How Eventbrite Fueled 3X Growth for Charleston’s Black Food Truck Festival

When Marcus Hammond launched Charleston’s Black Food Truck Festival in 2021, he wasn’t just organizing an event. He was creating a cultural home where food, music, and artistry are at the heart of the experience from start to finish.

“We started really to fill a void,” Marcus says. “What I was noticing was there were a lot of festivals in the Charleston area, but they didn’t celebrate Black culture.”

Marcus knew Charleston needed a festival like this. What he didn’t anticipate was just how far people would travel to attend.

“To my surprise, I didn’t know that people from all over the country were going to want to come to this event,” he says. “I was very, very surprised and amazed by that.”

Turning curiosity into discovery with Eventbrite

From the beginning, Marcus leaned into marketing channels that still work at scale: radio, social media, and email. But when it came to turning attention into ticket sales, especially for out-of-town travelers, Eventbrite became the unlock.

“Eventbrite,” Marcus says plainly, when asked how he reached audiences beyond Charleston. “When people are visiting different cities, the first thing they want to do is hit up Eventbrite to see what’s going on,” he says.

That behavior matters for festivals with destination appeal. Marcus points to the platform’s built-in discoverability and marketing tools.

“Other ticketing platforms just don’t have the marketing capacity that Eventbrite does.”

Power duo: Paid social ads + Eventbrite Ads that “push events to the top”

Today, Marcus runs a combination of Eventbrite Ads and the platform’s integrated paid social ads, usually in tandem.

“I use Eventbrite Ads and Facebook marketing,” he says. “I find it very easy. Eventbrite has a lot of automated features and tools that work really well.

“Whatever we spend on Facebook, we spend the same on Eventbrite Ads and have them running simultaneously.

“So not only are we easy to find on socials, you can find us very easily on Eventbrite as well.”

When it comes to discoverability, Marcus sees the effect in real time.

“What the Eventbrite Ads do is push my events to the top of Eventbrite search and on the homepage,” he says. “If someone types in ‘food truck festival’ and it’s near Charleston, we’ll pop up.”

The impact is meaningful. Marcus noted that up to 10% of his ticket sales come via Eventbrite Ads.

And Eventbrite’s integrated paid social ads not only save Marcus time, but money, too.

“I used to use a marketing agency for my Facebook campaigns. With Eventbrite, I can do it all myself, saving me thousands of dollars a year,” he says.

“Eventbrite allows me to cut out the middleman to market to Facebook.”

Seamless ticketing and check-in with Eventbrite’s Organizer App

Black Food Truck Festival isn’t a single-day event anymore. It’s a weekend operation with 10 different ticket types, including offsite parties.

That complexity demands infrastructure, especially onsite. Marcus uses third-party scanners running the Eventbrite Organizer App, prioritizing speed and simplicity.

And when things go wrong, flexibility matters. At the 2022 festival, heat drained scanner batteries, and lines backed up.

The fallback plan? Eventbrite’s Organizer App on volunteers’ phones. “We were able to put our organizer app on a lot of volunteers’ phones and scanned people in that way. It’s a very smooth process.”

Marcus also values the operational control Eventbrite gives organizers, without needing a rep for every change.

“With other platforms, I would have to go to them and have them create ticket codes,” Marcus says. “With Eventbrite, I can create a promo code myself. The power that you have in being able to use the platform and control so much makes it so much easier.”

Turning ticket sales into real-time investment power with Instant Payouts

As Black Food Truck Festival grew into a 15,000+ ticket operation, Marcus quickly realized that growth brings new pressures, like cash flow and financial risk.

Eventbrite doesn’t just help him sell tickets; it helps him stabilize and scale. Instant Payouts are central to that.

Access to funding based on ticket sales gives Marcus the flexibility to invest confidently in the event’s production and marketing without waiting for event-day revenue to hit.

“Eventbrite Instant Payouts allow me to invest the money from ticket sales into the event,” Marcus explains. “That’s a game-changer.

“Having access to that funding … companies that are smaller are not going to be able to do that.”

Harnessing Eventbrite reporting to unlock growth and opportunity

For Marcus, when it comes to understanding his business and audience, data is king.

“With Eventbrite, I can easily access data,” he says. “That is very important.”

Eventbrite’s self-serve reports revealed something extraordinary: the insights helped explain a huge leap in attendance from 5,000 attendees at the first festival in 2021 to over 15,000 people the following year.

“Over 84% of the people that come to the festival are from outside of the Charleston area,” he says. “And over 70% of those people are from outside the state of South Carolina.

“We learned that there was a niche to get Black travelers to a beautiful place like Charleston, South Carolina,” he says.

Better yet: Eventbrite made the reporting operationally simple.

When the local college asked for data on ticket sales and where attendees were coming from, Marcus had everything he needed at his fingertips in his Eventbrite account.

That led to a headline result: Black Food Truck Festival had an estimated $10.2 million economic impact on the city of Charleston, with attendees contributing $1.7 million in taxes.

Those numbers don’t just validate the festival. They unlock growth. 

Marcus has already used them to build expansion partnerships. 

“We have a relationship with our Conventions & Visitors Bureau along with Charlotte and others, ” he says.

Black Food Truck Festival proves what’s possible when vision meets the right platform. 

With Eventbrite’s marketplace reach, integrated marketing tools, real-time reporting, and Instant Payouts, Marcus has transformed a local idea into a destination experience.

And this is only the beginning.