Pepsi and Holiday World

I recently got a Holiday World brouchure from a Hotel in Ft. Wayne and I was VERY surprised to see that they offer free and unlimited Pepsi all day long! How do they do this? What's their system like? How can they afford it? HOW?!?!? HUH!?!?! HOW!?!? :)

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Jeff Walker
The All New Coasting Ohio!
http://www.coastingohio.cjb.net

Maybe Holiday World is like Cedar Point and is paying for this with their 1989 attendence revenues or whatever.

they have hadit for while, and 've heard that alot of parks ask them how? but before u start thinking that CP should get this, HW isn't a very large park and brings in no where near the #s of CP, or PKI. but who knows.

Well having been in food service business's at several points in my life I can tell you that fountain soda is fairly cheap. The average food cost on a 16 oz. soda is 3-4 cents, the disposable cup is anywhere from 12-20 cents. Further, Coke or Pepsi are happy to offer you a further break on costs if you are willing to put their name on any of your promotional materials. So what it amounts to is Holiday World paying for the cups. However, this is still very gracious because drinks are the core of profits in food service because the cost is so low. So it is not the cost that they're really losing out on, it is the lost revenue that can be generated from the sales of drinks.

They have some sort of special deal with Pepsi. This is the 2nd season they have offered it. They are dubbing it "The Orginall Unlimited Soft Drinks" I love the nice breeze you get when you walk into the little "Stations" that they have set up. And let me tell ya, they must be really a heck of a deal on cups, cause they are not that big, but like it says, drink as many of em as you want! I will be there BTW on Thursday

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God Bless Theme Parks!
A New Hoosier Theme Park is on the horizion!

Holiday World is somewhat unique in that Monday thru Friday the bulk of their business is local people using the waterpark. Weekdays, their world class coasters are walkons. The soda helps to keep local folks coming back to the water park, and also my increase food sales by reducing the chance that people will run home for lunch. This explains how they can afford to do it.

It is also just the sort on nice thing that the wonderful people who run this park would like to do.

Soda is where most fast food places and parks make their money. (That's why it costs so little and they charge us so much). Holiday World is cool and showing it. I wish six flags would ever try doing such a "thing." God forbid, the VIP's make less than 6 figs a year. O NO!!!

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Ow! My lap bar IS down all the way.

I don't know if you all know, but Walt Disney World gets all of their soda for free from Coka-Cola. I think it's a sort of advertising deal. Disney uses the Coka-Cola name alot, they even have a Coka-Cola attraction in epcot!(Which by the way is really cool) However, they still charge over a dollar for a soda. That's pure profit.

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I'd Rather Be Riding Rollercoasters
www.mycoasters.homestead.com/mycoasters.html

I don't drink Pepsi,so yeah it's the only way I'll drink one.:)

Apparently, the idea was that they'd rather get return visits from happy guests than charge some bloated cost for pop and have guests never come back. So apparently, they'd rather see a guest leave with a smile than empty pockets. It's a very interesting approach, I think, and is also testament to what kind of people the Koch's are. (I've never met them, not have I been to Holiday World. However, I've never met anyone who hasn't liked the park or its owners. That says a lot.)

I actually heard that profits from souvenirs and such went up after they put that plan in effect. A bonus, I suppose.

I'll hopefully be going to Holiday World within the next two weeks. Look for a TR as always. :)

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Matt Lynch
Co-Webmaster, Kennywood Boulevard
http://kennywood.coasterbuzz.com

Sugared water isn't too expensive to begin with... :)

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.:| Brandon Rodriguez |:.
http://www.coasters2k.com

I preety shure they get it for free or a very low price. Soft drink companies do this to keep other companies from getting bisines from the park, all the has to have is the pepsi logo on it and they give you the syrup for free.

[Signature deleted. Warned you many times before, even went so far as to email you, and you still haven't changed it. -L] *** This post was edited by Lynch on 8/6/2001. ***

mmmmmmmmm syrup!

hehe, I have to get out to this park, I think thats an awesome thing they are doing and actually thinking about the business in the "long run" unlike other coaster companys. (don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash the others, but I think this was a brave move by HW and I think they will/have been profiting from it)

Alan Jacyszyn
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SFDLnet: The Ultimate Darien Lake Guide
http://sfdl.coasterbuzz.com - SFDLnet Coaster Chat! August 6th, 7:00 PM EST

What I think is interesting is that everyone at the IAAPA show told Will Koch he was nuts for announcing this benefit. Now Holiday World has been lauded by IAAPA for this innovative new program. Talk about thinking outside the box.

Scott

Let me explain how it works. This is no secret; Will Koch has tried to explain it until he's blue in the face, but it seems that the rest of the industry doesn't quite get it...

Holiday World has offered unlimited drink service for many many years as part of its picnic program: if you booked a picnic at Holiday World, you bought the drink program, which involved wristbands for the picnic-goers and several specially-marked stands throughout the park.

For the 2000 season, Holiday World did some calculations. They took the revenue generated by the sale of soft drinks, divided by the number of park patrons, and concluded that they were getting $2.70/person for soft drinks. In industry terms, their soft drink per cap was $2.70. So they tried an experiment. They eliminated the special drink carts they used for the picnic drink program, they built the Oasis stands for self-serve drink dispensing, and they increased the park admission price by $4. $1 for the new coaster, and $3 to cover the revenue they would not collect for drinks. So effectively, they increased their soft-drink per-cap by $0.30. They also reduced selected operating costs (no wristbands; drink stands no longer attended, though staff still required to maintain the stands) and certainly increased slightly their product cost (more cups, more product).

The result, of course, is that Holiday World customers do not go thirsty; they still collect $3/person for soft drinks (as part of the park admission), and the park has seen an increase in per-cap spending on food and merchandise. That the program has been successful is demonstrated by the fact that it was continued in 2001!

I wonder if they have also experienced a decline in first-aid cases brought on by dehydration. I also wonder how much they are charging now for parking and for inner-tube rental...two other products which, like the soft drinks, are rolled into the admission price.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who thinks the Koch Development Corp. has some good ideas regarding P-O-P...!

I wonder what larger parks make per person on soft drinks. $2.70 seems like a very low number, considering you will spend that much on one large drink. And I am sure that most guests will buy several drinks. Holiday World must have been charging a fairly low amount per drink to begin with.
In any case, if any park offered a $4, all you can drink pass, I would buy one!



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Bob M.

RideMan's always got the skinny, I declare.

Rumor has it that other parks have asked them "How'd it go?" Hopefully, they'll see how well it went, and decide to give it a whirl. It seems like a win-win situation. (Park gets more money, guests seem to save money.)

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Matt Lynch
Co-Webmaster, Kennywood Boulevard
http://kennywood.coasterbuzz.com *** This post was edited by Lynch on 8/6/2001. ***

I shared a cab with a woman who was consulting for some small park in New England (she had a nose ring, I so dig that) following IAAPA. I asked her what she thought of the show, and immediately the topic of Holiday World came up. Long story short, she was fascinated how other small parks were really interested in what was going on there, all the while execs from larger parks thought Holiday World was asking for trouble.

The result? Holiday World gets tons of positive press and a great reputation, and that pays. I'm confident that, especially in enthusiast circles, people would take the park over any big park any day.

Holiday World "gets it" when it comes to treating your guests with a special experience. I can't tell you how many other parks have completely lost this concept.

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Jeff
Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"From the global village... in the age of communication!"

Not that this is terribly important to the conversation, but drinking soda actually encourages dehydration, Dave. I don't know how or why, but they used to tell us that everyday at UPS.

Jacob
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http://www.PKIGuide.com

Sure, caffeine is a diuretic. Alcohol and caffeine are not good things to drink when you're dehydrated.

You can get water in the soda stations as well at Holiday World. :)

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Jeff
Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"From the global village... in the age of communication!"