ABOUT CRAFT HOSPITALITY
Craft Hospitality produces 20+ food and beverage festivals annually across 10 cities — from coffee and cocktail festivals to wine fests and beer fests. We work with 500+ vendors, pour for 25,000+ attendees per year, and partner with iconic venues including the Philadelphia Zoo, Fort Mason in San Francisco, and Union Market in Washington, DC.
We build consumer-facing festivals from scratch — vendor recruitment, production, marketing, and day-of execution. The work is hands-on, fast-paced, and deeply rewarding if you love seeing an event come together and knowing you made it happen.
This hire is the most important one we will make this year. You are not joining a layered production team. We are a lean, high-output team of A players who love event production and putting together elite curation of food & beverage exhibitors to delight guests. Within 90 days, you should be comfortable running a festival by yourself, on-site. Within a year, you own responsibility for a column of 16-20 events and be managing them simultaneously at various stages of pre-production, execution, and wrap.
If that sounds like too much, this is not the role. If it sounds like exactly what you’ve been looking for, keep reading.
WHAT THE JOB ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
6 months out: You’re concurrently building up to 8 events at a time: soliciting and onboarding exhibitors for coffee fests, wine fests, beer fests, and cocktail fests, all at the same time. You understand that attendees buy tickets because of who will be exhibiting, and you’re actively soliciting a dream list of exhibitors to buy in to the event.
8 weeks before an event: You’re confirming exhibitors & vendors, chasing COIs and payments, tracking health department permit issuances, building floor plans, coordinating with the venue on load-in logistics, and staffing up your check-in team through Cast & Crew. You’re managing 30–80 vendor relationships per event — by email, by phone, dm, by whatever it takes. If a vendor hasn’t submitted their form by deadline, you’re on it. You don’t wait to be told.
Event week: You’re landing the plane with thousands of eager attendees ready to see you on Saturday and Sunday, calling and texting all exhibitors to make sure nobody misses a detail, confirming third party vendors, and triple-checking that the electrician, the rentals company, and the ice delivery are all locked. Nothing is “someone else’s job.”
Day of: You’re the first one on-site and the last one to leave. You’re managing load-in, directing vendors to their booths, handling the inevitable no-show or equipment failure, and making sure thousands of attendees have a great time. When the power goes out or a vendor no-shows, you use your judgment to solve it. If you have your cell phone and your laptop, you can figure out how – no matter what – the show goes on.
Monday after: You’re closing out the event — vendor follow-ups, deposit returns, staff payments, debrief notes. And you’re probably concurrently on your Event Week work for Friday’s load-in for the next event.
YOUR EVENT COLUMN
Over next 12 months you would potentially work on:
• Coffee Festivals in the 2026 calendar for: NYC, DC, San Diego, Philly, Austin, Seattle, SF
• Coffee Festivals in the 2027 calendar for: Dallas, Houston, LA
• Wine Fests in 2026 calendar for: DC and Philly
• Wine Fests in 2027 calendar for: DC and Philly
• Cocktail Fests in the 2027 calendar for: DC, Philly, NYC, SF
• Beer Fests in the 2027 calendar for: Philly
• And additional events as the portfolio grows
Each event involves 30–80 vendors, 800–12,000 attendees, venue coordination, staffing, permitting, and day-of operations. Ability to have intuition for prioritizing tasks and multi-tasking is critical. You will run multiple events simultaneously at different stages. This is the job.
WHO THIS IS FOR
You have produced live events. Not planned them. Not marketed them. Produced them — meaning you were the person responsible for making sure 30-50 exhibitors were recruited and then actually showed up, the site was built, the crowd flowed, and the whole thing didn’t fall apart. You’ve been the one on the ground when something went wrong, and you handled it.
Specifically:
• 1–3 years producing live events. Festivals, food/bev events, large-scale catering, non-agency-lead large-scale attendee facing events. The format matters less than the fact that you’ve run a production and have had enough reps to know when someone might need a telephone call or a text to ensure their commitment to deliver, perform, or show up.
• You are based on the East Coast with a preference for Philadelphia / DC metro area candidates. You will produce events in both markets regularly.
• You work weekends. Events happen on Saturdays and Sundays. Load-ins are Friday. This is non-negotiable. You will travel 30–40% of the time, primarily on event weekends. Expect to be on site many weekends from March – May, and all weekends from late September to mid-November.
• You are obsessively organized. You track details in spreadsheets, not in your head. You know where every vendor stands without being asked.
• You take ownership. You manage your own deadlines and follow through without being chased. When you say something is handled, it is handled. When something is delegated your way, you have a system for keeping track and making sure you follow up until it’s complete.
• You are physically capable. You are the boss on site. If a table needs to be moved, or a line needs to be expedited outside in the rain to get attendees indoors more quickly, you make sure it gets done.
• You communicate directly. You can manage exhibitors, negotiate with venue contacts, and direct a staffing team. You know when to be warm and when to be firm.
• You are proficient with Google Sheets, Canva, and Eventbrite. You will learn our other systems quickly.
WHO THIS IS NOT FOR
• If you thrive with a lot of imposed structure, daily check-ins, or hand-holding, this is not the role for you. We are a small team and you will operate with significant autonomy.
• If your event experience is primarily weddings, agency work, corporate conferences, or experiential marketing activations, the skill set is different. We produce large-scale consumer-facing festivals with dozens of independent, small exhibitors. You may find yourself out of place and unprepared.
• In our busy event seasons, if you are not comfortable with long days on your feet, and demanding, relentless hours with back-to-back events every weekend, you will not be able to keep up.
• If you want to play a smaller role within a more layered, large company where you own a single line of the event production and get limited hands-on with the event, this is not the role for you.
WHAT YOU GET
• Real ownership from day one. You are not an assistant. You are not a coordinator. You will own events end-to-end, make real decisions, and see your work come to life in front of thousands of people. Your decisions directly impact the success (or failure) of an event.
• Direct mentorship from the founder. You will level up your production experience with mentorship of a founder who has produced 150+ events.
• Access to every event we produce. Coffee, wine, cocktails, whiskey, beer. You will never lack for interesting weekends.
• A company that keeps growing. We are growing into new markets, locking in new venues, and building infrastructure. You are joining at the inflection point — early enough to shape how we scale.
• A career insulated from AI. We work with real people, on real projects, with high stakes, and interpersonal emotional intelligence that machines cannot replicate. Organizing human-driven chaos is a job for smart, intuitive humans.
COMPENSATION
• Health insurance and remote expense stipend
• Flexible remote work
• PTO
• Travel expenses covered
• This is a full-time W-2 position.
HOW TO APPLY
Start with the subject line “Associate Producer — [Your City].”
Include:
• Your resume.
• A short note (3–5 sentences, not a cover letter) about the most complex event you have produced and what went wrong during it. We want to know how you handle the things when it counts.
• Your availability to start.
We are reviewing applications on a rolling basis and will schedule interviews immediately for strong candidates. Target start date is late-August 2026.
Pay transparency disclosure: Starting salary is determined by location, experience, and skills. Range: $55,000 - $70,000 depending on exact geographic location and experience.