Not defending UW concessions, but what do you plan for at an upcoming game? Having worked in the concessions area many, many years ago as a student, I know some of the problems involved. First off, what is the anticipated attendance; how much reliance can you place on the number provided? Also, what is the weather anticipated to be like; should you place any reliance on the forecast? Will a special event, such as fireworks, increase an specific element within the attendance; i.e., kids and it being a night game that will in all probability end well after ten o'clock how many children will be in attendance because of the special event because of the late time involved?
Should there have been hot chololate offered? In all probability yes, after all this is Laramie in September and one never knows what a September evening can be like; can be nice and pleasant until quite late in the evening or it can suddenly drop several degrees within a relatively short period of time. But as with the situation with hot coffee, how much do you prepare for the for the event? If you are expecting an evening where temperatures may remain halfway nice until late into the evening you would not expect a tremendous demand and would prepare for a mild to moderate demand. The problem then is if the weather does suddenly change and demand goes from moderate to high how do you prepare enough to keep up with the increased demand. I do not know how long it takes to get a fairly large sized coffee urn hot but imagine it would be around a half an hour or more. If every stand has two large urns does it prepare two urns of coffee initially hoping there is going to be a high demand or does it prepare only one urn planning on a moderate demand and demand suddenly looks like it is going to be high is there enough time to have the second urn ready to meet the increased demand? I don't know. When I worked in concessions some forty years ago we made coffee in big kettles in the fieldhouse kitchen and took it to stadium stands in individual insulated (not very well) containers to the individual stands; think that might still be done to some extent.
In any case, as I mentioned in a different post I will no longer be attending UW athletic events, I talked with a couple of fans who were there and with an individual who works with a group in one of the concession stands. From what I am told, there really didn't seem to be much coffee demanded or in evidence until the second quarter toward half-time (at which time it might be a little difficult to make enough more coffee to meet demands at half-time). So really the question is how much should concessions prepare before the event and how much should it have in process in the early stages of the event for possible demand later in the event? Frankly, I don't know; but I do know that in the past I have been told that concessions has had to dump severaol hundreds of gallons of coffee and hot chocolate because attendance was way lower than anticipated or because the weather didn't turn as cold as predicted.
I would expect that it is harder for concessions to predict night football game demands than early (or maybe even late) afternoon games. I only know that several years ago I was amazed at the number of hot dogs/sausages (easily hundreds) and amount of popcorn I saw in trash dumpsters near the fieldhouse kitchen following a football game. (Found out that by rule concessions is not allowed to donate the unused prepared food because of libility concerns.) So, please cut a little slack for the concessions people, unforeseens make planning for events somewhat difficult at times.
Oh, as for the increase in the number of kids who came to see the fireworks, from what I am hearing that probably was also poor planning on the AD's part as I am told that probably a good half of the crowd had left after the end of the third quarter.
