10 questions to ask before you hire a festival locker company

Not all festival locker services are the same. Some are basic boxes with padlocks. Others are digital lockers with codes sent by email and SMS, monitored daily, with on-site support. Ten questions that separate a reliable operator from a problem you hand directly to your festival goers.

Use these as your standard when talking to any locker company. The answers tell you whether you are looking at a serious operation or a gap in your programme.

1. How do festival goers receive and use their access code?

A padlock with a wheel combination is not the same as a personal digital code. Ask specifically: does the festival goer get a locker number and a code sent to their phone before they arrive?

Volt sends each guest their locker number and a personal access code by email and SMS before the rental period begins, as described in the Smukfest 2026 locker guide. They can open and re-lock as many times as they like during operating hours with no staff involvement needed each time.

Some older systems still issue a manual wheel lock. The festival goer stands at the locker zone, picks a box, sets a combination, and hopes they remember it three days later. Queues build. Help requests follow.

2. Can festival goers book their locker before they arrive on-site?

On-site sales mean queues at entry. Advance booking spreads demand and lets festival goers arrive already sorted.

At Smukfest, locker prices are lower before the festival opens, which gives festival goers a real reason to book early. That shifts the transaction out of the site, reducing load on your ground team at the busiest hour of the weekend.

Ask the locker company whether advance booking is standard or optional, and whether their booking page can be linked from your own ticket flow.

3. What locker sizes do you offer, and how many units can you deliver?

The standard Volt locker is approximately 30 x 30 x 50 cm: room for a jacket, wallet, and a spare powerbank. That covers the everyday storage need for most festival goers. For food, medication, or beer, Cool Lockers provide temperature-controlled storage.

Capacity planning matters. Volt's container unit holds 296 lockers and needs only a single 230V outlet. Modular flightcase units add around 40 lockers each and can be placed across your site. Ask any locker company how they calculate the number of units your event needs, and what their lead time is if you need more at short notice.

4. Who handles delivery, setup, and teardown?

A locker company that drops hardware at your gate and leaves you to work out placement is a labour cost you did not budget for. The question to ask is simple: do you handle everything from delivery to teardown, or does your team need to be on-site for setup?

Volt's Event Lockers run as a full-service operation: Volt handles delivery, staffing, and maintenance, and the container unit needs only a 230V connection from the venue. Get the scope confirmed in writing before you sign. "Full setup" means different things to different suppliers.

5. What on-site support is available when something goes wrong?

At a four-day festival, something will go wrong with a locker. A festival goer loses their code, a door jams, or the system needs resetting. The question is whether your supplier has people on the ground to fix it in minutes, or whether they operate a remote helpdesk that answers on the next business day.

At Smukfest, Volt staffs physical booths at KærligHeden, Sølund Indgang, and Stjernebaren, with the team reachable at hello@getvolt.dk for direct contact. Mobile Locker, which operates at Hellfest and Rock Werchter among others, describes a 24/7 helpdesk with remote and on-site resolution options.

Ask for specifics: what is the response time commitment, and who contacts your operations team if hardware fails at 2am?

6. How is the locker area monitored during the festival?

Monitoring means someone checks the lockers each day: hardware issues spotted, abandoned rentals cleared, units confirmed secure. It is not the same as a camera in the corner.

Volt carries out daily monitoring at its locker installations, as noted in the Smukfest locker guide. Real-time rental data lets the supplier track which units are occupied and where capacity is running low across the site.

Ask any supplier to walk you through what daily monitoring looks like and who is accountable if an issue is found.

7. What does the revenue model look like?

Locker services at festivals run on two common models: a flat hire fee you pay regardless of how many lockers sell, or a revenue share where the supplier takes a cut of each rental. The right model depends on your event's size and risk tolerance.

Revenue share can convert a cost line into income, particularly at larger festivals with strong locker demand. Volt runs on a revenue-share model for most installations. The Volt cost guide for organisers explains how the model works in practice.

Get a clear breakdown in writing: who sets the locker price festival goers pay, who handles payment processing, and when does the revenue settlement happen?

8. What is your liability policy if an item goes missing?

Every locker company will tell you their lockers are secure. The real test is what happens when something goes missing.

Most providers include strict liability caps in their terms. Event Locker Solutions' published terms require a claim within 28 days of the event. Entertainment Lockers caps liability at $200 per incident unless gross negligence is proven. Volt's booking terms at Smukfest state that Volt is not responsible for items left inside lockers.

This is not a dealbreaker, but you need to know it before festival goers start asking. Check what language your supplier uses in their booking confirmation and whether your festival's own terms reflect the same position. Your legal team should see the supplier contract before you sign.

9. Can the hardware carry our branding or a sponsor's branding?

A locker wall seen by thousands of festival goers across a weekend is visible real estate. Some suppliers offer custom sleeves or branded panels. Others ship standard hardware and nothing else.

Volt has a white label model where the locker service runs under the event's own brand or a sponsor's identity. This is standard for larger partnerships. On the charging side, Volt-Chargers carry branded sleeves for sponsor integration. See the full service overview on the Volt for organisers page.

If a sponsor is interested in the locker zone as activation space, confirm with the locker company upfront whether custom branding is supported, what it costs, and what the lead time is for production.

10. Which events of comparable size have you actually run?

A company that has run lockers for a 500-person corporate day is not the same as one that has operated across a 100,000-person camping festival for five days. Both may describe themselves as festival locker specialists.

Ask for named references you can call, not logos on a website. Mobile Locker lists Hellfest, Rock Werchter, Graspop, and Pukkelpop as clients. Volt runs Event Lockers at Smukfest, Copenhell, and over 120 events across Europe, with more than 14 years of operation since 2012.

A supplier confident in their track record will give you contacts. One that hesitates is telling you something.

What Volt's answers look like

Event Lockers from Volt come with personal digital codes sent by SMS and email, daily monitoring, on-site staffed support, modular hardware that installs from a single power outlet, and a revenue-share model that converts locker rental into income for your event. Volt has operated at over 120 events across Europe since 2012, with more than 1 million customers served.

To get a quote or talk through how lockers fit your event, write to hello@getvolt.dk. Full details on what the service includes are at the Event Lockers service page and the Volt for organisers hub.