#60 Mandi Naylor | A Decade of Catering the NFL Draft, Super Bowl, & Bonnaroo
Mandi Naylor has spent more than ten years running food and beverage at some of the biggest events in the country. The NFL Draft. The Super Bowl. Bonnaroo. ACL. Lollapalooza. CMA Fest. KAABOO in the Cayman Islands. The NASCAR Chicago Street Race. She's fed commissioners, artists, and crews of thousands.
Now she's home in Tennessee, running events for the Robertson County Chamber of Commerce, and gives Nikki Sanz the most honest tour of festival catering you'll hear.
Highlights — What You'll Learn
Why catering is one of the best first gigs in this industry
How to feed thousands of people three to four meals a day for a month at the NFL Draft
The mental load of catering nobody talks about
What "Festy Mom" actually means
How to advance F&B when departments forget to send their numbers
The reality of mom guilt, coming off the road, and finding what's next
Everything Is Fixable or Livable
Mandi started in restaurant management and weddings, then went back to school as a working mom. A guest lecture from Dennis Freeman — her first mentor and an independent contractor for CMA — pulled her into live events. Her first day on the job, she ruined the laminator.
"He was like, it's not a big deal. Everything's fixable or livable. And I've lived by that my whole life."
That phrase is the through-line of the episode. Ovens break. Fridges break. A group shows up unadvanced and needs lunch in an hour. Audio goes out. A guy throws a stack of plates at you because he didn't have the right ticket. Everything is fixable or livable.
Why "Festy Mom" Isn't Just a Cute Nickname
Mandi's TikTok hashtag is #festymom, and it's earned. She's the first one in and the last one out. She decorates her tent — Halloween is her favorite. She advocates for AC and heating in the tent every year because crew comfort matters. She makes sure the food and the ambiance are right, because if the food is bad and the tent is bad, nobody comes back.
"Catering is your place to escape for 30 minutes. You can sit alone, you can listen to music with your friends, you can laugh, you can complain. You can sit down, eat, relax, and then get back to work."
Catering is the one tent on site where every department crosses paths. Mandi treats that as both the responsibility and the opportunity. She trains her staff to be peppy, to make small talk, to greet people like they matter — because the security guard in black pants on hot concrete, the rigger who's been up since 5 a.m., the production coordinator running on three hours of sleep — they all need somewhere to land.
The NFL Draft Is Harder Than the Super Bowl
This was one of the most surprising threads in the episode. Mandi spent years working both, and she's clear: the Draft is the bigger lift. Different city every year. Different permits. No stadium walls to anchor to. The footprint sprawls across downtown streets. A month-long build feeding thousands. And in the last few years, the Draft has challenged her to use only local caterers in each host city.
"A lot of them had never done the numbers we've done before. Some of them had never built a kitchen outside. So it was challenging to want to teach them and help them and guide them. And they did great. They pulled it off."
She gives Detroit a shoutout for the food and the people. She gives the Draft itself credit for the way they donate thousands of pounds of leftover food and water at the end of every event — something that inspired her to build food donation into every festival she worked after.
50 Pallets of Water and the Ice Team Nobody Thinks About
Mandi was over the ice team at the Draft and she paints the picture: 50 pallets of liquid (water, sparkling, Gatorade), 50 to 75 fridges placed across the site, two truckloads of ice. People hustling those fridges and coolers.
She made sure her ice guys carried extra water on their golf carts to hand out to security, to crew working the perimeter, to anyone who couldn't leave their post. That's the part of catering most people don't see — the operation that keeps every other department alive.
"How are you staying hydrated? Even festivals now will give water out to the people up front who can't leave the stage. Being hydrated is so important — it's something the industry has really stepped up on."
What She's Looking For When She Hires
Mandi's hiring criteria is simple and it has nothing to do with experience:
Show up on time
Did you do your research
What kind of shoes are you wearing
Did you lose your credential the first week
Open mind, hustle, eager to learn
Can you handle the mental side — the small talk, the same faces three times a day, the pressure of getting numbers right
"Catering is so mental. People think they're just taking tickets. They're not. They're doing small talk three times a day, watching numbers, making sure you don't go over. I want the people who can handle the mental."
She also doesn't gatekeep. Catering, ice, and water, in her view, are the best entry points in the live events industry, because every department flows through your tent. You learn what everyone does. You learn how to advance. You build relationships across the entire production.
Plate Throwers, Pocket Chicken, and the Mama Bear
Some of the best stories in this one are the catering crisis stories. The guy at the Nashville Draft who shoved a whole chicken breast in his pocket — and threw it at her when she asked what was in there. The Bonnaroo fight she broke up by stepping in front of a six-foot guy. The volunteer who threw plates because he was at the wrong location and didn't have a ticket.
"You're not going to throw plates at my people. You are leaving here now. You will not be nourished. You're done."
The mama bear comes out, and it has to. Because Mandi's tent is a safe space, and that means she protects it.
Coming Home
Last October, Mandi had surgery. Her daughter, 11, was navigating health issues of her own. Mandi looked at her husband Luke and said: I'm done. After a decade of being on the road, she came home.
"I always said there's enough work for everybody. I'm not in competition to get your job. I don't want your job. I'm calling you for advice. And we all move on, we all have different phases of our life. I'm in a different phase now."
She's the Event Manager at the Robertson County Chamber of Commerce now. Different scale. Different pace. Same passion for nourishing people and growing the community around her. She admits the FOMO is real — watching the Super Bowl from the couch this year, knowing the Draft was happening without her — but the trade is worth it.
"Mom guilt is for real. But we have nothing to feel guilty for. We're all just doing what we can."
Final Word
If you're trying to break in, Mandi's advice is short: come with a great attitude, don't be a know-it-all, listen, and don't ask to leave early. She'll never ask you to do something she hasn't done herself. And she'll always make sure you get to see your favorite artist before the night ends.
Listen to the full episode here and please follow the show and leave a review. Find your next gigg and join the #1 live events community at Giggs.
