I feel silly saying I only had one thing to rant about and now I'm back but I suppose it should be said. I think we should have a hospitality office or something, somewhere where broke otakus can get free food that will keep them coming back and staying well fed at the con. Over the course of the four days of con with the exception of my embarassing and shameful breakdown I lived on handfuls of this and that already taken and shared around with what could be and five hour energy shots, none of which I could pay for cause well, I'm broke.
That said I've been over 12 years of congoing at things like Orycon, which has a successful Hospitality office all con long full of simple, cheap stuff to feed people like meat platters and sandwich stuffs as well as water and all. Boxes are put out for donations and Orycon normally gets a pretty good hospitality haul to allow it the next year and so on. I think it adds a necessary sustaining factor to a con to have a place where people can come to relax, maybe watch some movies or anime and enjoy a psuedo-free meal with like minded exhausted otakus.
Orycon is substantially smaller than Kumoricon and food costs money. While it would be a nice idea in theory, it's not sustainable. Badge prices would have to increase $15 - $20 more, and ten to fifteen staff would have to be cooking for all these people. Plus, we'd run into the problem of impatient attendees, the question of hours for the room, location of the room, line control for the room, fire code for the room, a place for tables to eat the food...
Tanis is absolutely right, but I'll do you one better and breakdown the numbers for you, because I don't want to tell you "no" and leave it at that, I want to tell you why we can't so maybe, one day, someone can look at this data, and see the way to combat it, and maybe one day we can offer something to all attendees. However, as most large conventions will tell you, once you get past 2k attendees, the thought of feeding them all becomes astronomically non-feasible.
So, lets imagine that each attendee of OryCon contributes ~$1 to the Hospitality Suite, some more, some less, and over the course of the 3 day event they would probably get about $2000 for the next year's Hospitality Suite - which is about $1.22 per person (as an estimate, based on their attendance of 1628 in 2001, which is the latest numbers I can get on the internet easily).
Feeding a little over 1.5k on $2000 doesn't
seem particularly daunting, and a little bit of the cons budget probably supplements that. And you can estimate high that only 60% of attendees would use the hospitality suite. That brings the total needed to feed to ~960:
Average cost of
Meat platter: $12 (internet says it serves 6-8 so if we estimate high): $1440
Cheese Platter: $10 (internet says serves 10-12): $800
Fruit Platter: $14 (internet says serves 6-8): $1680
Taco Servings (2 tacos per person): $2400
Soda & Bottles of Water (~.25/per @ 6 per person): $1440
Now, that's just the basics, at cost, for 3 days - with high estimates of portioning (if you think most people only grab 1 or 2 sodas a day, you are crazy) and the total comes out to
$7760. That is for about 1000 people, 3 days, and that isn't including bagels or cream cheese or milk or cereal or doughnuts and goodness knows what else. They have quite a nice spread. I am sure they get some donations, but trust me when I say that it is EXPENSIVE to feed people.
So lets pretend we take that same number, and we multiply it by the amount of people Kumoricon, at current numbers would have to feed. We are at 4750, so 60% is 2850 which is almost 3x how many Orycon would be required to feed. Which means almost 3x the food (giving for variants, because food doesn't become exactly more expensive as you buy in bulk, there are discounts) near $18k just for food? That's the price of 400 at con registrations. It's a lot of money.
If there was an easier way to feed that many people the basics, hell even keep attendees in pocky and ramune... we'd probably want to hear about it, and think about the feasibility. But there are other factors too:
The convention provides a great benefit to the city - we have a surplus of youth with dispensable incomes - which means we benefit the city as a source of commerce. It would be a great disservice to the city to offer something that they provide at an income for their citizens. It's difficult, but we have to think about the economic impact on all ends. However, we do do our best to impress upon the city the necessity of providing cheap, easy and convenient food options as well as nicer places.
I hope that helps people see a small glimpse of what it is like budgeting and weighing different potential expenditures. It can get really really complicated really quick.
Similarly, if anyone else has any curiosities about why we do things the way we do, feel free to PM me, while we try our best not to disclose the exact amount of money we have or use on any given line item, we aren't secretive, and we are always willing to hear peoples thoughts and new ideas... heck, that's how I got where I am!
UPDATE: As I wrote this someone posted about ALA which has just under 4k in attendance, and does a Con Suite for their staff and attendees. I am currently asking on a forum in which i am in contact with the Programming Director of ALA how they work the cost of that to see what the differences are. I'll let you know what I find.
