booth

[ManyHats]

Our small town (around 1200 people) is having a street fest. We plan to set up a small booth and sell popcorn and soft drinks. They'll be several other food booths. How many drinks would you plan on having?

[John-in-KC]

Have you done your unit fundraising application yet?

 

Have you considered mixing lemonade and limeade as drinks? Sugar, water, lemon juice. Easily procurable at the grocery store, you might even be able to negotiate return of unopened materials.

 

Fresh brewed sun tea also can go over well.(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

[DYB-Mike]

Greetings ManyHats,

 

Several months back our Pack was asked to run a concession stand at a local Touch-A-Truck event. We had good luck running small snack bars before at scout-related events, primarily selling candy and water (sometimes hot dogs), but this would be our first big public attempt. The organizer anticipated attendance at 400 but she herself was inexperienced at the fine points of these events.

 

The bottom line was that we planned for 400 and I dont think we saw half that. We ended up with a lot of stock left over that we had to eat literally, as we were selling fresh pizza! Some of the stock, such as the candy and water we were able to save for Pack events (I still have frozen Pack hot dogs in my freezer). We made some money but probably would have made triple that (or more) if we had been more conservative with stock.

 

Has your town held this event or a similar one before? If so, are there any other seasoned folks who have run booths in the past you could consult? If your town has had similar events that youve attended what is your memory of the attendance? Did the whole town turn out?

 

Do you know if the other food booths will be selling similar items? If you got one drink for each person, you may only sell half that if somebody else is selling drinks, maybe less if they are cheaper.

 

My advice is to be conservative. Its easier to send somebody out for more supplies (make sure you have cash on hand for change as well) than to be stuck with a lot of overstock, especially if its perishable.

 

Good luck and have fun!

 

YIS,

Mike

 

 

[CA_Scouter]

We run concessions for our local Independence Day parade. Our food lady gets a lot of items donated or at substantially reduced cost, so our expenses are kept pretty low. Last year we ended up with about 100 extra dogs, but since they were donated there was no expense to us... we cooked 'em up for a Court of Honor later in the year.

 

 

For example, Wal Mart gives out $25 gift cards to various organiztions once a month. That will buy you a bunch of soda or bottled waters. Some supermarkets do this as well, you may even be able to talk a case of water out of your local drug stores and such... and you can return full cases if you have too much ( a nice gesture, they'll probaby not take it back though ).

 

 

 

 

[ManyHats]

We have a little over 2 monthes to get ready. Target has a great deal on Pepsi products this week. That's what brought the subject up. At $.22 a can, we can easily sell them for $.50 and make a good profit. I'm sure we can use them for other events if we have some left, but that means we have to store them.

[ManyHats]

Would this fall under the popcorn fundraising or do we have to fill out a form because in addition to popcorn we will have drinks. It is scheduled for Blitz day. Since the majority of the town will be at the fest we decided to set up a booth.

 

Yes there will be several other booths with soft drinks. I've heard another booth sells around 400, but they have ribs, chicken etc.

[John-in-KC]

AFAIAC,

 

Separate form. The popcorn is a council sale, your drinks are strictly for your unit.

[CA_Scouter]

I wouldn't charge less than $1/can. People don't mind paying a buck for anything, you don't have to mess around with coins, and its just not worth your time otherwise.

 

People like giving their money to Scouts.

 

We sell tickets instead of having the servers handling cash though we do hot dogs and the food handling rules are different.

 

If you want to give 'em a break on the price, do 6 tickets for $5 or something like that...

 

If other groups are doing soft drinks you may have to either adjust your price to match theirs ( read: dry erase board AND tickets ) or perhaps you can do water instead... just thinkin' out loud...

 

 

 

 

[scottteng]

I agree with the buck a can no change easy to justify have bottled water too. The real tourist traps here in Florida get $3 for bottled water. I would not try to sell mixed with water beverages such as lemonade or bug juice that is asking for a problem. Give someone a can or sealed bottle and they know it has not been tampered with. Add candy bars and bagged snacks to the mix and you have a winner. I would not even go the hot dog route as that needs cooking. These options will keep you out of health dept. requirements also.

[DYB-Mike]

Hi Folks,

 

ManyHats, What CA_Scouter said about pricing the drinks. We usually charge a dollar, even for a large bottle of water. Folks do like to contribute to the scouts. Of course you know best what your market will bear. Keep in mind that your profit margin goes down even if you can use the leftovers for Pack events.

 

I didnt realize you were selling the Trails End popcorn. There is a Unit Money Earning Form you should file with your Council before the event to cover any other items you are selling. Heres the link:

 

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34427.pdf

 

One interesting thing I got from this Forum: if youre selling a brand-name item, like Pepsi, you need to request permission to have the scouts in uniform while selling. Apparently having uniformed scouts selling Brand X give the appearance that the BSA endorses Brand X. Our Council granted us permission to sell a local brand of chocolate in uniform. Im happy to say they realize a scout, especially a cub, in uniform is a great sales incentive.

 

One other suggestion: ringpops. The kids are crazy for them and they sell like hotcakes, at least in this neck of the woods.

 

YIS,

Mike

 

 

 

 

[moxieman]

ManyHats,

 

Is there a festival coordinator you have to go through to set-up your booth? You might want to consult with them to see if they know what the other food booths are offering and then make sure whatever you offer is different.

 

Back when I was a scoutmaster (now district volunteer), our town had a huge Independence Day celebration (roughly 40,000 people would show-up in a town with a population of 8,000) down to the local park (an overnight layover point for Benedict Arnold on his failed attempt to capture Quebec City). The organizers were smart--no two booths could sell the same thing. Our troop had a "monopoly" on selling strawberry shortcake. The Pack had the monopoly on burgers/dogs. The fie department auxiliary had Pepsi product drinks. Project graduation had fruit cups, etc. There were always something like 30 some-odd groups selling food/drinks at this event and no two had the same thing.

 

You had to go through the booth coordinator to make sure whatever you wanted to sell wasn't going to conflict with another group's sale. That way you weren't 'robbing' any other group of potential sales.

 

If there isn't a coordinator for the food booths at your event, you may want to try and contact the other groups and see what they're going to sell. If they get suspicious, explain that you don't want the scouts to compete and possibly steal sales from'em.

 

And, as the others have said, once you have an idea what you are really going to sell, fill out the unit fund-raiser form and submit it to your council office. Be conservative on your supplies. If you sell out, you'll know to get a little more next year.

 

Caution on soft drinks. They are now date stamped and diet drinks have a shorter code because the artificial sweetener breaks down over time. If you're buying now for an event two months from now, double check those date codes before buying. Better yet, wait until closer to the event as soft drinks go on sale all the time.

[ASM59]

Hello,

 

I think it is just about impossible to give a good answer to your question without having a good feeling for the event, number of people attending, and their likelihood of purchasing stuff.

 

When I was treasurer of our local Pack and my wife was fundraiser chairperson, we had pop & water sales at our local summer festival in town every year for 5 years. Our first year, we profited nearly $900.00. I cant remember the total number of pop cans and water bottles sold, but I know that the very next year at the same event we only sold half the amount of pop and water. Again, the third year the profits were back up to around $800.00.

 

The way we did this was to work out an arrangement with the local grocery store. They simply kept some pop and water in the cooler for us and we picked them up (and ice) as we needed it. A tally was kept and when the fundraiser was over, we paid the balance. It was great, we didnt have to have any money up front and the store was very gracious in the way they dealt with us.

 

I am not so sure about the advice about the price??? Our experience is that by keeping the price reasonable, we got more business and became well know for not being like the other booths that were gouging on their prices

 

ASM59

 

[ManyHats]

I agree on the price. Our intention is not to make a ton on drinks. If we buy them for less than $.25 and sell out at $.50, then we don't have to store them and still make a profit. We plan to pop some of the popping corn and sell it for $.25. The main focus is the popcorn. Since we can't do Blitz like most Packs do, we're giving this a shot.

[anarchist]

ManyHats,

 

Not knowing where you are I hesitate to mention this but you might want to check the local health department...In our neck of the woods we have an annual "town day" and we used to sell water, sodas and popcorn (both packages and freshly popped). For years and years we generally set on on one end of the main street and another group selling popcorn set up at the other end. We made more profit on water and fresh popped popcorn than sodas!

 

A few years ago the Health department started sending sanitation inspectors around and closed down a bunch of stands for not having potable water and soap to keep the utensils "clean"....we were lucky as we had access to a commercial kitchen -should we drop our popcorn scoop...(what a joke!). The next year the county was asking for sales tax from vendors...and now we do other things... red tape and health department just took the fun (and profit) out of "food production. BTW selling cans and bottles and popcorn packages did not require health department permit or "inspections -just "cooking up fresh popcorn was the culprit) but the sales tax hassle was just too much.

 

good luck

[DYB-Mike]

Anarchist, Im surprised about the tax issues. Is your Charter Organization a non-profit?

 

We had to deal with our local Board of Health because we were cooking hot dogs and serving pizza but they were very friendly and helpful. They normally charge a permit fee but waive it for non-profits so, as our Charter Organization is a church, no fee. We had to have sanitizing station, use gloves, and so forth but it really wasnt burdensome

 

YIS,

Mike