The brand new one-act noir comedy, Tough City, Prone to Rain by Alan Haehnel, is perfect for a competition piece – easy to stage, with a large cast and fun to play!
If you have students who are quick on their feet, great at math, and have a cheerful disposition, they might be excellent concession volunteers. Concession volunteers are responsible for selling snacks and beverages during the intermission of the show (sometimes before and after the show as well, if it’s deemed important) efficiently and accurately. Some schools choose to sell show merchandise, flowers for actors and crew, candygrams, or other items at the performances, so concession volunteers would be in charge of those as well.
Volunteering to be in charge of the concession table for a school production is a great way for students to get involved in a non-artistic capacity. If you have students who want to get involved, use the following best practices to prepare them for the concession role.
Note: Depending on what you’re selling and the requirements of your school/board/etc., concession volunteers may need to have a Safe Food Handling certification (or whatever your local equivalent is). Be sure to find out what the requirements are for your school before you start selling concessions.
When concession volunteers arrive will depend on when they are responsible for selling their wares. If they are only selling concessions during intermission, they can likely arrive just before the show starts, to have an adequate amount of time to set up their station. If they are selling before the show, they’ll need to arrive no later than 45 minutes prior to showtime to clean and set up properly. Feel free to adjust the start time as appropriate to your production and show needs.
Students should be dressed neatly in an agreed-upon look, for example, wearing all black, white shirt and black pants, a show shirt, or a piece of school merchandise. Students should wear an accessory such as a lanyard or pin that indicates that they are a concession volunteer. If the items they are selling are open to the air (e.g., unwrapped baked goods), concession volunteers must wear gloves and perhaps even a face mask. In that case, you’ll need at least two concession volunteers: one to handle the items and one to handle the cash (do not let students touch both, even if they are gloved!). If students have long hair, it must be tied back neatly or controlled with a hairnet if required.
The first thing concession volunteers need to do is ensure they have enough inventory to sell. There’s nothing worse than going to open your concession stand, only to discover you have three bottles of water and eight chocolate bars for a sold-out audience. Unless your students are in charge of providing concessions, the responsibility for getting the items will usually fall on a parent volunteer or the teacher/director. Don’t leave your students hanging; keep an eye on your supplies.
Concession volunteers must have everything they need arranged in a way that’s easy to access: food together, drinks together, supplies together, and so on. Students don’t want to be scrambling to find what they need during a rush of customers. If you’re selling items that need preparation or specific equipment, such as coffee or tea, students need to be trained on how to prepare and use that equipment properly. Depending on what you’re selling, think about what items might be needed, for example, napkins, cups, lids, and/or straws, disposable utensils, disposable gloves, serving tongs, cling wrap or Ziploc bags for storage, or a means of refrigeration for cold items, whether that be a fridge or a cooler with ice.
The concession area needs to be immaculately clean and tidy — students are handling food, after all. Surfaces must be carefully cleaned before setting out items to sell, and any cleaning supplies must be safe to use around food. Adequate trash and recycling bins should be available.
Concession volunteers have a very short time to serve patrons (generally between 10–20 minutes, depending on how long intermission is), so they have to be efficient, while still being pleasant to patrons. They need to know what the price point of each item they sell is, be able to add up the total cost of each patron’s order quickly, and count the correct change without using a calculator.
If you’ve got a cash box, students must know how to keep the box tidy, accurately count change, and document what’s been sold for inventory purposes. If you also have debit or credit card sales options, students will need to accurately report the different types of payment. Again, ensure that you’ve got at least two students working the table, so the student handling the cash is not also handling the food.
When the concession stand closes will depend on whether you allow food and drinks in the theatre. If items are allowed in, feel free to keep the concession area operating until the theatre doors close. If not, it’s best to close the concession stand a few minutes prior to shutting the theatre doors for Act 2, so patrons have time to eat their snacks and dispose of their trash. Once the concession stand is closed, volunteers should count the cash box, prepare a report of what was sold (so you can restock prior to the next performance as necessary), and then place the box in a pre-approved place for safekeeping.
Concession volunteers often double as box office team members or ushers or are asked to help out with those duties. It’s great if your front of house volunteers are cross-trained on each role, in the event that you are short-staffed for a performance.
As a perk, you may wish to offer students who volunteer as a concession team member the opportunity to watch part of the show when they aren’t completing tasks, or a complimentary ticket to another performance. Just be sure to instruct your students on how to enter the theatre as unobtrusively as possible, if they are entering while the show is in progress.
What are your best practices for your concession team members? Share them with us on our socials!