ABOUT THAT CONCESSION STAND …

JEREMY WALTNER  – PUBLISHER

Lori Lehr knew she wanted to offer traditional ballpark fare at the concession stand that is part of the Lily Pad baseball complex in Menno during the recent District 6B Amateur Baseball Tournament, so items like burgers, hot dogs and nachos were a given.

But she also wanted to beef up the menu with additional options for hungry baseball fans who converged at the ballfield during the tournament’s six-night run, 12-game run, “but I just couldn’t decide on what.”

So the concession stand manager pretty much went with everything.

The result was a menu that could put a Dairy Queen to shame, with more than 40 items available ranging from pickles and cotton candy to pulled pork sandwiches and chicken strips. There were apples with caramel, pretzels with cheese, pistachios, mozzarella sticks and onion rings; chili cheese fries, corn dogs and cookies.

And to drink? How about a mocha Frappuccino, Gold Peak tea, Body Armor sports drinks and a variety of domestic beer?

“It was fun to try a huge menu — and it went well,” said Lehr. “It wasn’t a flop, that’s for sure.”

Perhaps the most unique decision made by Lehr was to offer fried foods — something not typically associated with a concession stand like the one at the Lily Pad.

“Someone had suggested it and I thought I would try it and see how it goes,” she said, noting she consulted with all-things-Menno-baseball enthusiast Galen Guthmiller before deciding for sure. “I asked Galen if I could do what I want with it, and that’s how it came about.”

Not only were the fried foods popular, they were among the best sellers; Lehr said cheese balls were a big seller, and onion rings and the chicken strip basket were also hot commodities.

While she has never taken it to this level, Lehr has experience running a concession stand, heading up the food booth for softball in the summertime. But with COVID-19 shutting the 2020 season down in Menno, she found herself volunteering to head up the stand for the district baseball tournament. In addition to planning the menu, that meant buying all the food, finding workers and getting things rolling each of the six nights.

Lehr says she purchased what she could locally, but also relied on visits to Sam’s Club and other communities like Mitchell, Yankton, Sioux City and even Hartington, Neb., to round up harder-to-find items like cheese balls. She kept close tabs on the quantity of sales each night so she could replace what was sold — “as much as 25 lbs. of cheeseballs, 12 lbs. of fries, 120 burgers …” she said. “We try to keep track every night of what we’re going through and replace that much.”

And Lehr said she relied on as many as 10 people to work the concession stand and grill each night, including Aisha Abbink and Logan Ulmer, who were there every night.

The end result is the ability to feed baseball fans delicious food, of course, but also to make some money for the Menno Baseball Association.

“I know there are projects they want to do on the field, so I thought we’d try to make some money for them,” said Lehr, who doesn’t know how much the food sales generated in revenue, but says it will be in the thousands of dollars. “We were happy to do that.”