Hot dog economics: How and why Fenway Park vendors pick where to sell food
Have you ever wondered why it seems like there are more vendors selling pizza in the Fenway Park bleachers and hot dog around home plate?
Or what product vendors wait years to sell?
Well, NPR’s Planet Money podcast spent a night at a Red Sox game last month for their most recent episode, “Peanuts and Cracker Jack,” to go inside the economics of the game outside the game.
As the Planet Money hosts Robert Smith and Nick Fountain (a former Fenway Park concession vendor) explain, the decision of what each vendor sells is first determined by draft before each game, with the most senior vendors picking what they want to sell first.
The first pick, of course, is beer.
But after beer, the most preferred selling item can depend on the weather, so vendors must think ahead. For example, lemonade does great on a hot day, but not so much on a cold Wednesday night in April, when Smith and Fountain visited Fenway.
The vendor with the 20th pick, Jose Magrass, said his strategy that night was “something warm.”
“It’ll either be hot dogs or you could take pretzels or maybe a hot chocolate,” said Magrass, who despite his picking order is annually first in commission.
Magrass’s secret: Not only does he strategize according to weather, but also according to what section he’s selling in.
“Hot dogs out of home, pizza in the bleachers – because they’re sizing up their customers by how much they paid for their baseball tickets,” Fountain explains. “When I was working there, Diet Coke sold really well around home plate because, you know, that’s where the vain people sit. Coke, regular Coke, sold much better in the bleachers.”
Turns out the game is a lot more complicated than, “Popcorn, here!”
Listen to the full podcast here to learn more tricks and tactics of the ballpark vendor trade. Or to just enjoy the moment in which it gets interrupted by “Sweet Caroline.”
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