…could they manage to lose money selling beer at a football game:
The school released the figures to the Associated Press after a records request, which showed it incurred significant expenses from its first season selling alcohol stadium-wide at TCF Bank Stadium. Those include hiring additional police and security officers, setting up tents and other facilities, and equipment rental. Roughly half of its revenues went directly to Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp., which had the contract to sell beer and wine.
The booze itself cost the university about $180,000.
This bit here made me wonder if they really focused their spending properly (emphasis added):
About $30,000 of the school’s expenses were one-time costs to prepare the stadium — from setting up ATMs to buying plants.
Plants?
In conjunction with beer sales?
Isn’t that what urinals are for?
They apparently expect to turn a profit next year. Not sure if that’s tied with the GoGo football team making the playoffs “next year” or not.
Mitch, you’re forgetting about how many administrators and assistant deans were required to implement and oversee this program. If they hadn’t been analyzing every person’s purchases you might have run the risk of either (a) an underage student might have gotten a beer [for the first time in her life, no doubt] or (b) an adult might have abused this freedom and gotten intoxicated. In either case, you should support this incredibly efficient and wondrous apparatus since IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN!
I looked up the beers they serve–Lite, Grain Belt “Premium” and Summit Pale Ale–and quickly determined that the price they’re paying for liquor, wholesale and in kegs, is higher than the prices I’ve seen for the same product in cans or bottles in the liquor store. (see my site) I also calculated an estimate of how much labor it’s taking to serve a drink, and God help a private sector bartender if it takes him that long (5 minutes or so) to serve each drink.
My college days….I knew guys who paid their monthly rent by hosting beer parties. Perhaps the University can hire some faternity guys to run the beer tent. Show them how to sell beer profitably.
But seriously….when its not your money, you tend not to watch your spending.
Chuck: Your idea will never fly. You have to make it culturally inclusive and politically consistent with U dogma: have an LGBT beer booth and have frat boys dress in drag and talk with a lisp. Promise the proceeds for gay studies and put a big DFL logo by the bar. Your urinals will overflow with a raging river of politically correct profits.
Big S…..you should read National Review Online’s education blog. Phi Beta Cons. They occassionally report on diversityvilles latest antics. Its scary what Big Education spends money on. And how much.
Diversityville – a place we consciously avoid, but have to send our kids for six hours each day.
How many hours of twitter support was “Bill”ed to it by over-generously paid U of M staff?
Oh, who am I kidding?
There is no amount of fecklessness and squander that can account for the failure to sell beer at a profit to college students.
Engineering failure. The UofMn mis-estimated how much pork could be floated in $900,000 worth of beer.
Don’t worry they will fix it next season, they will increase the price of beer 10% and only add 15% more pork. It should work out, no problem!
“My college days….I knew guys who paid their monthly rent by hosting beer parties.”
Chuck, My buddies and I did the vary same thing, we rented halls and packed them full. We would sell and serve keg after keg on a Saturday night. We made plenty of money and had a hell of good time to boot.
Chuck wrote:
Its scary what Big Education spends money on.
The bias is not at all subtle. A friend gave me her son’s textbook for his college communications class — plain vanilla speech coms, not political at all.
Every example of a person communicating poorly is a conservative. For example, the GOP is chided for not enough colored people at their 2008 convention. Dems are not mentioned at all, in any context.
Another example of a poor communicator is an anti-same-sex marriage debater, who is described as red faced, angry, and shouting his opponent. The characteristics of the pro-same-sex marriage proponent is not mentioned at all.
Examples of dishonest communication are given by listing corporations — global, Enron, etc. The only non-corporate examples of dishonesty mentioned are individuals. Government dishonesty is never mentioned.
The thing reads like a breezy self-help book. Research is presented without examining the research for credibility. Ironically, bigotry is condemned at the same time bigoted statements are made about people based on race, sex, and national origins (‘People raised in American culture tend to value the individual, while people raised in Asian cultures tend to give more respect to authority and collective goals”)
The thing reads like some bizarre parody of ‘things white people like’.
The book is “Communication Works” by Teri Kwal Gamble and Michael Gamble, http://www.amazon.com/Communication-Works-Teri-Gamble/dp/007803681X
Don’t worry – they did make a profit. The U’s administration just is trying to intentionally misallocate costs. Fixed assets have to be capitalized and expensed over many years. I’m sure the Strib wouldn’t want businesses to be taxed based on their new definition of loss because buying any large piece of equipment would automatically cause the profit to disappear that year – meaning no income tax due!
Why not let each frat or social group take a turn selling beer to raise money for their cause (free labor) and teach the kids about volunteering while turning a profit?
Or, the legislature could just slap a nice big tax on beer. That solves everything.