The Entrepreneurship Ecosystem of Food Festivals—A Vendors’ Approach

A food festival is a type of an environment in which various stakeholders function. The main aim of the research is to indicate the elements and relations of the entrepreneurship ecosystem of food festivals. Empirical data were collected at three food festivals in Poland in the summer of 2020 using the pen-and-paper interview method and semi-structured interviews. During the research, a total of 58 interviews were conducted with vendors. A coding technique was used to process the data. The themes included in the interviews concerned parts of the food festival entrepreneurship model: capital, micro-environment, and macro-environment. The conducted research shows that the core of the entrepreneurship ecosystem model of food festivals is dominated by the family capital. For the vendor, the food festival acts as a platform connecting with the micro-environment and other stakeholders. In the macro-environment of the food festival ecosystem, apart from the conditions of support, there are also factors that limited the activity. The research is an attempt to fill the gaps in the identification of specific features and elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem of food festivals. The research is an attempt to show how the entrepreneurship ecosystem model of food festivals works. The observations require further in-depth research, e.g., in terms of the evolution of this ecosystem or the dynamics of relationships.