If you're organising a village fete, a county show, a corporate away-day or a wedding and you need a food van, the usual way people find one is a Google search, a Facebook post asking a local group, or word of mouth from someone who saw a truck they liked at another event. All three work eventually, and all three are slower and less certain than they should be.
A search turns up whichever vans have paid for ads or built up years of their own website's ranking — not necessarily whoever's actually free that weekend or covers your county. A Facebook post gets you whoever happens to see it and comment, which might be three vans or might be none. Word of mouth only reaches as far as your own network.
What a directory search should actually tell you
The useful version of "find a food van" answers four things at once: what food they do, what counties or areas they cover, what kind of events they're set up for (a wedding is a different job to a construction site canteen, and a van that's happy with one isn't necessarily set up for the other), and how to reach them. A listing that's missing any of those four is a name and a logo, not something you can actually book from.
What separates a listing worth clicking from one that isn't
The details that actually help an organiser decide are rarely the ones a van thinks to put first. A food type and a nice photo matter, but so does the coverage area — a van based two counties over may say yes and then quote a call-out fee that changes your budget. Event types matter too: a van that lists weddings, corporate catering and festivals separately is telling you it's actually set up for each, not just willing to try. And a van without a website or social link listed is one more message you have to send before you even know if they're available.
Why Eventibites exists
Eventibites is a free directory of UK food vans, trailers and mobile caterers, built around exactly those four questions — food type, coverage area, event type, and a direct way to reach the caterer. It's free to search and free to list, with no commission on anything booked and no contract either side. You deal with the organiser or the caterer directly; nobody sits in the middle taking a cut of a wedding booking or a corporate lunch.
It's a new directory, not an established one, so search results will be thin in some areas for now — that's the honest state of it, not something to talk around. But a new directory only becomes a useful one because vans list themselves early, and organisers searching now are exactly the reason a van would bother.
If you run a van and aren't listed yet
Listing takes a few minutes, it's free and stays free, and it's how you show up the next time someone runs a search like the one this article is about. Add your listing here — coverage area, food type, event types and a way to reach you is all it takes to be findable.
And if you're the one doing the organising: search by county and food type here, free, with no account needed to look.