Increasing sales by 30% at the Festival d'humour de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
September 29, 2026 | Quebec, Canada
The Festival d'humour de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue has nothing to envy Quebec's largest festivals — it already enjoys an enviable reputation. Edition after edition, the event draws nearly 6,000 admissions over three nights and offers a lineup that brings people together around laughter. The festival is run by a seasoned organization, and attendees rate the experience highly.
Highlights
31%
31% sales increase compared to the previous two editions.
400h
spent in a virtual queue rather than standing at the food trucks.
29%
Of the 487 orders placed through YUGO, 143 came from festival-goers ordering again — 29%.
50%
of people who ordered on Friday ordered again on Saturday.
The solution: order without missing a second of the show
Beyond the recognition and success of the event, the FHAT organization wanted the 2026 edition to fix a pain point for festival-goers: time lost at food trucks.
On top of the frustration of waiting, attendees face a hard choice: enjoy the show or walk over to the kiosks to order. Research shows that adding five people to a line can cut order volume by about 10%. (Measuring the Effect of Queues on Customer Purchases — Yina Lu, Andrés Musalem, Marcelo Olivares, Ariel Schilkrut)
For the 2026 edition, the festival deployed YUGO for food-truck ordering. No operational overhaul was needed: trucks kept working with their usual setup, plus a web page for YUGO order information.
For the festival-goer, the YUGO experience takes a few taps. Scan a QR code to a website, order, and pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay — no account required. YUGO then places the order in a virtual queue with a real-time wait estimate. A first notification goes out when preparation starts, and a second when the order is ready, so everyone shows up at the right time.
For food trucks, the order arrives prepaid on screen and can be prepared ahead. That is what changed Annie's day for the better at the JM La Grillade food truck:
“It's a system that works well and helps us prioritize orders better,” she says. “Honestly, it's a very user-friendly app and it went really well.”
Flexible software
For Annie, handling tricky situations was simpler: “Everything went smoothly — easy to adapt when we were short on inventory, and ideal for our reality.” In 2026, 36% of total food-truck sales volume at FHAT went through YUGO. The rest stayed traditional for festival-goers who did not use YUGO.
A festival-goer's take:
“YUGO really should have been at Saint-Jean last week, and it should be at Festival H2O in Amos next week, and at Osisko en lumière in August too. It's so useful and practical — it should be everywhere!”
A first edition rated 4/5 in the FHAT survey
For a first rollout, feedback from YUGO users is promising. The 60 festival-goers who ordered through YUGO and answered the official festival survey gave it an average score of 4/5. That is a strong start for year one, with room to grow that YUGO intends to pursue.
Continuous improvement
YUGO works hard to keep refining the customer experience. The goal is to tune the product to each type of service point: making a poutine takes longer than opening a can. By calibrating wait estimates and notification timing to each vendor's reality, YUGO makes wait times more accurate and the queue feel smoother.
Why FHAT recommends YUGO
Beyond the numbers, it was the partnership that stood out for the organization. “So much fun working with proactive people like you,” says festival coordinator Stéfanie Barbin, who simply adds: “It was a pleasure working with you and we can't wait for next year.” Vendors and festival-goers agree on the outcome: faster service, invisible virtual queues, and higher sales — without asking exhibitors to overhaul how they work.
« Festival-goers loved being able to order without missing a second of the show, and the food trucks were able to optimize their sales. » Stéfanie Barbin, Coordinator of the Festival d'humour de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue
