01
Which door
Food cooked and served on the field, packaged food, the craft row, or a service such as a workshop or a hire. The rulebook that applies to you follows from this one answer.
Vendors · 03 of 03 · apply
Get in the queue for a pitch.
Applications open in winter 2027 with the terms and the rate. The queue is open today: ten minutes of typing puts you at the front of it, costs nothing and commits nobody.
Our plan for 7–8 August 2027 at LeBreton Flats, subject to permits · applications open winter 2027
What you are filling in.
Two forms exist in this process, and only one of them is open. The queue is read by a person at the festival office and decides nothing on its own.
Status · 29 August 2026 · intake 02 · vendors & makers
| Stage | What it is | When |
|---|---|---|
| The queue, below | A first conversation. Binding on neither side. | Open today |
| A reply from the office | A person reads it and writes back with questions or an honest answer about the year. | Within ten working days |
| Terms and rate published | The fee, what it covers, the pitch agreement and the requirements, in one publication. | Winter 2027 |
| The application proper | The same answers again, with the documents attached. | Winter 2027 |
| Jury, for the craft row | One question: did you make this? Resale is refused at this stage. | Winter 2027 |
| Pitch agreement and the fee | Signed and paid before the site plan is drawn, so your frontage and power land on it. | Spring 2027 |
| Documents in | Public-health permit by 24 July 2027, certificate of insurance by 28 July 2027. | July 2027 |
Have these six answers ready.
The form takes about ten minutes with them to hand. Approximate answers are welcome on all six, and an honest estimate beats a confident round number every time.
The form saves nothing as you type, so gather first
Fields marked required on the form are the ones an answer cannot be written without
02
What you sell
Name the dishes or the objects. Three or four lines does it, and a link to a menu or a photo set does the rest.
03
What you bring
Tent size, counters, fridges, fryers, propane, and any vehicle that has to stand on the field. The site plan is drawn from these answers.
04
The power you draw
Amps and what draws them. An estimate is fine at this stage, and the distribution is designed from the declared draws on the applications.
05
Where you stand on insurance
Carrying a $2,000,000 policy today, able to arrange one, or carrying none at all. All three are ordinary answers, and the third one is the answer that sizes our group route.
06
Where you are with food permits
A food handler certificate on the crew, an Ottawa Public Health application filed before, access to an approved commercial kitchen. Craft and packaged sellers leave this empty.
01Now
In the queue
02Planned
Terms published
03Planned
Application in
04Planned
Pitch agreed
Intake 02 · vendors & makers · answered by a person
The queue.
Everything here is a first pass. Nothing you write below is held against the application you make in winter 2027, and writing again when something changes is welcome.
One business, one entry · write again if anything changes
After you press send.
Eight steps between this form and a counter open on the field. Every date ahead of today is our plan and says so.
The two July dates are hard · everything before them exists to meet them
- As soon as it sendsNow Your answers land with the festival office Filed under vendor applications. A notification goes to the person who handles them.
- Within ten working daysNow A person writes back With questions, an answer about insurance, or an honest word about how much room the food street has.
- Winter 2027Planned Terms, rate, requirements and form publish The queue is told first, ahead of any public announcement.
- Winter 2027Planned You apply, and the craft row is juried Same answers, with the documents attached. The jury asks whether you made the object.
- Winter 2027Planned Academy courses open Accessibility, handling food on a field, and safety on the ground.
- Spring 2027Planned Pitch agreement signed, site map drawn Your frontage, your power and your load-in window land on the published plan.
- 24 July 2027Planned Public health packet closes
- 28 July 2027Planned Certificates of insurance due Ten days before the gates. The two hard dates of the whole process sit here.
What happens to your answers.
Every field on the form is there because a decision depends on it. The ones a festival usually asks for and never uses are missing on purpose.
What happens to what you send
- Your application is used for your application. It goes to the festival office and into the participant record for your business.
- Marketing letters need a separate tick, per mailing type, none of them pre-ticked. Consent given for one type covers that type alone.
- Dates of birth, home addresses and citizenship are never asked for. Every unnecessary field lowers the number of makers who finish the form and adds an obligation to store something.
- Your power and equipment answers become the site plan. They are read by the person designing the distribution and by the ESA notification built from it.
- Withdraw at any point by writing to the office, and the record goes with you.
The queue is also how the group insurance question gets answered. Makers who tick «I carry none» are counted, and that count is what a broker asks for first when a festival goes looking for a group policy. A maker who says so today is doing the work that opens the craft row to everybody else.
Questions about the form itself.
Anything else goes to the office and gets answered here.
hello@capitalcultures.com
Does being in the queue guarantee me a pitch?
It guarantees you the terms, the rate and the form before anybody else, and it tells us what the food street and the craft row would look like if everybody in the queue traded. The pitch itself follows the application in winter 2027.
Does it cost anything to be in the queue?
Nothing, at any stage. The fee attaches to a signed pitch agreement in spring 2027.
I do not know my power draw yet.
Write an estimate and say it is one. Fridges, fryers and hot holding are the three that matter, and the distribution is designed with headroom over the declared numbers.
I sell things I buy in. Where do I go?
The craft row is juried on whether you made the object, so resale belongs on the marketplace, which lists shopfronts from across this city. Say so on the form and the office will point you at that door.
Can two of us share one pitch?
Say so in what you bring, and put both names on the form. Shared pitches work on a craft row and are harder on a food street, where the public-health permit attaches to one operator.
Do I have to be from one of the communities?
The craft row is juried on whether you made the object, and the food street is judged on what you cook and how safely you cook it. A card on the row carries the maker's name and, where there is one, the community the craft comes from.
I applied through the vendor page already.
One entry is enough. Both forms land in the same place, and the office reads them as one queue.
The rest of it.
Three pages hold the trade door. Read them in any order; the queue asks for what the first two describe.
Vendors · 03 of 03
Ten minutes, and you are in the queue.
The rate, the terms and the application form publish together in winter 2027. The queue reads them first.