Monday, April 28, 2008

Oddly Amusing

For some reason, this struck me as funny:
In his first year, Di Martino, who was notified about a month before opening weekend of his selection as a Jazz Fest vendor, said he spent $15,000 on the kitchen supplies, shelving, safe and other equipment required for his booth at the festival. He also spends between $7,000 and $10,000 each year in booth rental fees, to say nothing of the money spent on the 2,000 pounds of meat, 3,000 loaves of bread and 200 gallons of olive salad he estimated goes into the operation each year.

The cost for those provisions is up significantly this year, Di Martino said, thanks to a spike in food prices exacerbated by a declining dollar that makes his European-imported salami and olive products particularly pricey.

In what he described as one example of the highly-regulated environment confronted by prospective festival vendors, Di Martino said he wanted to raise the price for his Jazz Fest muffulettas from $5 to $6 this year to account for those inflated wholesale costs. Festival organizers, he said, wouldn’t let him.

Can't quite put my finger on it.

Update: Searched online, but I couldn't find the chart from Saturday's paper that showed ticket prices doubling in just four years.

Comments:
why is that funny?

i guess im not getting your point.

when i worked at the napoleon house in the 90's we stopped doing a booth at the french quarter fest for the same reasons.

we were just above a break even point in profit margin .

is it funny because jazz fest sucks?

if so thats cool.

just didnt get your point.

thanks. rick.
 
That was done hurriedly on a work break. I was hoping to find the chart showing ticket prices going up astronomically. I think it's ass backwards to hold so firm on food prices while raising ticket prices every year. Especially if the reason for raising ticket prices so much is to pay acts like Billy Joel astronomically while the vendors are barely breaking even.

I would start going again if the ticket price dropped back to $20-$30, and I'd even be able to pay a buck or two for the fod items. But Quint Davis cares more about Billy Joel than Peter Di Martino. Yeah, I have to laugh that people that care nothing about doubling admission in a four year period are that worried about food prices.
 
I too searched for the Saturday graphic of the trumpet with the rising gate prices online at nola.com and it wasn't there - it was embedded in the text of the article

http://blog.nola.com/mariamontoya/2008/04/50_jazzfest_tickets_bargain_or.html

The discussion of bargain versus burden disappeared from the homepage pretty quickly too. I found it interesting there were more comments under the burden section that the bargain section...
 
thank you for clearing that up.

great post.
 
I wonder if, at some point, raising the ticket prices stops have any value in terms of bringing in more affluent tourists and just starts leaving visitors with less moey to spend elsewhere during their visit. Probably not, but raising prices more and more to have more and more name bands is just another example of the misguided "bigger is better" principle, IMO. The Jazz Fest has had big national bands for years -- I remember going to see Run DMC in 85 or 86 -- but they also had days without any bands that would be bring in large college aged crowds, and fewer name bands all around to justify, or cause, higher prices.

Thanks for the compliment Rick, but I should have waited til I had time to put in more links and make the point clear.
 
Thanks, for pointing that out Swampwoman, should have looked harder.
 
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