re: Concession stands

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In the end, you end up working a bunch of people for hours, netting less than minimum wage per worker.


And this is why places do this. It's a legal way for them to often pay less than minimum wage. I use to work in a similar setup at the Hoover Met for Barons games. We got 10 or 15% depending on the day. Our organization gave it up right after I graduated high school because they had such a struggle getting enough people to work because so many times you worked your a** off for very little money.

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So this is another part of the problem. The organization commits at the beginning of the year. Let's say it's a little league organization with 200 parents. It can be extremely difficult to get all of the parents to agree to work, or maybe some back out at the last minute. Halfway through the season, the organization is struggling to find enough people to work Saturday. Then parents start bitching at the coach for committing them to work. So now the University may be left in the lurch with no organization to work the stand.

I know a little about this because I knew of a high school sports team that worked concessions for the Titans. So here's what it's like for those parents. They have to get up early, fight traffic to get to the game. And maybe they aren't parking near the stadium, so they have to deal with shuttles or whatever. They have to put in the hours of work. And they aren't getting paid themselves...they're doing it to raise money for uniforms or whatever the team needs. And you guys who have played on high school teams know exactly what I'm talking about here...maybe 25% of the parents do all the extra work to fundraise, while 75% never do anything.

Those are the people working concession stands.

Using non-profits can be very effective. But Byrne needs to get very hands-on here to fix this, and it sounds like maybe he is. Maybe devote some athletic department employees to monitor and score the groups' efficiency, and then pay a bonus to those groups that score high. There has to be an incentive for them to work harder and do better. And there has to be better training.