Wine Festivals — Espoo, Kokkola & Porvoo

Finnish wine festivals have established themselves as one of the most stylish event categories of the summer season, and Fridays has been the long-term staffing partner for the three biggest city-based events — Espoo Wine Festival, Kokkola Wine Festival, and Porvoo Wine Festival. These events combine premium wines, food, live music, and an adult audience that expects the service to match the quality of what is being poured.

Fridays' role at these events is twofold: we supply the trained event staff — hosts, gate crew, floor supervisors, and area managers — and we supply the professional MCs who guide the day's programme on stage, introduce winemakers, moderate tasting sessions, and keep the tempo of the event from start to finish. Choosing the right MC is exceptionally important here: the audience is demanding, the content is aimed at adults, and every stage moment has to feel natural to both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking guests.

In practice Fridays handles recruitment, briefing, employment contracts, shift planning, and occupational safety. Before each event we walk the team through the client's brand look, key messages, and behavioural guidelines, so that the on-site experience is delivered by one coherent team — even when the total group is made up of dozens of individuals across several shifts. There is always a shift lead on site who communicates with the client's producer in real time.

The demands of a wine festival come down to detail: full compliance with alcohol serving regulations, age verification, smooth flow from ticketing to the festival area, dedicated VIP service, and the ability to react to weather changes without letting the guest experience suffer. Our staff are trained across all of these tasks.

Across the three events, combined visitor numbers run into the tens of thousands, and in every one of them Fridays has been the same reliable partner year after year. A stylish event needs stylish encounters — and that is exactly what our event staff have been trained to deliver.

Fridays' delivery model on activations of this scale rests on four cornerstones. Recruitment and employment run entirely through us, so no shift ever leaves the client carrying employer risk. Briefing and training are done before every shift so brand look, key messages, and behavioural rules land with each individual worker. On-site coordination runs through a named shift lead who stays in contact with the client's producer across the day and reacts to changing situations before they turn into problems. Daily reporting turns encounters, feedback, and observations into a document that can be walked straight into the next planning meeting. This chain is built over years and is the reason clients come back to the same activations year after year — we sell an operating model, not individual workers.