Snacks, Smiles, and Success!

Just as popcorn goes hand-in-hand with movies, concession stand snacks go well with sporting events. New Ulm High School’s Assistant principal and activities director, Troy Guentzel, knows how to attract the seasonal taste buds of many. The New Ulm High Schools concession stands decided to spice things up by adding multiple new seasonal foods. Ranging from pretzels in the winter time, roman noodles in the fall, to possible ice cream choices in the spring, New Ulm High School has it all on the table.

In attempts to promote the Heart Healthy of New Ulm, Mr. Guentzel decided to test out a few healthier options in the concession stands. Specifically, meat and cheese packages were introduced to the public to try and give the people an option with high protein. Despite the lack of nutritional value, seasoned pretzels, ice cream sandwiches, and Roman noodles were brought to meet the people’s wants.

Assistant principal and activities director, Mr. Guentzel, stated in his interview on the new concession stand food that, “We decide the different types of food based off of three reasons. First, we look at shelf life. Next, we see how convenient it is to prepare the food for the costumers. Finally, we look at how much something will sell in our concession stand specifically.” New items like the meat and cheese are very convenient because they come prepackaged. Roman Noodles are also easy for students to prepare for others because all they need to add to the noodles is hot water. There happens to be hot water already in the concession stands due to the coffee that is also sold.

Although most changes in the concession stands have been completely new ideas, some foods have been switched more than once. During Mr. Guentzel’s first year at New Ulm High School, he attempted to change the brand of pizza being sold in the concession stands. In hopes to sell cheaper pizza and make a larger profit for the concession stands, Happy Joe’s pizza was replaced with Dominoes pizza.

Despite the drop in pizza prices, the people showed Mr. Guenzel they wanted Happy Joe’s pizza back. Mr. Guentzel saw himself throwing much more pizza away at the end of the night and eating his money instead of making money off of the cheaper pizza. It was then decided that New Ulm High Schools concessions would switch back to selling Happy Joe’s pizza. The transition back increased the prices, but at the end of the night, the people showed that they were willing to spend more money just to have their favorite pizza, Happy Joe’s.

All of the new seasonal foods being brought to the table are being sold very well, but New Ulm High School continues to see the same old top sellers. Sour Patch Kids, Skittles, pepperoni pizza, and Mountian Dew proceed to make a large profit and be in high demand. With these top sellers and new changes, New Ulm High School continues to see, on average, 20,000 dollars of profit a year being brought in by concession stands alone.