A concessions proposal is not a menu. It is a math problem with a menu stapled to the front.
Most venue managers and finance directors get handed a single percentage and no way to check whether it is good. The percentage is the least useful number in the document. What matters is what that percentage applies to, who paid for the equipment it runs on, and what date the money actually lands in your account. Get those three right and a smaller headline number can pay you more than a bigger one.
Here is how concessions revenue share actually works, from the operator side of the table.
How much revenue should a venue expect from concessions?
No one can give you a dollar figure without three inputs from your building. Attendance, per-capita spend, and your share of the defined revenue base. Multiply the first two, apply the third, and you have your answer.
That formula is the whole article. Everything below is about how each of those three numbers gets stated, defended, or quietly inflated in a proposal.
Be suspicious of any projection that moves only one variable. A proposal that promises higher revenue purely by raising the percentage back to you has not changed anything about your building. A proposal that promises it by raising per-cap has to explain the operational change that produces it. More points of sale. Faster lines. A menu matched to your actual crowd. If the projection goes up and nothing about the operation goes up with it, the number is decoration.
Industry-wide reference ranges do exist. The National Association of Concessionaires publishes an industry survey with per-capita and revenue benchmarks by venue type, and pulling it before you evaluate anything gives you a yardstick no bidder controls.
What is a typical concession revenue split?
There is no typical split, because the split is not a price for food. It is a price for a bundle of costs, and the bundle changes from deal to deal.
Four burdens have to be funded by somebody in every concessions agreement:
- Equipment. Coolers, fryers, warmers, POS terminals, carts, the build-out of the stand itself.
- Staffing. Recruiting, hiring, training, scheduling, food handler certification, and the payroll for every event whether 400 people show up or 4,000.
- Inventory. Product, packaging, cost of goods, and the spoilage that comes with perishables on a seasonal calendar.
- Day-of operations. Management on site, cash handling, health department compliance, cleanup, and the person who solves it when a line goes down mid-event.
The venue concession revenue split moves with who funds those four. When the operator funds all of them, the venue's percentage is lower and the venue's risk is close to zero. When the venue owns the equipment and the operator only brings labor and product, the venue should be keeping meaningfully more. A proposal that quotes a percentage without stating which side carries each of the four is not a proposal you can compare to anything.
Term length belongs in this same conversation, and it is the piece finance directors most often miss. Equipment gets amortized across the life of an agreement. Nobody buys and installs permanent equipment for a twelve-month deal. If you push a bidder into a short term, you will get a worse split, a lighter build-out, or both, and you will have earned it. Multi-year initial terms with renewal options are what make the operator-funded model possible in the first place.
What is a good per-capita concession spend?
Per cap is total concessions sales divided by attendance. The number is meaningless until both halves are defined, and in our experience that definition is where most proposals get soft.
Ask what the denominator is. Tickets distributed, tickets scanned, and announced attendance are three different numbers for the same event, and they can differ enormously at graduations, tournaments, and comped community events. An operator quoting a strong per-cap against scanned attendance and an operator quoting a weak one against tickets distributed may be running identical stands.
Then ask what the numerator includes. If suite catering and hospitality sales are folded into the concessions per cap, the number is inflated and does not describe the stands at all.
Concessions per capita spending is driven by things you can actually change:
- Dwell time. Minutes between doors opening and the event starting, plus intermission length. This is the single biggest lever most venues control and rarely think about.
- Points of sale per thousand attendees. Under-built stands cap revenue no matter how good the operator is.
- Line speed. Menu design, prep discipline, and payment method decide throughput far more than staffing headcount does.
- Alcohol service. Whether beer and wine are served changes the per-cap profile of the entire event.
- Re-entry policy. Let people leave and come back and you have handed the revenue to the restaurant across the street.
- Audience composition. Youth tournaments, touring performances, and graduation ceremonies produce three very different spending patterns in the same room.
- Event timing. Whether the event crosses a meal window is worth more than most menu changes.
What percentage of concession sales does the venue keep?
Whatever the contract says, applied to whatever the contract defines as the base. The concession contract percentage of sales is only half the question. Net versus gross is the other half, and it is where two proposals with the same headline number stop being comparable.
Nail down, in writing, whether the base is calculated before or after each of these:
- Sales tax
- Credit card and payment processing fees
- Comps, staff meals, and promotional giveaways
- Franchise royalties on any branded product lines in the building
- Spoilage, waste, and inventory shrink
That fourth one is genuinely operator-only knowledge. Several strong-selling concession products are franchised brands and carry royalties off the top. A stand full of them can post excellent gross sales and still deliver a thinner base than a house menu. If a bidder proposes branded product lines, ask how those royalties are treated in your split before you get excited about the traffic they bring.
Two more clauses decide whether a good number is a real number.
Catering should be its own line. Private events, suites, and hospitality have a different cost structure than a walk-up stand, so they belong under a separate commission rate rather than blended into the concessions percentage. Under JT Hospitality Group, that side of the business runs through Ted E's Kitchen for venue concessions and catering, with Artisan Provisions on larger catering programs and Longhorn Liquid on high-volume bar operations. Different rates, different economics, stated separately.
Reporting and payment need a calendar date. Monthly statements and a fixed day of the month for payment are worth more to a finance director than an extra point of share paid whenever. Ask for the reporting format up front, and ask whether the agreement gives you audit rights against the operator's POS records. An operator confident in their numbers will not blink at that question.
The short version for your next bid
Ask every bidder these, in writing:
- Which of the four burdens do you fund, and which do we?
- Is our percentage applied to gross or net, and exactly which deductions come out first?
- What attendance denominator are your per-cap projections built on?
- Are catering and suites a separate commission, at what rate?
- What day of the month do we get the statement, and what day do we get paid?
- Do we have audit rights, and how do we exercise them?
- What operational change produces the revenue lift you are projecting?
Our team has run concessions inside DFW arenas, event centers, ballparks, and municipal facilities for more than twenty years, across venues that are not remotely alike. The proposals that hold up over a full term are the ones where every one of those seven answers was written down before anyone signed.
If you want a straight read on the concessions economics in your building, start a conversation with us.
JT Hospitality Group, the live event brand of Sorrells Enterprises LLC, serving Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond for over 20 years.
Published by JT Hospitality Group