Thursday January 12th, 2017
At the outset, I am all for having children eat healthy foods. We work hard to provide Harrison with a proper diet in spite of what he sees on TV.
I noticed this morning on FB that the Recreation Centre that was one of my responsibilities in my former life is initiating a healthy menu in the concession. Through the years there have been many discussions and attempts at this but they all failed. Milk vending machines were around for a while but they failed. In my day we wanted customers to buy something salty, something wet and something else. We were trained to ask customers questions like “would you like something else”? The customer has to say NO and Psychologists say customers don’t like to say No… We operated the concession to provide what the customer wanted.
We wanted customers to come back, the same day/night if possible. We purchased cheap coffee, bitter horrid coffee that customers would begrudgingly buy and would not come back. We bought better coffee and they would come back for seconds, more sales more profit. The fundamental problem is we need to change what people want when they go out to sport venues. For example when I think of going to a Leaf game I immediately think of beer and nachos of all things. I don’t think of shaped carrot chunks. We had customers that loved our steamed hot dogs. The sales of hot dogs was directly related to the type of wieners we used. They were good hot dogs (and will remain a secret I took with me:) Schneiders skinless.
It’s admirable to provide and promote healthy snack alternatives. The first item the story listed was “baby carrots”. Those bags of small carrot chunks labelled “baby carrots” are anything but baby. They are carrots that are cut up, peeled and shaped to look like baby carrots. There are urban legends out there that these carrots are evil and processed from used cars, but most are not. They are carrots just not baby carrots. You could make your own baby carrots with some craft knives and a router but I don’t think that would be cost effective.
The reality is that education and changing people’s lifestyles is more important than providing the healthiest food kids and people see at the Arena. I’m sure you have purchased green or other vegetables at the grocery and the young worker at cash doesn’t know what they are. There was a day when we sold cigarettes at the Arena concession. We stopped selling cigarettes in conjunction with all the educations, programs and advertising out there about the harm caused by cigarettes…
Good luck with this healthy alternative program.
We need to get moving again so I can start a travel blog again…