The company who handled food and water at the Knotfest Iowa festival has released a statement, apologizing for the two hour wait for attendees to purchase a bottle of water. According to Loudwire, 30,000 fans came out to Iowa's National Balloon Classic Field to see Slipknot, Megadeth, Lamb of God, Gojira and this past weekend.
The venue didn’t allow fans to bring refillable water bottles into the festival grounds, and a lack of vendors , coupled with understaffing issues caused some fans to become severely dehydrated. Some were also charged $20 for a single bottle of water.
Knotfest attendee Mary Capron told KCCI News, “There were no signs showing where refillable water stations were and I went back and looked on the map. They didn't even have it marked on the map. It was not spread out. Many festivals that we went to in the past, you had one stage on one end, one stage on the other and the food and beverages were spread out all over the place. I mean, (at Knotfest) you were in a line and you didn't even know what you were standing in line for.”
BEST Concessions and Catering, the vendors for Knotfest, said in a statement, “First and foremost, BEST Concessions and Catering would like to apologize to all those who were affected by the events at Saturday’s Knotfest. As the concessionaire and head of food vendors for this year’s Knotfest in Iowa and an experienced concert concessionaire, we went into the event with a staff we expected would be able to accommodate Knotfest. However, a few days before the festival, our staff dwindled.”
He continued, “At that point, we regrouped and hired additional help and unfortunately on the day of the event, we saw a huge drop in staff. As many others in the hospitality industry have seen, staffing has been difficult with the ongoing pandemic. With more than 30 years of experience in hospitality this was an unprecedented occurrence and as a company we will work hard to prevent situations like this from arising again. We are again very sorry for the experience some concertgoers had and apologize to everyone who encountered long lines and were unable to access concessions.”
