In festival production, especially for culinary events, success isn’t just measured by how many tickets you sell or how much revenue you earn at the gate. A truly great food festival is defined by a rich tapestry of experiences and outcomes that go beyond the bottom line. Seasoned festival organizers around the world – from bustling street food fairs in Singapore to cozy wine-and-cheese gatherings in France – know that focusing on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) beyond ticket sales can make the difference between a good event and a phenomenal one. These KPIs capture what actually makes a culinary event memorable and meaningful to attendees, vendors, and the community.
Why look beyond ticket revenue? While selling out tickets (or hitting high attendance for free events) is important, it doesn’t guarantee that attendees had a great time, that vendors did well, or that the festival made a positive impact. By establishing metrics that gauge attendee engagement, vendor success, sustainability, and safety, festival producers can steer their decisions towards improving the quality and impact of the event. For example, a food festival in Toronto’s Greektown might be free to attend, drawing over a million people, so its success is measured in things like crowd satisfaction and vendor sales rather than entry fees. Whether you’re organizing a small local food fair in a rural town or a large international street food festival in a capital city, defining success through these broader KPIs ensures long-term growth, great word-of-mouth, and repeat attendance.
Below, we explore several crucial KPIs for food festivals – throughput per stall, attendee dwell time, waste diversion, local producer sales, and safety outcomes – and how paying attention to each can help create an outstanding culinary event. Along the way, we’ll share practical examples, lessons learned, and tips from real festivals across different countries and cultures. By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to measure what truly matters and actionable insights to make your next food festival not just financially successful, but holistically great.
Throughput per Stall: Ensuring Vendors and Attendees Flourish
One key metric that veteran producers watch closely is throughput per stall – essentially, how many customers each food vendor serves within a given time frame (often per hour or per day). This KPI goes beyond total sales; it tells you about crowd flow and vendor performance at a granular level. A high throughput means a stall is popular and efficient, whereas a low throughput might indicate issues like an unpopular menu, poor booth location, or slow service.
Why it matters: Throughput per stall is directly tied to both attendee satisfaction and vendor success. If popular stalls have excessively long lines, guests can become frustrated (nobody enjoys waiting 40 minutes for a taco) and may leave early or avoid buying anything at all. On the other hand, if a particular vendor barely gets any visitors, they may pack up early or decide not to participate next year. Tracking throughput helps strike a balance:
– Identify bottlenecks: If one barbecue stand in a Texas food festival has a queue that snakes across the field, maybe it’s time to add another similar BBQ vendor, create a larger serving area, or implement a pre-order system to spread demand.
– Improve layout: Low throughput at a stall might be due to a bad location (tucked in a corner or too close to a noisy stage). Organizers of the Taste of Sydney event, for example, rearranged vendor booths after day 1 when they noticed one craft beer tent was hidden from main foot traffic. The next day, that tent’s customer count doubled simply due to better placement.
– Ensure vendor ROI: Small artisanal vendors at a local farmer’s market festival in New Zealand or Canada rely on making enough sales to justify their time and expense. Monitoring average throughput per vendor helps ensure you haven’t over-booked too many stalls for the given crowd size. Each vendor should have a fighting chance to do good business. If the average customer count per stall is too low, you likely have more vendors than the attendees can support, and vendors might leave unhappy.
How to track and improve throughput: Use tools and smart planning to keep an eye on those serving speeds and lines:
– Point-of-Sale Data: Encourage or require vendors to use a standardized POS system (or even better, a centralized festival payment system) that tracks number of transactions. This way, you can gather data on how many sales each stall makes per hour.
– Headcounts and Observations: Assign volunteers or staff to periodically count queue lengths and serving rates at each stall. Even simple manual counts (e.g., noting that Stall A served 50 customers in the lunch rush hour and had 20 people in line at peak) can highlight discrepancies.
– Cashless Payments & Pre-Orders: Many festivals worldwide have adopted cashless payment wristbands or apps. Not only do these speed up transaction times (boosting throughput), but they provide real-time data. For instance, at a large food truck festival in Singapore, organizers used a mobile ordering app that showed which stalls were getting slammed with orders – they could then actively redirect people to shorter lines via announcements and signage on digital screens.
– Vendor Communication: Sometimes, improving throughput is as simple as talking to vendors. Maybe a stall has one person doing both cooking and cashier duties, creating a bottleneck. Suggesting that popular stalls bring an extra helper during peak hours is a practical fix. Share info with vendors about expected rush times (based on past data) so they can prep food in advance and serve faster.
By maximizing throughput where possible while minimizing extreme wait times, you ensure attendees get to taste more offerings (increasing their satisfaction) and vendors maximize sales (increasing their willingness to return). It’s a win-win that transforms the festival from a crowded food court into a well-oiled culinary adventure.
Dwell Time: Keeping Attendees Engaged and Satisfied
Another often overlooked KPI in food festivals is attendee dwell time – the average length of time each visitor stays at the event. This metric captures how engaging and enjoyable your festival is. After all, if people are having a great time, they’ll linger to savor more food, enjoy entertainment, and soak up the atmosphere. If they breeze through in an hour and leave, it could signal that the event didn’t offer enough to hold their interest (or perhaps some discomfort drove them away).
Why it matters: Dwell time is closely linked to both spending and satisfaction:
– Higher spending: The longer people stay, the more likely they are to buy additional food, beverages, and even merchandise. For example, consider a beer and chili festival in California – a visitor who sticks around for 3 hours might sample multiple dishes and craft beers, whereas someone who leaves after 30 minutes might purchase just one item. Organizers of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival have noted that when they increased the variety of activities, attendees stayed longer and overall vendor sales per guest went up.
– Better experience: If guests choose to spend more time at your event, it’s a good sign they’re enjoying themselves. Maybe they found plenty of delicious bites, great music or cooking demos, and comfortable places to relax. On the flip side, if dwell times are short, you might investigate reasons: Were there too few seating areas causing fatigue? Not enough happening beyond food stalls? Long entry or food lines that drained their patience early?
Global considerations: Dwell time can vary by culture and event type. At a family-friendly food fair in Mexico City, families might plan to make a day of it, so offering kids’ entertainment and shade can encourage them to stay for hours. In a bustling night market in Bangkok, people may come and go quickly unless there’s live music or a social media-worthy spectacle to make them linger. Tailor your festival attractions to your audience:
– Young foodie crowds often appreciate live music, celebrity chef demonstrations, or interactive games (like a hot wing eating contest) that keep them around.
– Families appreciate picnic areas, kids’ zones, and scheduled breaks like cultural performances or cooking classes where they can sit and engage.
– Tourists or out-of-town visitors might enjoy guided tastings, storytelling about local cuisine, or photo-op spots that encourage them to explore every corner.
How to increase dwell time: It’s not just about letting people in; it’s about convincing them to stay:
– Diverse Programming: Offer more than just food stalls. Successful festivals in India and Indonesia often blend food with cultural dance performances, workshops, or contests. A varied schedule of activities spaced throughout the day ensures there’s always something coming up that people want to stick around for.
– Comfort and Amenities: Simple comforts can significantly impact how long people stay. Ensure ample seating (benches, picnic tables, even hay bales at a farm-to-table fest), shaded areas or tents in hot climates, and heaters or fire pits in cooler weather. Clean, accessible restrooms and water stations also encourage longer visits – nobody likes to leave early because they couldn’t find a restroom or got dehydrated.
– Optimal Scheduling: Stagger “peak moments”. Instead of having one big highlight (like a celebrity chef show at 1 PM), spread headliner events across the day (e.g., chef demo at noon, a big band at 3 PM, a cooking competition final at 5 PM). This staggered schedule is a tactic used by many large festivals (such as London’s food festivals) to prevent an early rush and early exit. It gives attendees reasons to hang around.
– Re-entry Policies: If your festival spans multiple days or many hours, consider allowing re-entry for day ticket holders. Some festivals in Australia have noticed attendees leaving for a break (especially if the event runs all day) and coming back with more friends for a second round. If you do allow re-entry, make sure to use a wristband or digital ticket system to track exits and returns – which can double as data to measure dwell time more accurately.
By keeping an eye on dwell time and the factors influencing it, you can gauge how captivating your festival is. Remember that a longer average dwell time, coupled with positive feedback, usually means your event is not only attracting crowds but truly engaging them – they’re savoring every minute (and every bite), which is exactly what a culinary event should inspire.
Waste Diversion: Making Sustainability a Success Metric
Food festivals can generate a mountain of waste – disposable plates, cups, utensils, food scraps, packaging, you name it. In today’s eco-conscious world, how well your event minimizes and manages waste is a critical KPI that reflects on your festival’s values and operational excellence. Waste diversion refers to the percentage of waste materials diverted away from the landfill (through recycling, composting, or reusing). For instance, a waste diversion rate of 75% means 75% of all waste was recycled or composted rather than thrown in the trash.
Why it matters: A high waste diversion rate is more than just good press; it indicates responsible event management:
– Environmental impact: Festivals like Bali’s Ubud Food Festival or Chicago’s Green City Market events emphasize sustainability, using this KPI to push for zero-waste goals. Achieving, say, an 85% waste diversion or higher means your festival greatly reduced its environmental footprint. This resonates with attendees (especially younger generations in places like the US, Europe, and Australasia) who appreciate eco-friendly practices.
– Operational efficiency: A well-managed waste system with clearly marked recycling and compost bins, and a plan for sorting, keeps the venue cleaner and reduces cleanup time. In contrast, a festival that neglects this might end the night with overflowing garbage bins, attracting pests and creating an unpleasant scene that staff have to clean up for hours (a lesson some organizers in Spain and Italy learned when early editions of their events saw trash piling up).
– Community and sponsor relations: Local authorities and sponsors increasingly look at sustainability metrics. A city government in Germany or Canada may be more willing to approve or support a festival that can demonstrate eco-friendly outcomes like high recycling rates or innovative waste reduction (for example, banning single-use plastics or donating surplus food). Sponsors, too, often want to align with “green” events for their image. Showing strong waste diversion performance can help in grant applications or sponsorship pitches.
Real-world example: One recent food industry event in the Netherlands set an ambitious goal of a 100% waste-free festival. While they didn’t hit absolute zero waste, they managed to recycle or reuse the vast majority of materials. In fact, about 99.5% of all plastic bottles and drink cans were collected for recycling by the end of the event – an almost complete capture of recyclables. This was achieved by working closely with vendors to eliminate unsustainable packaging and by offering a deposit-refund for beverage containers (attendees got a small refund for returning their cups and bottles). The lesson learned is that with planning and engagement, near-zero waste is possible.
How to boost waste diversion at your festival:
– Plan with Vendors: Set guidelines for all food vendors on acceptable packaging. Many festivals from New Zealand to France now mandate biodegradable or compostable plates, cups, and cutlery. Some even provide the vendors with these materials to ensure consistency. If everything can go into a compost bin, it simplifies waste sorting enormously.
– Recycling & Compost Stations: Establish clearly labeled waste stations with separate bins (recycling, compost, landfill). Staff each station with a volunteer or staff during peak hours to help attendees sort correctly – many people want to recycle but might toss things in the wrong bin by accident. The Slow Food Nation festival in the US famously had “trash talkers” at bins guiding people, resulting in very high diversion rates.
– Incentivize Reuse: Consider a deposit system for cups, or sell branded reusable cups and plates that attendees can use all day (common in European beer festivals). If attendees pay $1 extra for a cup and get it back upon return, you’ll see far less plastic lying around. Plus it educates the public in a fun way.
– Handle Food Waste Smartly: Partner with local farms or composting facilities to take food scraps. Encourage vendors to donate unsold edible food at the end of the day to local shelters or food banks (a practice seen in many festivals across India and Singapore, where saving food from waste also feeds the needy). Track how much food is donated or composted – those numbers contribute to your waste diversion success story.
– Communicate Goals: Let attendees know about your sustainability goals. If your aim is “Zero Waste”, promote it on signage, social media, and announcements like “Help us recycle 90% of festival waste – use the right bins!” When festival-goers know you’re aiming for something special, many will enthusiastically participate and even self-police their friends.
By treating waste diversion as a key metric, you align your festival with global sustainability trends and government or community expectations. More importantly, you make the event cleaner, greener, and more appealing to everyone involved. A food festival celebrating nature’s bounty should also be respecting Mother Earth, and hitting strong waste diversion KPIs is how you quantify that success.
Local Producer Sales: Boosting the Community and Vendor Success
Food festivals often celebrate local cuisine and artisanal producers – from family-owned BBQ joints in the southern USA, to indigenous ingredient vendors in Mexico, to cheese mongers in Italy. A great food festival doesn’t just please attendees for a day; it also supports the local economy and small businesses. That’s why local producer sales is a vital KPI: it measures how well your vendors (especially local and small-scale ones) are doing in terms of revenue and volume of sales.
Why it matters: High sales for local producers mean:
– Economic Impact: The festival is pouring money back into the community. For example, the annual Taste of Delhi festival in India reported that dozens of home-based food entrepreneurs collectively made tens of thousands of rupees in sales during the event – a significant income boost that helped some expand their businesses afterward. When your vendors are selling out their stock or hitting record sales, it’s a clear indicator that attendees found the offerings desirable and the local food scene is thriving. This can help justify funding or sponsorships, as stakeholders see concrete benefits to local businesses.
– Vendor Satisfaction and Retention: If vendors have a lucrative, positive experience, they’ll want to return next year and spread the word. On the other hand, if they barely break even, you might have trouble filling vendor spots in the future. Many successful festivals from Australia to Spain track a simple metric: the percentage of vendors who apply to return the next year. A high re-sign rate often correlates with strong sales and good vendor treatment.
– Culinary Authenticity: Strong sales for local producers often means the festival stayed true to authentic flavors and quality. Attendees vote with their wallet – if the handmade tamales from a local abuela in Mexico City are selling out, it shows people value genuine local cuisine over generic fare. That success encourages event programmers to keep prioritizing real local food over just big-name brands. It keeps the festival’s soul intact.
How to measure and support local vendor success:
– Total and Average Sales: If possible, gather data on each vendor’s sales. This could be through voluntary post-event surveys or using a unified payment system that reports sales per vendor. Some festivals partner with payment platforms (like a festival-specific card or Ticket Fairy’s integrated vendor sales tracking) to get real-time sales data. For instance, at a major food truck festival in Los Angeles, organizers required all vendors to use the festival’s RFID payment wristband system – this not only improved attendee convenience but also allowed the organizers to see that, say, the taco trucks collectively grossed $50,000 in a day, and the average spend per attendee at food vendors was $30.
– Sell-Outs and Throughput: Track how many vendors sold out of their inventory by end of day and at what time. If many are selling out early, that indicates booming sales (and maybe that even more product or more vendors were needed). It’s a nice problem to have, but you want to balance it so that attendees who come later still have options. If no one sells out, maybe attendance or spend was lower than expected, or vendors brought too much. Aim for that sweet spot where most vendors are very pleased with sales without too many attendees leaving empty-handed.
– Vendor Surveys and Feedback: Quantitative sales are one side, but qualitative feedback is gold too. Send a post-festival survey or call up a few key vendors. Ask about their sales compared to expectations, but also: Did they feel the pricing was right? How was the crowd for their product type? Did the festival logistics help or hinder them (e.g., easy load-in, electricity supply, location)? This feedback might reveal, for example, that a local organic farmer from out of town did okay in sales but would do much better if placed in a “farmers market” zone next to similar producers rather than between two loud food truck grills.
– Promote Local Talent: Use your marketing to spotlight local vendors before and during the event. Festivals in New Zealand and Canada have highlighted vendors’ stories on social media (like a short video of the baker who will be selling sourdough donuts). This not only draws that vendor’s loyal customers to the festival, but it also can increase the vendor’s sales on-site as attendees seek them out. The more foot traffic each stall gets, the better their sales potential.
– Facilitate Transactions: Ensure that purchasing is easy. In many countries, going cashless improves sales because attendees aren’t limited by the cash in their pocket. If your festival uses Ticket Fairy’s platform, for example, you could integrate on-site cashless payments or advance token purchases to streamline buying. Additionally, ensure there are ways for attendees to access funds if needed – for instance, some rural food fairs in Indonesia have brought in portable ATM machines on-site to help people spend more freely when card payments were difficult. The less friction in the transaction, the more sales will flow.
Ultimately, when local producers and vendors smile at the end of the festival counting their earnings, you’ve achieved something special. It means the festival not only entertained but also economically empowered the community that makes those wonderful foods. That is a huge win and a core aspect of what makes a culinary event great.
Safety Outcomes: Prioritizing Well-Being and Smooth Operations
No matter how delicious the food or festive the mood, a festival can only be truly successful if everyone stays safe. Safety outcomes as a KPI involve tracking any incidents, accidents, or health issues and evaluating how effectively they were prevented or handled. In the food festival context, this covers a broad area: crowd safety, food safety, fire safety (all those grills and deep fryers!), weather-related precautions, and general attendee well-being.
Why it matters: A festival that nails all other KPIs can have its reputation destroyed by one serious safety incident. Success in safety is often measured by the incidents that didn’t happen:
– Preventing accidents and illnesses: Good safety performance might mean zero serious injuries, zero cases of food poisoning, and only minor first aid cases despite hosting thousands of guests. For example, an outdoor summer food festival in Arizona made a point to provide free water and lots of shade tents after some heat-related illnesses in a past year. The result? In the following year, medical incidents dropped dramatically even though attendance grew.
– Efficient emergency response: Even with precautions, things can happen – a guest might slip, or someone might have an allergy reaction. A key safety KPI is your response time and handling of incidents. How quickly did the on-site medical team reach an individual in need? If a kitchen fire flared up at a vendor stall, was it extinguished immediately? Quick, effective responses prevent small issues from becoming major ones. Think of it as the festival’s resilience score.
– Attendee perception of safety: This is a softer metric, but very important. If attendees feel safe and cared for, they’re comfortable staying longer and returning next time. If they see chaos, insufficient crowd control or overly intoxicated people wandering unchecked, they’ll not only leave early but also warn friends. A well-managed festival in London or New York will have clear signage for emergency exits, visible security and medical staff, and a generally orderly environment even amid the fun – attendees subconsciously note this. Post-event surveys asking “Did you feel safe at the event?” can give a satisfaction score related to safety.
How to excel in safety outcomes:
– Detailed Risk Assessment: Before the festival, conduct thorough risk assessments compliant with local regulations (and common sense). In Germany, for instance, getting an event permit requires documenting crowd management plans, emergency evacuation routes, fire extinguisher placement, etc. Identify all potential risks: kitchen fires, electrical hazards, overcrowding, weather (rainstorms, extreme heat), foodborne illnesses, etc. Then implement preventive measures for each.
– Vendor Food Safety Checks: Protect attendees from food-related issues by working with local health inspectors or having your own food safety officers. Ensure every vendor has the right permits and follows hygiene standards (gloves, temperature control for perishables, hand-washing stations in each booth). Performing a quick inspection of each stall before opening (as done in many US and Singapore festivals) can catch risks early – like a vendor whose fridge isn’t keeping temp – and avoid anyone getting sick. Track the number of vendor booths that needed corrections or any food safety violations as a metric to improve on.
– On-Site Medical and Security Team: The size of your safety team should scale with the event. A small gourmet festival for 500 people in Auckland might have a couple of first aid certified staff and a few security guards. A massive night market in Shanghai with 50,000 visitors will need a full crew: paramedics, an on-site ambulance, security personnel at gates and roving inside, and even a liaison with local police. Track incidents per attendee ratio – e.g., 1 medical incident per 1,000 attendees – and aim to reduce it with each edition by learning from near-misses.
– Training and Drills: It’s not enough to have staff; they must know what to do. Brief your vendors and crew on emergency procedures. Some festivals in California have a quick safety meeting each morning of the event, covering things like “what to do if there’s a fire” or pointing out where fire extinguishers and exits are. If you really want to be thorough, run a drill before gates open (for example, simulate an evacuation alarm so staff know how to guide people out calmly). It may seem excessive, but when you have tens of thousands of people on-site, preparedness saves lives.
– Monitor and Adapt in Real Time: Use communication tools (like radios or WhatsApp groups) among staff to report and fix safety issues on the fly. Is a walkway becoming slippery from spilled drinks? Dispatch cleaning before someone falls. Is one area of the festival getting overcrowded? Proactively slow entry to that section or reroute foot traffic. In the digital age, some large festivals even use CCTV and density tracking technology to monitor crowd flow and prevent crushes (e.g., systems tested in events in UK and Australia). Even if you don’t have fancy tech, vigilance and good communication are your best tools. After the event, review what happened: no matter how smooth it went, have a debrief to document any minor incidents or close calls and how to improve safety next time.
Success in safety is often invisible – when nothing bad happens, it might feel like it was easy. But it’s the hard work behind the scenes and careful planning that creates that secure environment. As an organizer, take pride in a festival where the only thing that gets burned is the wood-fire grill pizza, not a safety record. A safe festival is one that attendees and vendors alike will trust and return to, making it a cornerstone of long-term success.
Using KPIs to Guide Festival Excellence
Defining and tracking these KPIs – throughput per stall, dwell time, waste diversion, local vendor sales, and safety outcomes – gives festival organizers a well-rounded scoreboard for success. It’s like a balanced diet of metrics to ensure your food festival nourishes everyone involved:
– Financial numbers (like ticket revenue) alone might tell you if you broke even, but these additional KPIs tell you if attendees were happy, vendors were successful, the community was benefited, and the event was responsible.
Integrating data into decisions: Top festival producers continuously use these metrics to refine their events year over year:
– After each festival, gather all the data and debrief with your team. Did average dwell time increase after adding the live jazz band? Was waste diversion better this year once you banned Styrofoam? Which three vendors had the highest throughput, and what can you learn from them (popular cuisine type, or were they just closest to the entrance)?
– Use the insights to make concrete changes: maybe you realize that the vegan food stall had massive lines (high throughput) – next year, invite more plant-based vendors and shorten each line. Or you find dwell time was low on the second day of a two-day festival – maybe because programming was weaker that day – so you’ll balance the schedule next time or improve day 2 attractions.
– Share some metrics with stakeholders: Sponsors and city officials love to hear about the broader impacts. Instead of simply saying “10,000 people attended”, you can say “10,000 people attended and collectively spent over $200,000 with 50 local small businesses, and we diverted 2 tons of waste from landfill”. This paints a picture of an event that is valuable and sustainable, not just popular.
The Ticket Fairy advantage: Technology can lighten the load in tracking these KPIs. Working with an all-in-one event platform like Ticket Fairy can provide tools to monitor various aspects:
– Real-time analytics on entries (to infer dwell time and peak attendance times).
– Integration with vendor sales systems or RFID tags for cashless transactions (to calculate throughput per stall and total vendor sales easily).
– Registration data that can be used for post-event surveys (gathering feedback on satisfaction and perceived safety).
– And of course, seamless ticketing (with no surprise fees or dynamic pricing gimmicks, because keeping attendees happy starts from the ticket purchase experience).
By leveraging such platforms, even first-time festival organizers in places like Singapore or Brazil can have a data-driven approach from the get-go, learning and adjusting quickly rather than through painful trial and error alone.
Key Takeaways
- Success is Multidimensional: A food festival’s greatness isn’t defined by ticket revenue alone – consider experience, impact, and safety metrics to get the full picture.
- Throughput per Stall: Monitor how many customers each vendor serves. High throughput and short lines mean happy attendees and thriving vendors; use layout, tech, and vendor mix adjustments to optimize this.
- Attendee Dwell Time: Track how long attendees stay. Longer dwell times often equal higher spending and satisfaction. Keep people engaged with diverse programming, comfort amenities, and smart scheduling so they savor the festival for longer.
- Waste Diversion Rate: Measure your sustainability efforts by the percentage of waste you divert from landfills. Aim high – clear bin systems, composting, recycling, and vendor cooperation can lead to 80%+, even 90% waste diversion, making your event greener and more respected.
- Local Vendor Sales & Success: Gauge how well local producers and vendors did (total sales, average sales, sell-outs). When vendors prosper, the community gains and they’ll be excited to return. Support them with good logistics and promotion – their success is your festival’s success.
- Safety Outcomes: Safety is the bedrock of event success. Strive for zero major incidents by thorough planning and on-site vigilance. Track incident response and attendee feedback on safety. A safe environment ensures guests can focus on food and fun without worry.
- Data-Driven Improvement: Use these KPIs year-over-year to guide decisions. Learn from the numbers and feedback to continuously improve your festival – whether it’s adjusting the number of stalls, adding more entertainment, upping the recycling program, or increasing security, let the data illuminate what makes your specific event better.
- Holistic Festival Excellence: By steering your team with metrics that reflect what really makes a culinary event great – happy guests, successful vendors, positive community impact, and a safe, clean atmosphere – you set your festival up for longevity and legendary status. In the world of festival production, the events that thrive are the ones that define and chase success in all the areas that matter.
17th October 2025