Slaprea, Cambodia’s biggest food festival returned with over 70,000 visitors as reported by the National Stadium team. 

The Idea Consultancy which owns and organizes the festival was surprised with the huge turnout despite the two year hiatus. The event garnered so much demand on social media, traffic police began turning people away from the stadium at 7pm, only 3 hours after the festival began. 

NHAM24 alleviated much of the traffic with its recently launched ride hailing service with over 2,000 free rides to and from the event. “We are glad we could support our local community events like this, we don’t just deliver dinner to our customers anymore, we deliver them to their dinner too!” says NHAM24 founder, Borima Chann. 'G’, or Galeno Chua, the founder of Slaprea and The Idea Consultancy attributes the high traffic to this year’s main sponsor Phillip Bank. ‘This is likely because Phillip Bank knocked out an incredible offer of $4 and $6 in cash vouchers to the festival when you signed up for an account, they really understood what customers wanted!’

“We closed off this year on a high note, introducing thousands of customers to our financial services”, says Phillip Bank’s Chief of e-Channels Banking Officer, Mr. Vincent Yap. Festival-goers who were interviewed stated they were pleasantly surprised by the service, ‘You know I can be sitting at [Other bank name omitted] for hours and still not get what I want, some banks grow too fast and suddenly the service and operations turn bad, but with Phillip Bank, I was set up in less than 10 minutes and the service was so kind! And now that there is a universal QR code I think I will probably switch banks now, the service is better.”

Other sponsors which made the event possible were Pro Vida, Cambodia’s top selling fresh spring water company who provided refreshments for festival goers and the UNIDO who advocated for food safety and the CQS certification on fish products in Cambodia.

“I have to thank the passionate volunteers from Volunteer Nation and the support of the Ministry of Education and Olympic staffs for their ongoing support of the festival, without them it wouldn’t be possible”, says G, “Although I’m personally happy about the turnout, I can see there is still a lot to improve as a community on multi sector issues such as waste management, food safety and empathy. For example, single-use plastic consumption increased greatly from our last event prior to COVID, so we’ll be working hard on education and systems-change to improve the sustainability of our events. Moving forward I believe we will not be able to make everyone happy in order to move into this direction.”

Slaprea is Cambodia’s biggest food festival celebrating a guilt-free love of food, drinks and taste-experiences in the Kingdom, whilst conducting advocacy and research for both business and community issues such as environmental conversation, antimicrobial resistance, empathy in the Kingdom and food agriculture products for export. 

Slaprea 2022 is supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, National Olympic staffs, Volunteer Nation and UYFC, and powered by corporate partners such as Phillip Bank, NHAM24, Provida, Fly Phnom Penh, UNIDO, dip! Cambodia and organized by The Idea Consultancy, a Cambodian social design consultancy and agency branching into sustainability services.