Concessions Enhance Your Rodeo Experience

Your rodeo creates memorable moments that people carry with them for the rest of their lives. Ensuring you have food at your rodeo helps enhance these memories because food carries nostalgia and memories. (Plus, it helps you avoid hangry attendees.)

You can offer your own concessions to bolster your rodeo revenue or work with local food trucks and vendors to have food at your rodeo. Whichever direction you go, Rodeo Ticket’s software can help you streamline your operations. We’ll cover everything you need to know to manage your concessions yourself or to work with food trucks.

• Rodeo Concessions Stand Strategy
• Rodeo Food Trucks & Vendors

Rodeo Concessions Stand Strategy

Opening your rodeo concessions stand can be a great way to boost your rodeo revenue. You don’t have to sell anything fancy – think canned or bottled drinks, popcorn, hot dogs, ice cream, and candy bars. Consider how you want to approach alcohol sales – it can be smart to control the alcohol at your event by being the only vendor because you can avoid people getting overserved.

Keep your operating costs low by buying your concessions in bulk at the store, then adding a markup to your pricing – you’re operating the concessions stand and have some permit and equipment costs to cover, too.

A rodeo concessions stand can also help people feel a personal touch and even the small town vibe that rodeos represent, which can enhance your attendee experience. You can even add signature offerings for your rodeo – The Strawberry Days Rodeo makes a tradition selling strawberries and cream each year.

Rodeo Concessions Stand Pros & Cons

The pros of operating your own rodeo concessions are:

• Additional Revenue Source
• Unique Food for Your Rodeo
• A Small Town Feeling

The cons of operating your own rodeo concessions are:

• Staffing Your Concessions Stand
• Tracking Inventory
• Paying Sales Tax

Manage & Sell Concessions with Fully Integrated Software

Rodeo Ticket makes it easy to manage and sell concessions at your rodeo:

• Inventory Tracking – Add all of your items and quantities to your inventory. Inventory is automatically updated as orders come in.
• Order Fulfillment – Mark orders as fulfilled manually or opt to automatically mark POS orders as fulfilled.
• Concessions Pre-sales – Anticipate your concessions needs by letting people pre-pay for concessions when they buy tickets. You’ll need to have a good plan for fulfilling these pre-orders at your rodeo stand.
• Concessions POS Sales – Sell concessions with our built-in POS app and even let people buy concessions when they buy tickets at your box office.
• QR Code Concessions Sales – Let people scan a QR code to make their concessions order online. You’ll want to have someone dedicated to fulfilling online orders to keep everything moving and wait times short.
• Tipping – Let your attendees add a tip so you can reward your volunteers for their hard work.

You’ll also benefit because Rodeo Ticket pays your sales tax for you on all credit card transactions. Our system makes it easy to charge sales tax on cash and check transactions so you can make those payments to the government.

Rodeo Food Trucks & Vendors

If you don’t have the support to operate your own concessions, you can turn this situation into an opportunity. Create vendor booths at your rodeo grounds around your arena. You can split these booths between food and souvenir vendors.

Start by creating a vendor booth map for your arena grounds. Then, determine your pricing strategy. You can charge a flat fee for each booth location or you can charge a higher price for better spots.

Next, think about what kinds of food your attendees will want to eat, then find local food trucks or restaurants who might be interested in selling at your rodeo. Cover protein, dessert, snacks, and drinks in your outreach.

When you land a popular local food truck or restaurant, include them in your marketing. Knowing there will be good food at your rodeo can help you sell more rodeo tickets and get people more excited about coming to your rodeo.

Rodeo Food Trucks & Vendors Pros & Cons

The pros of inviting food trucks and vendors to your rodeo are:

• Enhance Rodeo Marketing with Popular Food Trucks
• Reduce Volunteer Recruiting & Training Needs
• Add a Revenue Source Without Too Much Extra Work

The cons of inviting food trucks and vendors to your rodeo are:

• Vendors May Not Return Each Year to Build a Tradition
• Vendor Marketing & Outreach to Close Sales
• Vendors May Forget or Not Show Up

Sell Vendor Booths with Rodeo Ticket’s Software

Rodeo Ticket makes working with food trucks and vendors easy:

• Custom Pricing – Set your booth pricing to match your sales strategy. You can even create discount codes as needed.
• Sponsor & Vendor CRM – Track food truck and vendor outreach with a built-in CRM designed for rodeos. Know who you’ve talked to and what stage your conversations are in.
• Booth Map – Use a booth map of your arena to make it easy for food trucks and vendors to pick their spots. Or, sell booths like general admission and assign vendor spots yourself.
• Online Sales – Let vendors buy their booths online without having to contact you.
• Invoicing & Approvals – Send vendors invoices that they can pay online or with a check. If you’d like to approve all of your food trucks, you can have vendors request an invoice online instead of letting them just buy a booth.

With these tools backing your food truck and vendor strategy, you’ll streamline your operations, stay organized, and make your rodeo experience memorable.