Usually skiers brownbag for two reasons—they don’t consider the area restaurant’s offering palatable or they find it too expensive. If they don’t like the restaurant, their opinion won’t be improved by refusing to let them eat their lunch in it. However, you might change their mind with a clean, well-lit lunch room where hot and cold beverages, candy bars, desserts, etc., are available. And you might make money at it at the same time.
Because brownbagging is a problem at most ski areas, and because many ski area managers are unaware of the problem or are ignoring it, Richard McHugh, of Skier Feeding Inc., and Phil Camp, formerly marketing head at Sugarbush and now president of Profits Inc., a consulting firm, realized the need for information on brownbagging and, in cooperation with SKI AREA MANAGEMENT, are this winter surveying Eastern ski areas for data. They hope to shed light on who brownbaggers are, where they come from, what type of ticket they buy, what they like and dislike about an area’s eating facilities and how many people are in their party. A preliminary report is covered in REPORT, page 7, and the full story will be told in the June issue of SAM.
