25 cent Cotton Candy

Remote starts are nice. I need to get one.

Aw, c'mon, John. Michigan winters aren't that bad! ;)

Yeah but the summers can be brutal.

I agree that real world prices in the park would be awesome for us. And i agree that it would sell like hot cakes. As a departmetn manager I would be concerned that the lower profit margin will create two issues. One can the park meet the demand in that situation? Is there enough warehouse space for the amount of food that would be needed to see the same profit (in dollars) with a higher cost per item? If the employee level can be increased to meet higher demand (and that's a big if) what happens to the department on a slower than expected day?

Lowering the cost on a food item isn't just snapping your fingers and being done with it. Lower price means more demand, means having to have more product and labor to meet that demand. Means having to sell more and working harder just to have the same profit as the previous year. It's an easy proposition with the cotton candy, not for bigger ticket items. Unless of course the park wouldn't mind proft from foods going down. HAHA

Lets say that last year, CP sold an average of 60 chicken finger baskets an hour per booth. The average booth could churn out 240 baskets an hour. So the workers aren't doing as much work as they could because the demand isn't there. Lowering the price increases the demand without needing to increase the capacity. You're already going to be turning a higher profit.

Not to mention that the good press for such a promotion would get butts in the park - some of which probably wouldn't even take advantage of those deals.

JuggaLotus, that is a valid point. One i didn't think of since I assumed that the foods department would be managing their stands to ensure that there was an appropriate level of staff to serve the customer demand.

True there is a minimum level of staff needed to run the joint. On the other hand it would stand to reason that if a stand's minimum staff was greater than the demand needed you would see that stand change in nature to allow for appropriate staffing levels.

A management staff that's on their game would be controlling the staffing levels to fit the demand at hand. Perhaps it's bad for me to assume that the CP foods management is on their game.

With all that said i can say from my experience at the park with the specific example of chicken fingers that the lines for these stands are usually longer than i'm willing to put up with. So from my point of view in this specific case, the stands (as they are run in the past few years) are already at their max capacity for the staffing that is currently scheduled there. I imagine that just about every stand in the park would like to have an extra body or two to increase efficiency and cleanliness. That's just the nature of foods. And agian i'm lead back to the probable reality that lowering food prices to real world levels would create all kinds of problems for the food service department.

Sometimes, on busier days, many of the stands seem like they may not even be able to fit any more bodies, even if demand warranted it.

Exactly my point.

I would rather have a $1 beer instead of a $1 burger.

.... one can dream.

JuggaLotus said:
Remote starts are nice. I need to get one.

Yes, they are. :)

gener said:
I never said that Holiday Worlds soda plan was a disaster for PR. Sorry for not being clear on that. But the free soda is a complete and utter incompetent brain dead move for the parks bottom line. Soda (along with other treats like Cotton candy, snow cones, popcorn and anything coming in a syrup concentrate) is the amusement parks best friend for food cost. One can probably get those percentages down in 5% or less! Now in the real world a food cost of 25% or 30% is a good goal. But because of the cheap foods (like soda and cotton candy) an amusement park can get below 20% across the board. For Holiday world to give away one of their most profitable items is a crime (from the standpoint of whoever owns the park). You have taken one of the best food items for a park profit-wise and made it a liability. (...)

You sound like the entire rest of the industry when Holiday World announced the 'free soft drinks' program. You really should do a little research, because Mr. Koch has explained the program more times than I care to count...and people still don't understand it.

In 1999, Holiday World's per-cap on drinks was $2.80. For 2000, they increased the ticket price by $4. $1 of that was for the coaster, the other $3 was for all the Pepsi product you wanted to drink. The customers are ecstatic, the park gets a $0.20 increase in beverage per-cap, not to mention a whole lot of press attention and a unique marketing hook, and as a bonus, the park got a significant increase in food per-cap. In other words, the program was designed to pay for itself, and ended up paying dividends. It was a bold and dangerous step, but it has been a tremendous success by every reasonable metric.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

That's quite a brilliant program.

Thank you for clearing that up, Rideman. If you hadn't, I would have had to have stepped in to set him straight. ;)

With all due respect Rideman, the fact that they built the program to "pay for itself" doesnt' change the validity of my point. The talking heads can claim all they want that it's this big success, but those running the program sing a different tune.

First they didn't consider the greatly increased waste that came along with it. And that, in this case, kills the per cap. Easily that .20 is lost. Talk to the people cleaning the midway. I would love to see the end pepsi bill and compare it to the 3 dollar per cap.

Second they didn't plan for the numbers of people waiting in line just for free soda that interfered with real sales. In turn beverage kiosks had to be built to circumvent the issue. I wonder if the cola provider paid for that... I would think that they would. If that's the case it isn't a factor. But if Holiday World is paying for and upkeeping the soda stations it's another cost. But even if the kiosks are property of the soda folks, someone has to clean and stock the thing.

If they claim that part of the increase was to pay for the coaster, did they reduce the ticket price a dollar the year after the coaster was built? I would think not. Gate money is used for whatever they want to say they use it for. Generally i would think that it is used for ops costs. Food service on the other hand should be not only self sustaining, but also a huge factor in the profit. Having any "gate" money go to supporting the foods dept is plain silly. They could have easily just raised the price four bucks and dropped the price of soda to a standard street price and they still look like champs and have a hefty increase in profit that season. To tie a portion of the gate to supporting the cost of one of the best margin food items is, again, rediculous... from a business stand point.

It is a fine line between gouging and running the business smartly. But i garuntee that their profit would be greater if they sold the soda and didn't "give it away".

The thing is that Holiday World isn't out to have the highest per cap or the biggest profit margin. So maybe it does work for the Koch family. But from a bottom line standpoint they could be doing it better.

Finally, one may ask, "if it's so bad then why not go back?" Simple, because all the good press they got will go away and have a greater negative impact than they got out of trying the free soda.

I think you summed it up in your last statement regarding good press. There's a lot more to the program than simply the free soda itself. The good press has its own ROI, and I suspect the powers that be considered the ancilliary costs of the program you mentioned, and simply implemented the gate increase to help counter some of the loss of profit they experience from the soda sales.

There is a lot more to the story, as well. Holiday World had been operating an unlimited drink program for picnic groups for several years before, so they knew what they were getting into. In fact, extending it to everybody actually made the program simpler. The real key, though, is that Mr. Koch (a) does lots of neat things with spreadsheets, and (b) obviously considers his park to be a single entity, not a group of affiliated departments, each an independent profit or loss center.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

All that and there is so much that Holiday World is gaining with the public's perceived value of the soft-drink program. It makes for extremely happy guests who come back with such a positive experience that they go out of their way (maybe unknowingly) giving free advertisement to the park for everyone they talk to about it.

This is very similar to CP's 25 cent cotton candy as far as public perception. I know I never get cotton candy, but I like it, and at 25 cents I had it 3 times on opening day. I felt glad to give the park my 75 cents and felt I was getting something great in return - a real value for my money.

*** Edited 5/9/2006 11:34:39 AM UTC by cyberdman***

The best part was seeing all the people walking around with the cotton candy with smiles on their faces...especially the little kids. Like cyberdman mentioned, I never get cotton candy, but did...and liked it...and it was so nice to hand someone a QUARTER and get something that was actually worth the price.

We dont get a lot of food at the park, so I cannot speak on other price drops (our beer and pretzels are exactly the same...d'oh)....but the cotton candy was a great morale boost!