Food Stand Taxes

I approached a Burger Stand hoping to pay some 8.45 on a Burger and Fries when lo and behold...it's an odd amount. I realized that they now charge a x.99 price on most food items and add on ~6% tax.

Anything happen to make them lose their tax-free pricing?

Delete the post if posted before, thanks.

I noticed the same. In previous years there were signs indicating that sales tax was not charged. Looking to see if I have a picture of that ... found a low quality one.

I bet "Terrible Taft" has something to do with this.

Well that sign is misleading. They do charge tax, but it was factored into the menu price. That way you kind of figure the actual price of the item backwards. It's just more convenient for the customer. However, i understand that it costs the vendor an extra fee in order to "not add tax". Perhaps CF was sick of paying out year after year.

gener, it was more complicated than that. It was a sales tax pre-pay arrangement where they paid a sales tax amount to the State based on the anticipated sales, which was then audited. I'm not sure how they calculated it, but what they are doing now really could use a re-think. My frozen custard today cost me $2.77. Would it really hurt them to drop the price of a cone by $0.02 (to $2.57) to make it come out to $2.75? I'd think the simpler cash handling would pay for the loss of revenue...!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who notes that there are other things at CP this season that need a re-think, but won't go into them all here...

Rideman,

If you're not going to get into them here, then where and when?

I thought that was the concept behind these kind of boards.

Oh, I'll get into them. Just not in a thread that is supposed to be limited to the food stand tax issue. :)

For instance, now that Cedar Downs has magnetic locks on the outer exit gates, could they PLEASE remove the slam-latches from the inner exit gates? And on the same ride, the new backpack policy is beyond silly. And why, oh why, are they painting the supports on Magnum GREY?! Magnum has never been GREY, it has always been SILVER! And who screwed up in reassembling the Iron Dragon trains so that the shoulder bars won't open right? When they were adding the operator's safety zone between the first and second car on Magnum why didn't they take the opportunity to fix the railings for the first three rows of the train? And when are they going to do something about the seat belt situation on Millennium Force? Why did they install *harder* butt-cushions on Mean Streak when they should have instead installed *softer* back cushions? And speaking of seat cushions, when I rode Mine Ride I would have felt a lot better about it if I weren't perched on the edge of the seat because there is no 'give' to the seat, when what happened on that ride happened on that ride...

You see why I didn't want to go into all that stuff here? :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Hi:

I noticed last year the beer tax wasn't included. This year, of course everything. I wanted to grab a silver tag and ask for an explanation, but they all looked busy.

My guess was they were forced to do it. I can't imagine counting out change all day is a good thing from Cedar Point's point of view.

-Shon

From a Sales Manager perspective: The cash +/- will be increased significantly. I wonder if they'll add cameras to deter the register system cheaters.
You have to watch out for those who will steal like one penny from your change and keep it, they do add up.

Just as you could lose two cents to get to a round number for some items, you could gain two cents by raising other prices to get to the round number.

Jeff, I'm not sure, but I don't think that's what DJtheC is talking about...rather, with the new pricing and all the change-fiddling, the variation between what's in the register and what the register says it's supposed to contain is going to increase.

It's an internal bookkeeping problem that comes from having to deal with all that fiddling small change.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

My post was in response to your earlier comment.

Oh. Sorry, Jeff...! :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who hates the way pennies accumulate...