The Bite of Seattle, founded in 1982, is one of Seattle’s most abiding annual culinary traditions. The now three-day food festival was born out of Reagan-era recession woes in the local restaurant industry, which galvanized a group of owners to put on a weekend event in Greenlake to drum up business. But with the COVID-19 pandemic came a period of even more profound economic uncertainty for restaurants, and the festival went on hiatus from 2020 through 2022.
In May of 2023, Cheq, a Kirkland-based digital payment startup, announced via a press release that it had acquired the rights to produce the beloved festival, and would be transforming it into a “digital-first” experience with the use of its mobile payment and ordering system. Locals swiftly took to Reddit to express skepticism about having to download an app to place orders. “That’s gonna be a disaster,” commented one user in early June. The prediction foreshadowed a tide of complaints about long wait times, app glitches, and double charging from attendees that would flood in during and after the festival on July 21 through July 23.
Chef Grayson Corrales, owner of Capitol Hill tapas bar MariPili, says she and her team were excited for their inaugural stint as vendors at the Bite of Seattle. A booth at the Bite cost MariPili $3,200, and with various permits included the total cost came out to $5,000. Additionally, Cheq kept 16 percent of all sales. For a fledgling restaurant like MariPili — precisely the sort of establishment buoyed by the Bite of years past — Corrales says that’s a significant cut. Many of her restaurant friends elected not to participate after reviewing Cheq’s terms, says Corrales, but MariPili was willing to “make the sacrifice.” Cheq declined to share how much revenue this year’s Bite of Seattle produced for the company.
