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Camp Business
| Camp Concessions Balancing sales with healthy options can be a tough task By Melanie Minch Every summer from age 6 to 18, I sang and hiked and played in the hills of beautiful Camp Wyandot in central Ohio. At the time, the concession stand (camp store) was just the dining hall transformed into a makeshift, once-a-week store. But as a child, it was pure magic. Miss Connie would sit behind the tables and wait patiently as I made my big choices. The postcards were spread out, and I’d buy just the right one. I’d send one home every year with pretty much the same message scribbled on it: Hi, Mom and Dad, having lots of fun. Miss you, Love, Melanie (Years later I found all those postcards saved by my dear mom.) My favorite decision was what candy to buy! Let’s see: M&Ms or Skittles? Necco or Swizzlers? At six, it took me forever to decide. With my purchases hand-written on a file card, Miss Connie would hand them over to me with a smile. I’d tear the candy open with my grubby little fingers and eat it like it was the best thing in the whole world! By the time I was eight, I knew just what I would buy at that store, and I’d be sure to get there first for the best selection! Cho-Yeh Camp Today, concession stands and camp stores are still popular. Moms still treasure their postcards, and campers still need this year’s T-shirt. But candy is only a small part of all the tempting food now offered. Cho-Yeh Camp in Livingston, Texas, provides concessions for its campers at The Trading Post. The camp and conference center is a co-ed, Christian-based, non-profit camp in Piney Woods, northeast of Houston. Jason and Kim Brown bought the camp in 1990 and had 386 children attend that first summer. There are now more than 2,500 children attending, ages 6 to 19. Jason says that they “struggle in camping and as parents with what our children eat.” To keep their kids as healthy as possible, the Browns only open The Trading Post on opening and closing days of camp. This automatically limits the number of times the campers can visit (and the number of bad choices they can make). Bank account balances are easily tracked on the camp computer system. The Trading Post is stocked with camp clothing, food (often bought at a bulk price at Sam’s Club), candy and favorite kid fare like pizza, chips and hamburgers. CEO Jason Brown says: “We want kids to enjoy what they’re eating. Plus we know a week at camp is physically demanding.” Matching Inventory To Philosophy This summer, Texas Children’s Hospital is collaborating with Cho-Yeh Camp on a new camping experience called “Kamp K-ana,” which means health in a native Alabama Indian language. “The camp is for kids who are clinically obese,” says Brown, “which is not our normal camp population.” The idea for this new camp came from Dr. Keith McPherson, the camp pediatrician who operates a private practice in Conroe, Texas. McPherson was concerned about the growing number of obese children he saw in his practice (he estimates there were 450,000 clinically obese children in the greater Houston area alone) and wanted to do something about it. McPherson, Texas Children’s Hospital and the Browns hope that Kamp K-ana will introduce kids to a healthy, active lifestyle. To help them along, the camp will stress what types of food are good for them and what types are not. During the camp session, Dr. McPherson and the registered dietician on staff will closely monitor the total caloric intake of each resident, focus on community building and emotional support, explore attitudes toward food, and keep campers’ bodies active and their minds off food in the hope of helping his campers both lose weight and motivate them to change their lifestyle. Because of this, for this camp session, The Trading Post will only offer healthy selections like fruit and vegetables and cut back on candy and other high-calorie food. The concession stand will still be a fun part of camp; it’s just that the definition of fun foods will change. Concessions Confessions There’s no doubt the camp store and wonderful concessions offered are a fun part of camp, one that can also provide a learning experience for your campers. Your challenge is to decide how to balance offering kids what’s good for them and offering them what they want. In some cases, a little candy after a week of activity might not be a bad thing. In other cases, it might undermine your entire week’s work. The goal is simply to match your inventory with your philosophy. Your campers will let you know if you succeeded. Melanie Minch is a freelance writer in Medina, Ohio, and a regular contributor to Camp Business and Parks & Rec Business magazines. She can be reached via e-mail at gardens@zoominternet.net. Building Relationships How Camp Cho-Yeh uses its management software to streamline its business operations (including concessions) and create a great first impression By Melanie Minch As the old cliché notes, “The Devil is in the details.” Nowhere is that more evident than in the camp industry, where the success of your programs is often based on how well you can store, track, retrieve, and share information across multiple platforms and audiences. Staff members need to know who is in which cabin, what programs/classes campers are participating in, what counselor goes with what campers, what medications campers are taking (if any) and so on. Managers need to know what programs are popular, which ones are making money, which ones need to be fixed or cut, what is driving registration, what is detracting from registration and on and on. At the end of the day, the amount of data floating around your office (and brain) can seem overwhelming and unmanageable. Camp Cho-Yeh has been fighting this battle for eighteen years. Four years ago, the camp purchased CAMPWISE, a camp management software program from RecSoft (www.campwise.com), which is touted as offering a “fully integrated system combining registration, payments, inquiry and more” to try to get its hands around the data--and use it to better the camp. By all accounts, the camp is happy with its choice. First Impressions Matter “Registration is our first impression,” says Kim Brown, Vice President for Development and Marketing at Camp Cho-Yeh. “The process must be smooth and easy. We must build trust (with our customers/parents) from that very first point of contact.” According to Brown, CAMPWISE enables them to do just that, providing the campers and, by extension their parents, with the opportunity to seamlessly register and pay for pictures, care packages, DVD’s, scholarship programs and canteen (concession) items. In fact, this ability to up-sell (parents with money left in their accounts are offered the chance to donate to the camp scholarship account) has really added to the overall health of the camp. As Brown says, “Those $5 to $10 rollovers really add up.” Vendor Choices There are several companies that offer camp management solutions (check out the Camp Business Online Buyer’s Guide, www.camp-business.com, for a complete list and links to Web sites and/or e-mail addresses), but according to Brown, the keys to making a good choice are system latitude, system flexibility and customer service. Brown chose CAMPWISE after a lengthy interview process. She asked lots of questions, test drove the system, visited the office and ultimately decided her personality meshed well with that of the folks at RecSoft. “They did (and do) an exceptional job of listening to our needs. When we call them, they are there. They respond quickly. For example, we recently had a staff turn-over. RecSoft came here and spent two days training our new staff on their system.” Brown notes that there are many programs out there, many of which offer similar functionality. Her advice is to detail your camp’s need, ask lots of questions of all potential vendors, and work to determine if it is the kind of company you can work closely with. As Brown says, “How they service your account, how they view is critical.” |
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