Posted by Kerry Rehm on March 22, 2005 at 08:49:33:
In Reply to: Re: Misconceptions about ATR Expo's food & water posted by athena lopez on March 21, 2005 at 19:56:01:
Before putting ink to paper, think of the consequences the printed words will bring. As stated in the past, the Forum is not to be used to air out dirty laundry. I believe, too, that the ATR next year can be better by working on the complaints of this year's event. What should be done is to file your complaints to the person directly via email or phone. Mr. Wild's commentary should have never appeared on this Forum. Done right, he should of contacted the proper authorities at the Pacer office of what he perceives as a mistake on the results. Or he could go to the "Contact PCP" page or the "Officers" page to find the person he needs to talk to. As for me, my phone number is listed on the Health & Fitness Expo page of the Azalea Trail Run site...or just ask for my email address on the Forum...or have me contact you by way of the Forum. I'll be happy to discuss it with you.
But since we've already got this started this way...
As for Aramark, they were very kind in letting us hand out the "donated" product of Milo's tea. We have someone on the committee who works for Milo's and they thought that would be a good change of pace to have that available for the runners. We could TRY next year to either take some of the water from around the finish line and put it just outside the doors of the Civic Center or maybe fill up what Gatorade jugs we have available from Pacer Headquarters with H2O and have them on tables outside the doors. Aramark would probably NOT let us hand out donated products of water like bottles of Kentwood or Dasani because they can sell those at their stands and make money. Aramark has exclusive rights on concessions and catered food served inside either the Civic Center or the Convention Center meaning they dictate what is served to the people who gather. We have to get an okay from them if we wish to bring in a donated product because to them anything brought in cuts into their revenue that they could make by selling the same item. We, the ATR, payed "generously" for the jambalaya and we would pay just as generously to have red beans and rice as well. We also pay for all the Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite that is served at the expo during race day. None of that is free to us. The beer comes as "in kind" sponsorship from the local Budweiser-Busch distributor. We can look into having fruit, bagels and yogurt to hand out as well but as mentioned before we don't have the relationship that Senior Bowl has so finding someone to donate those products is hard. Athena, maybe you and some of your friends could help us on that. We could use someone to help us secure more sponsorships for the race. We would love to have a name like Food World attached to the front of Azalea Trail Run. Could we get some of ya'll out there to do that - put your collective heads together and start generating more sponsors for OUR run?? The sky is the limit if we could only get more sponsorship & volunteer help with this race.
By the way, hot dogs were a part of Senior Bowl. They were able to get Mobile Gas to be a sponsor and I think they (Mob.Gas) cooked the hot dogs for everyone. But I'm sure they (Senior Bowl) had to either pay Aramark a pretty penny to have that service or they received a very nice gesture from Aramark to have it donated. Sometimes we have to pay Aramark for having a donated product like in the case where I mentioned having gumbo for a few years, recently, at ATR. We had to pay Aramark a "pretty penny" just to give out that donated product to the race participants.
Hope this info about Aramark and the need of sponsorship helps in you out there understanding more about what it takes to make the ATR it's best.