test run is highly recommended so you don’t discover a system bug when 20,000 hungry people are in line for lunch.
– Cultural Differences: Payment and tipping norms vary widely by country and culture, and your festival strategy should reflect that. For instance:
– In the United States and Canada, festival-goers will expect to be able to tip and may even feel awkward if there’s no option to tip. Here, make sure the tip prompt is front-and-center and perhaps suggest a default tip percentage to encourage generosity.
– In many European countries, people are used to either minimal tipping (rounding up the bill) or having service charges included. A festival in France or Germany might lean towards simply pricing items a bit higher to cover staff costs and posting “Tax and service included” so that transactions are one-and-done. If you do provide a tip option, it might not be used heavily, but staff will still appreciate what they do get.
– In parts of Asia and Australia/New Zealand, no-tipping culture is common. Here, attempting to introduce tipping at a festival could confuse attendees or even annoy them if they feel it’s an imported custom. Focus your cashless strategy in these regions on speed and convenience, not tips. If you have many international vendors who expect tips (say an American BBQ stall at a Singapore event), you could accommodate them by allowing an optional tip, but it’s wise to set expectations with those vendors that tips may be slim due to local norms.
– In Latin America, cashless adoption is growing but cash is still prevalent in many areas. Ensure your system can handle bilingual interfaces (for Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) and consider keeping a few cash lanes operational for comfort. Tipping varies by country – for instance, Mexican festival vendors might see some tips from locals but not at the 20% level a U.S. vendor might. Know your audience and communicate with vendors about what to expect.
– Feedback Loops: After any festival, but especially the first time you implement a new system, gather feedback. Survey your vendors: “How did the cashless POS work for you? Any issues? Did the tip process feel fair?” Likewise, ask attendees via post-event emails or social media polls about their experience paying at the festival. Use this data to refine your approach in future editions. Maybe you’ll learn that people loved the convenience but wanted more top-up stations, or that staff felt the tipping interface was hard to navigate – these insights are gold for continuous improvement.
By adapting your approach to the size and cultural context of your festival, you ensure that “cashless and tip-friendly” doesn’t become a one-size-fits-none policy. Instead, it becomes a tailored asset that matches the character of your event and the expectations of your audience.
Budgeting and ROI: Is Going Cashless Worth It?
Implementing a cashless POS system with offline mode and tip features is an investment. Festival organizers need to consider cost, but when done wisely, the return on investment can be well worth it. Let’s break down the budgeting and the payoff:
– Upfront and Operational Costs: Depending on your approach, costs may include:
– Hardware rental or purchase: Handheld POS terminals, mobile card readers, receipt printers, network routers, RFID wristbands (if using), etc. Large festivals often rent devices from a cashless solution provider. Smaller events might simply rely on vendors’ own devices (lower cost to organizer).
– Software and Licensing: Some platforms charge a setup fee or per-user/device fee for the event. Others might take a small percentage of each transaction as their revenue. Evaluate these models and negotiate – festival scale can give you bargaining power.
– Payment Processing Fees: Cashless means card processing fees (typically 2-3% plus a transaction fee) are now part of the equation. Decide how this is handled: do you absorb it, pass it partly to vendors, or incorporate it into food prices? Many events bake the fees into vendor booth costs or slightly increase menu prices by a marginal amount to cover fees (since customers at festivals are generally less price-sensitive about a $6 item vs. $5.80 + some fee).
– Connectivity and IT: Budget for internet infrastructure (like portable Wi-Fi, cell boosters) and IT support staff for the event. Also, if you are doing a custom system or RFID cards, there’s cost in the registration/top-up stations and the staff to run those.
– Staff Training and Materials: There’s a minor cost in time and perhaps printed manuals or extra vendor meetings to ensure everyone’s trained. This is often money well spent, as smooth operations prevent costly mistakes.
– Speed = Revenue: One of the biggest ROI factors for cashless is increased sales volume. When lines move faster, attendees buy more – they might visit an extra food stall or grab that second beer because they aren’t discouraged by waiting. Many festivals have reported higher per-capita spending after switching to cashless, sometimes by 20-30%. Why? Cashless buyers tend to make spontaneous purchases and aren’t limited by the cash in their wallet. Plus, with an integrated system you can even implement upsells (e.g., a prompt on the screen: “Hungry? Add a snack for $3”) to boost sales further. These additional revenues can easily offset the transaction fees and equipment costs. Essentially, faster throughput means your festival’s finite hours are used more efficiently for sales.
– Labor Savings and Accuracy: Think of the labor that goes into handling cash – counting bills, making change, reconciling amounts at day’s end, dealing with errors. Cashless systems simplify or eliminate many of these tasks. Vendors might need fewer cashiers if one cashier with a fast POS can handle what two cash-handling cashiers did before. Accounting after the event is also much easier with digital records from every booth. This can reduce overtime hours for administrative staff and minimize human error losses. It’s harder for a cashier to mis-key a price or pocket a $20 when everything is tracked digitally.
– Attendee Satisfaction and Retention: While harder to quantify directly, a smooth payment experience is part of what brings people back next year. Long lines and frustrated patrons, on the other hand, can damage your festival’s reputation. Investing in a good system is investing in your brand. Attendees are more likely to write positive reviews or tell friends “you have to go to this festival – they have their act together, I never waited more than a few minutes for food!” Happy customers lead to growing attendance, which is the lifeblood of any festival’s finances.
– Data Insights = Future Gains: The data collected via a cashless POS can inform better budgeting and inventory decisions in the future. You’ll see exactly which vendors had the highest demand, peak sales times, and total transaction counts. This might help you adjust stall placement (to reduce bottlenecks), refine your vendor mix, or even set smarter vendor fees (charging premium for locations that always see heavy traffic). Over multiple events, these insights can significantly boost your profitability and also help vendors succeed (meaning they’ll eagerly pay to return).
– Sponsorship Opportunities: Don’t overlook that going high-tech can attract sponsors. Payment technology companies, banks, or even soft drink brands may want to sponsor your cashless experience (imagine branded top-up stations or a “Powered by [PaymentApp]” partnership). This sponsorship money can underwrite a lot of the costs. Just ensure any partner aligns with your values – for example, avoid those that insist on awkward “dynamic pricing” or excessive fees that would anger attendees. Ticket Fairy’s platform, for instance, avoids such practices and focuses on enhancing user experience, which is the kind of ethos you’d want in partners too.
In weighing the costs, do a simple thought exercise: How many more food items or drinks must be sold to break even on this cashless investment? Often the number is surprisingly low relative to your crowd size. If each attendee buys just one more item because it’s easier to pay, the system pays for itself and then some. Most festival producers who have made the leap to cashless will attest that they saw not only financial gains but smoother operations and improved customer feedback – a true win across the board.
Key Takeaways
- Prioritize Reliability: Choose a POS system built for festival conditions – one that can process quickly at peak times, endure outdoor environments, and seamlessly switch to offline mode if internet fails.
- Always Have a Backup: Never rely on a single point of failure. Equip your event with offline payment capabilities and consider keeping a fallback like limited cash sales or top-up stations so no attendee is left unable to buy food.
- Streamline, Don’t Eliminate, Tipping: Preserve the ability for customers to tip service staff in a cashless setting via easy on-screen prompts or built-in service charges. This keeps staff happy without adding significant wait time per transaction.
- Ensure Fair Tip Distribution: Set clear policies so that every dollar of tip reaches the workers as intended. Be transparent with vendors and staff about how and when tips from cashless sales will be distributed, and follow through quickly.
- Train and Inform Everyone: Invest time in training vendors and staff on the new systems and communicate clearly with attendees about the cashless setup ahead of the event. Prepared people will adapt much more smoothly on festival day.
- Adapt to Your Audience: Tailor your payment and tipping approach to the size of your festival and cultural norms of your audience. One size does not fit all – localize your strategy for maximum acceptance.
- Measure the Benefits: After going cashless, analyze the data and feedback. Often you’ll find shorter lines, higher sales, and positive attendee experiences, confirming that a well-executed cashless and tip-friendly system is worth the investment.
12th October 2025