After a successful four-year run, the Karachi Eat festival recently had its fifth outing at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park as opposed to Frere Hall where it had been previously taking place. Organized by CKO Events Architecture, the 3-day event generated mixed reviews from those who managed to make it to the venue despite serpentine queues and endless waits.
The highly anticipated food festival took place in Karachi from January 12-14. Instep reports on some of the major highlights that took almost 100,000 people by storm.
After a successful four-year run, the Karachi Eat festival recently had its fifth outing at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park as opposed to Frere Hall where it had been previously taking place. Organized by CKO Events Architecture, the 3-day event generated mixed reviews from those who managed to make it to the venue despite serpentine queues and endless waits. Most of the festival’s criticism revolved around its single entry point, which was too narrow and resulted in long queues that exhausted people even before entering the venue. Nonetheless, the decision to change the venue turned out to be a success; inside, the place was spacious and also allowed for some breathing space to visitors, making the experience worth the wait.
With total footfall spilling over 100,000, Karachi Eat 2018 featured over 125 kiosks with a diverse range of cuisines including Parsi, Mexican, Sri Lankan, Middle Eastern, Thai, Chinese, Swiss, South Indian and many others. Given the large number of people attending, it is noteworthy that there were no complaints in terms of security, clashes or cleanliness at the event. With huge amount of food being served at the venue, it is worth appreciating that cleanliness was taken very good care of while the entire park was cleaned at the end of three days with over 50 people involved in the process.
Speaking about the venue change, CEO of CKO Events Architecture, Omar Omari shared, “The idea has always been to reactivate our public spaces, bring awareness to the parks that exist within Karachi and experience them as one experiences public spaces all over the world. The Karachi Eat had outlived the space available at the Frere Hall, in terms of parking, traffic flow, capacity and permissions. We wished to now focus on an another park, one which has been sitting under our noses for over a decade, however sadly about only 1 per cent of the people who came to the festival had ever been there before.”
Given the criticism and people’s reaction over certain activities that took place at the event, we asked him about the issues that need to be addressed next year. He mentioned three major changes that they need to work on. “Reduction in the amount of stalls, serious filtration for participation of companies/ brands and restructuring entering and ticketing procedure – making them faster and easier for attendees.”
