Kettle Corn at Fenway Park
Sunday, August 10th, 2008
Velma and I went to Boston’s Fenway Park not to see the Red Sox, but their triple A affiliate the Pawsox at the Futures of Fenway day this week. I heard that they sell kettle corn at Fenway Park and I finally found it, behind the bleacher section in the Big Concourse food area. A bunch of people had said that it’s really good, but it’s not. Lemme explain:
First, the guy is stirring the kettle with a baseball bat. At first glance this is cool and obviously ties in with the whole baseball park theme. But if you want to properly mix the oil and sugar together while it’s heating, you need something with a little more “push”. Also, the guy was just stirring it with one hand while standing behind a screen.
Second, their sign said they use a mix of soybean oil and corn oil but they’re using vegetable oil as you can see in the photo. I’ve tested this particular oil and have come to conclusion that it’s not as tasty as regular corn oil. Of course it’s a lot cheaper than corn oil, but what do they care?
Third, their kettle temperature isn’t hot enough to make the popcorn really explode and fluff up enough to our taste. You can tell this by how the kettle corn looks and feels. I’ve tried making kettle corn with an industrial electric popper and it had the same texture to it. Not having enough heat makes the corn come out like movie style popcorn, crunchy but not fluffy. This is why the guy was able to make kettle corn with one hand while hiding behind a screen. He’s SLOWLY cooking it so nothing burns.
They were using the same brand of popcorn (Act II) and sugar (Domino) as we use. You would figure it would taste pretty much the same, but alas…it doesn’t. Still, the other option at Fenway was to buy the pre-packaged Popcorn Indiana crap. Did I mention that I wouldn’t even feed that stuff to the squirrels that come to my porch?
We are now the victims of our own success. We just had a record day at the Springfield farmers’ market. The days are now turning into a grind and we no longer have time to chat with each other or interact with the customers or other vendors. We just spend 5 hours constantly stirring, popping, scooping, sealing and selling.
We went through 10 jugs of oil. Each 1 gallon jug of oil produces 5 batches or kettlefuls of kettle corn. Approx total for the day: 50 “loads” of kettle corn. That’s about 1 batch every 6 minutes for 5 hours straight. I know I was popping as hard as I could for the first 2 hours and Steve was going nuts bagging the stuff. This easily beats the best day we had at the Brimfield Antique Show where we paid more than $300 EACH DAY to have the privilege of popping there.
I recently got email from someone who makes kettle corn at the huge Hershey Amusement Park in Pennsylvania. They were wondering why I wore so much protective gear when I pop, because their kettle doesn’t get hot enough to send second degree burn causing little missiles at them. They guy said he doesn’t even wear a face mask. (I would bet good money that his kettle corn tastes a lot like the kettle corn at Fenway Park.) He also mentioned that they do about 50 loads of kettle corn a day at their busiest spot. This was news to me, since that’s what I’m doing now at a little farmers’ market in Springfield. Boy do I need to come up with a motorized cover to keep up with demand and keep myself out of the heat.
I just went back and took a look at our first blog entry.  We first did this Springfield spot almost 3 years ago and we had sold only 50 bags that first day.  Who knew it would come to this?
On the other end of the spectrum, our other location in Framingham got pretty much rained out this week. Veggies do fine in a rainstorm, but water and popcorn really don’t mix well. So if anyone is doing the numbers in their head and thinking they can make a killing selling kettle corn, make sure you add in rain days where profits almost drop to zero. Did I mention it sucks to be breaking down and loading up a trailer and getting drenched in the rain AFTER you’ve made no money?
8/11/08 Update:
So Velma and I are going into Sam’s Club to get our supplies for the week. We see this guy loading up his pickup truck with bags of popcorn, sugar and salt. I asked him if he’s doing kettle corn and he told me that his main location is at Fenway Park! We chat for a while and he says that he has the same set up at Harvard Stadium. I explain that we do quite well with farmers markets in this area, but fail to mention this website to him. Hopefully he won’t find this website and find out that we’re kettle corn back-stabbing assholes.
