“Hello, London! Let me introduce the band… On oysters, we have the Wright Brothers! On burgers, the legendary Northfield Farm! And on rocket and chorizo baps, Brindisa!”

OK, maybe I’m taking their billing a bit far, but when 60,000 revellers descend on Lovebox at Victoria Park in East London next month to listen to Goldfrapp, the Flaming Lips and Groove Armada, they’ll also be able to enjoy one of the most formidable line-ups of festival food around. Not for them the usual toss-up between greasy noodles and nondescript meat pies; the food here will be from Sourced, a kind of Borough Market on wheels, offering the best from London’s most celebrated food stalls. There will be fudges from Burnt Sugar, pure fruit lollies from Bensons, wild mushroom sandwiches from Sporeboys, as well as gourmet burgers, hotdogs and seafood bars.

The man whom hungry Loveboxers will have to thank is Ben O’Brien, who runs an artist management company (he reluctantly admits to having looked after our Eurovision entry one year) and who nurtured his passion for food when living in Borough. “It would always frustrate me when I went to music festivals or gigs that you could never get anything decent to eat,” he says. “It wasn’t just average food – it was often so dire you ended up going hungry rather than risking it.” Then he noticed that the demographic of festivals was changing. “It was no longer just something you did as a teenager. A lot more people in their thirties were going. They were taking their families, and as they got older, they wanted to do it in a bit more style, a bit more comfort.”

So he brought together a group of entrepreneurial stall-holders from Borough and set about finding suitable festivals: “The nicer ones, obviously, rather than those full of teenagers getting wasted.” The first was last August, at the Innocent Village Fête in Regent’s Park, London. O’Brien admits it was all a bit of a last-minute hodgepodge, but suppliers were delighted. One stall, the Veggie Table, run by a husband and wife who make amazing haloumi and red quinoa burgers, sold out on day one; they were up all night making stock for the following day. “Traders are quite a suspicious bunch,” says O’Brien, “always wondering how much things will cost them. But when they came back, it was all, ‘When’s the next one?’

“What we noticed is that it’s not necessarily the most ‘out there’ and different food that does best, but a really good version of something people are familiar with. The most popular things were the organic gourmet burgers, because people know they like them and are up for having a really good one. You have to provide a good amount of what people know, then there’s room for one-offs, such as the supplier who does about 30 varieties of Scotch egg.”

This year, as well as Lovebox on July 19 and 20 (www.lovebox.net), Sourced is taking in Art in Action outside Oxford (July 17-20; www.artinaction.org.uk), the International Balloon Fiesta in Bristol (August 7-10; www.bristolfiesta.co.uk) and the Big Chill in the Malvern Hills (August 1-3; www.bigchill.net). At the latter, they do a farmers’ market, so campers can buy bread, sausages, bacon and eggs to make their own breakfast. Sourced is also doing the Innocent Village Fête again, on August 2 and 3 (www.innocentvillagefete.com).

“These days, there are so many events that everyone is looking for a point of difference,” says O’Brien. “You aren’t necessarily going to get more people coming to your music festival because you’ve got such great food, but they might come back next year because they had a great time, including fantastic food.”

Sourced, 020-7183 3251

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