It’s now reflection time, after being overwhelmed from the wild and humbling experience and support at our first international World Street Food Congress 2016, held at Bonifacio Global City, Manila from 20-24 April. We present some facts and figures that makes this World Street Food Congress movement that much more inspiring to us with the support shown at the recent event.

It was a gated but free entry event and yet records of all sorts were being broken – such as the sheer amount of people entering and the number of dishes sold, for starters.

Here are a few ‘Did you know moments’ ..

1/ They came, they ate and they conquered.
A whopping grand total of 73,000 people visited the World Street Food Congress 2016 in the span of five days. It could have been far more if not for the gated entry points and crowd control measures.

2/Hungry for ribs
A grand total of 1920 portions of Balinese Iga Bakar BBQ pork ribs were sold on Saturday, 23 April

3/ Pigs did fly (off the shelves)
Pepita’s Kitchen sold out 14 piglets, served with truffle paella, on a single day, while last year, they shifted only 8 in the similar time span.

4/ Education is Key
150 culinary interns from six different schools (De La Salle – College of St Beilde, Enderrun College, Global Academy, International School for Culinary Arts and Hotel Management, Lyceum of the Philippines University, Magsaysay Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts) participated in this event and each one handled and assisted a vendor offering comfort heritage dishes new to them.

5/ Too hot to Handle
Temperature soared to a scary 40 degrees on Saturday, 23 April but we still saw an insane amount of people entering the event.

6/ Patience is Key
Long queues were formed way before opening hours each day, some came as early as an hour before. That wasn’t the surprising bit – the lines went up to a whooping 1km away from the entrance. But they happily obeyed one of the 10 Commandments of the event “Kill Boredom- make friends with those in the line, it’s better than Facebook, believe us”.

7/ The hawkers were our heroes
They worked for an average of 14 hours on weekdays and an average of 16 hours on weekends. This is dedication to bring only the very best street food to the people. Some did not even take the mandated few half hour breaks through the day.

8/ People were hungry … for information
We received countless requests to extend our Pitchbox and Hackathon sessions (at the WSF Dialogue) as more people wanted a platform to share their ideas and to hear what their peers had to say and suggest.

9/ Chicken is King
The Zhu Hou Chicken stall sold out by 945pm almost every day, shifting close to 200 fowls per day.

10/ Two ladies, four hands and 125,000 satay sticks
The ladies from Sate Marrangi, Indonesia, toiled away at the back of the stall and skewered 125,000 sticks of sate to feed the hungry masses for five days.