What are good foods to serve at a refreshment stand?

Question

There are a few requirements:

1. It must produce a large profit. (The refreshment stand is a fundraiser for football)

2. It has to be easy to prepare in large quantities. (Attendance at some of the football games reaches in excess of 8,000 people)

3. It has to be innovative.

Currently, we sell the standards: burgers, hot dogs, fries, popcorn chicken, popcorn, sodas, water, and candy.

We need something NEW!

Note: We order everything from a restaurant wholesale supplier so we are limited in what we can purchase, but any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for something such as cookies or candy. I'm look for something that is preferabally warm. Microwaving is not an option for producing large quantities. We also don't have enough oven space to produce enough pizza. The best cooking options from what we have are a lot of burners, grill space, and deep frying.

Answer 1

Chili
Hot chocolate
Coffee
Tea
Fried Coke

Answer 2

You can make a large profit by deep frying anything. It's really cheap. What about deep fried desserts. People are going crazy for this stuff now. You can sell them for at least $3 a piece. Twinkies, snickers, 3 musketeers. You could also do this with fresh fruit and charge more. Apples, strawberries, bananas. You could probably go as high as $5 for a dish of these. Charge extra for dipping sauces. Chocolate and berry sauce would be great for these.

Another thing you can do is also charge for dipping sauces for your fries. I went to this place in NYC called pommes frites, check out their website. I paid $.75 for each dollop of flavored mayo. They seem easy to make.

I have only had this in NYC, and it's so good. Basically it's a corn pancake that has a slice of mozzerella then they top it with another corn pancake and let it melt. They are so good. I paid $5 for mine.

Another really good one is corn grilled corn on the cob. Charge more for flavors. There are a ton of recipes out there. You can can charge $3 for plain $4 for flavored.

Answer 3

Nachos are a big hit at our school concession stand. You can do just basic chips and cheese and then offer toppings for additional cost. Sausage dogs are also big sellers. Grilled chicken as an alternative meat.
chips of all kinds.
Healthier wraps/gyros
Coffee and Hot chocolate
Deep fryer-taquitos, egg rolls, funnel cakes, corn dogs, fried veggies-whole green beans, brocolli, mushrooms, sweet potato fries.
you could have some specialty areas, such as breakfast-biscuits/burritos
gourmet-upscale concession foods
healthy alternative

Good luck.

Answer 4

taco in a bag

you take a small individual size doritos bag of chips and crunch them up a little bit. then open the bag up and put in a small scoop or two of ground beef that has already been seasoned with taco seasoning. then you let the customer chose from diffrent topping to put in the bag.

the fair I went to recently did this and they offered tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, taco sauce and salsa, onions. THIS WAS A MAJOR HIT!. They had the ground beef in crock pots and the toppings in disposable containers.

The ground beef with taco seasoning can be made ahead of time and even frozen if desired. you can get the lettuce and cheese and maybe onions already chopped, shredded. Not too much work that is involved in this!

Answer 5

Nachos
Corn Dogs
Specialty sausages in place of the hot dogs.

I think most people expect the standard fare at refreshment stands at sporting events. As long as the quality is good don't stress too much over it.

I like abbypupp's ideas!

Answer 6

How about corn dogs or funnel cakes? And, maybe cotton candy.

Answer 7

nachos
little bags of chips
pizza (you could make your own very easy)
pigs in a blanket
cookies

Answer 8

How about salads? With various dressings.

Answer 9

How about freshly prepared veggie cups with dip or fruit cups with dip?

Answer 10

Curry & rice - it's easy to make at home and keep warm. As for rice, microwave it.

Kebabs.

Doughnuts.

Chicken burger.