A perspective by David Lynch Chairman JazzFest Committee
The JazzFest Drink Booth is different from most of the other big fundraisers for the church and school; it earns all of its money from the general public instead of deriving much of its money from the pockets of parishioners and school families. Working the booth is fun, but during peak sales times it can be intense, hard work; we are actually earning money in a businesslike way.
We have only a limited number of personnel tickets available for each day, so we cannot lighten the workload by recruiting a surplus of volunteers. Some shifts fill up faster than others and volunteers may be requested to sign-up for a less popular shift. We have developed a system that is very good at accomplishing the work of the booth, but it is very organized and needs people to do specific jobs when needed, despite whether it is what they would really prefer to do, especially when the booth is busy and staffing is tight. There are perks and ‘fringe-benefits’ to being a JazzFest volunteer, but a key part of the sense of satisfaction comes from a feeling of service to the St. Catherine community. Among the perks are free parking and admission to the grounds (you can enjoy the fest before or after your shift), a free shirt, food and drinks at the booth, our own port-a-potty, and an extraordinary opportunity for people-watching.
This summary of operations should provide you an overview of what needs to go on at the booth. Specific ‘jobs’ are highlighted by bold type, and their roles are highlighted in blue.
Product Flow:
The Fairgrounds supplies us with pallets of cans in cases, pallets of bottles in crates, and a truck loaded with huge blocks of ice. It is our job to find a way to use the ice to cool our product and serve it to our customers. Our club has developed a system to accomplish this and we take pride in our reputation for serving the coldest drinks on the grounds.
Our system consists of two main operating areas, a front serving area where product is stored in iced-down bins and we serve our customers, and a back preparation area where the product is precooled before being carried to the front.
Several two-person teams – a ‘cashier’ and a ‘picker’,
staff the serving area. Each team
serves a line of customers and we usually have 3 to 6 lines depending on
customer load. The
cashier takes the order from the customer and returns their change. The cashiers do not handle wet
materials-we take pride in keeping our cash dry. The picker removes the product
from the serving bin and gives it to the customer. The picker and cashier should
work together carefully to make sure that errors are not made in counting
money, change, or product. Losses due to errors hit us very hard; we only
pocket 1/18th of the money we handle, so a 1-in-36-error rate would
eat up half of our profits. The cashiers
must also be very careful not to sell beer to underage people – check IDs! A person called ‘Bill’ is the best
friend of the people up front. ‘Bill’
got his name because the cashiers call out for “Bill!” when they get a fifty-dollar
or higher bill from a customer. Bill helps check the big
bill for authenticity (the cashier also uses a counterfeit-detection pen)
and carries it back to the bankers so that it is not
inadvertently returned as change. Bill
also makes sure that the cashiers have enough change, and carries excess cash
back to the bankers. Bill
gets refreshments for the servers, and arranges for replacements when they need
a Port-a-Pottyä
break. New procedure used in 2002 - There are four serving
lines with two 'Standing Bills' serving each pair of lines, by taking all bill's
of $20 and up. Standing Bill's make change for customer's bills above $20,
then customer pays cashier. This may seem ridiculous, but it made a big
difference in preventing errors when we did it this way in 2001. A
'running Bill' links the front Bill's to the bankers. Also suggested
change - picker takes order and places it in a coke tray. Cashier
counts from tray. $3 products (beer, and sodas) go on one side of tray; $2
products (water) go on the other. Cashier makes customer wait until
product is loaded in tray before they can take product..
The back preparation area is a little more complicated. Sackers empty cases or crates of product into crawfish bags. A large supply of sacked product is stocked-up before the afternoon rush time. Care needs to be taken in sacking and handling product – remember one broken can costs us 18 cans of profit. These crawfish sacks of product are precooled in ice water barrels. A barrel-master marks the time that sacks are placed in the barrels and decides when they are ready to be moved up to the serving area. He also makes sure that the kinds of product being sacked and placed in the barrels meet the prevailing customer demand. He has general authority over the sacking operation.
A serving-area captain monitors and replenishes the stock in the serving bins. He and his helpers carry product from the barrels to the serving bins and holding bins up front. He also monitors the amount of ice and water in the bins. The barrel master and serving-area captain work together to use the barrels, holding bins, and serving bins wisely to produce the coldest drinks on the grounds.
Icemen work inside the truck and break the big blocks of ice into
manageable-size chunks that can slide down a ramp into a wheelbarrow. Larger chunks are placed in the barrels,
while ice needed for serving bins is chopped into smaller pieces within the
wheelbarrows. Safety note: the
ice work contains some of the greatest potential for damage to people and
property. Please be careful when
sliding blocks of ice down the ramp into the wheelbarrows. Never have more than one person chopping ice
with an ice pick in a wheelbarrow at one time, and never use an ice pick in a
bin that contains product. Also please
protect our serving bins by not trying to dump ice directly from a raised
wheelbarrow into a bin.
The back area is the scene of a lot of hard physical labor, and it is good for people to be able to switch around and use different muscle groups. Also, not every job needs to be staffed fulltime. The barrel-master, serving-area captain and day captain can help distribute the load among the workers.
Money flow:
Meanwhile, while product is flowing from the back of the booth area towards the customers up front, money is flowing back from the customers (via the cashiers and Bill) to the bankers safely protected from the public in back. The two bankers sort and double-count the money before it is periodically picked-up by Fairgrounds staff. At the end of the day, this money will be recounted by Fairgrounds staff in the presence of Club representatives in order to produce the official money count for the day.
Day Captain:
The day captain is responsible for overall staffing and operations. He makes sure that we have people working where work needs to be done. This can be a very difficult job, especially when the customer load is heavy and we need to staff several service lines up front; leaving fewer people to move more product through the pipeline in back. Everyone needs to cooperate and do their part. Usually the day captain can’t just stand around and ‘captain’ but needs to carry out another ‘job.’ I have found that being ‘Bill’ is a very good way of doubling up on duties because it allows me to monitor the needs of the cashiers and pickers, while moving me around the entire booth.
Morning shift and evening shift:
Each morning we have a group of masochists (I mean candidates for future sainthood) who generously assist in setting up the booth for the day. This includes stocking and icing down the serving bins, sacking a large supply of product, and initial preparation of the cooling bins. Usually there is other work to be done, such as cleaning up after an overnight storm or moving pallets of inconveniently placed product. These volunteers are rewarded with doughnuts.
In the evening, after sales are closed, any unsold product is repacked and loaded into the beer truck, and club property is secured in or to a storage box.
A club leader carefully goes through two product inventories with Fairgrounds representatives – once in the morning before the product packaging is broken down for sale, and one at the end of the day to determine how much of each product type has moved from the stand.