If you were going to design the ideal amusement park food, one that patrons couldn’t walk past without craving, the IAAPA Convention and Trade Show would be a smart place to start. Here you come across the conventional and the uncommon, the new and the established. It is clear that though varieties and tastes may have changed some over the years, the standard formula seems to have remained the same: portability, originality, and variety. At this year’s show, there were snacks filled with cheese, glow-in-the-dark snacks, specialized popcorn, fried things, baked things . . . a whole lot of things. The ones that attracted the most interest were the ones that were being dispensed for free, of course, but we at Funworld struggled to look past the merely complimentary, and bring you the truly important. What follows is but a sampling of food options, exciting and new, coming soon to an amusement facility near you. Eating on the Go Portability is the magic word when it comes to the amusement park snack. Most food sold outside park dining rooms, where there is somewhere to sit down and eat, needs to be small enough to carry around, but large enough to provide sustenance. These are pretty obvious considerations, but many parks are finding a way of accommodating eat-on-the-go customers while at the same time providing dining options above and beyond the bag o’ popcorn/cotton candy or chicken-on-a-stick variety. Chicagoland favorite, Connie’s Pizza, offers an array of handheld specialty pizzas, several of which are cleverly outfitted with raised crusts to prevent spills. The pizzas come frozen, pre-topped, and in a wealth of varieties: breakfast pizzas, French-bread pizzas, thin-crust, and deep-dish pizzas. Says Jim Storner, national sales manager for Connie’s Pizza, “The idea is to allow customers to walk around the park eating the product. At the same time, this is a unique, high-quality food. We use all-natural cheeses and toppings, no filler.” The breakfast pizzas come with egg, cheese, bacon, and sausage, and are microwaveable (the only one of Connie’s Pizzas that is). All the other varieties can be cooked in just about any conventional oven. Storner describes Connie’s as a “one-stop shop” for pizza and pizza components. Besides the individually wrapped pizzas, 6.5-inch to 15-inch, it offers premade dough balls, sauce, cheese, toppings, all sold separately or together. This year at the convention, Connie’s showcased its new Ciabazza. The name is a fusion of ciabatta and pizza, and the product is, too: gourmet pizza toppings served on traditional Italian ciabatta bread. It’s available in two varieties: Manzo—mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, and bacon—and Roasted Vegetable—zucchini, peppers, and fresh herbs. Storner describes the fare as a more upscale option for parks to consider. “Customers will never know it’s a frozen pizza.” Right now Ciabazza is available in movie theaters and convenience stores, but Storner says that the product attracted much interest at this year’s show, and not strictly because it was being given out for free. For more information, visit www.conniespizza.com. But maybe you’re on the lookout for something a little more ostentatious, a vended item that doubles as a history lesson, kind of. Anything with Ye Olde in its name has got to be historical, and the Ye Olde Kettle Cooker is just that. The most popular kettle cooker in the amusement industry, it has a rustic design, a copper kettle and cast-iron-looking cooker, though it conforms to rigid standards. It cooks popcorn just as it was cooked in Germany in the 1800s, very rapidly in an open kettle with a little sweetener and salt. “Kettle-cooked popcorn is really something that’s coming into its own,” says Dan Turrell, sales manager for Concessions Manufacturing Inc., the makers of the Ye Olde Kettle Cooker. “The cooker fits well into themed parks, especially during holiday celebrations and historical celebrations, Civil War reenactments.” The Kettle Cooker can be found at Hersheypark, Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, as well as Paramount’s Kings Dominion, Worlds of Fun, and Adventureland. “Part of the allure of kettle corn is the demonstration, the artful way of popping it. It’s a show, but it’s also an incredibly popular product.” Turrell says that Silver Dollar City popped 850 pounds of popcorn in one day on the Ye Olde Kettle Cooker. Not incidentally, the park has purchased another. The Kettle Cooker, which can be found as far afield as Malaysia, is now available with an automatic mixer (no paddling!) and a titanium-coated receiving basket, which has a shiny copper finish but, unlike copper, can be cleaned with soap and water. For more information, see the web site at www.kettlepopcorn.net. You Can’t Eat Just One Preparation is also a big selling point with sweet roasted nuts, the smell wafting through the summer air and tempting even the most hardened amusement parkgoers. German Almond Roasters Inc. premiered a smaller nut roaster at this year’s show, an electric version called the Mandelprofi Nut Roasting Machine. The Bavarian recipe is the same, but the little orange roaster has made preparation a lot easier, and foolproof. Simply pour in the nuts, add the glazing packet, and, voila, out come perfect crunchy nuts. Here are the specs: it is 48 pounds, 110 volts, and it roasts 15 pounds of nuts per hour. “It’s the perfect size for a little candy store, a small convention, or outdoor vending,” according to Reinhard Henn, co-owner of the company. German Almond Roasters Inc. has plenty of other nut roasting machines, big and small, gas powered and electric, as well as all the paper products and heating trays necessary to set up one of the machines in a facility. German Almond Roasters also offers free training, either over the phone or at its Coconut Creek, Fla., warehouse. Henn says that there was much interest in the Mandelprofi model, which retails for $2,995, because of its easy transportability, easy cleanup, and the finished product. “About 50 machines have been ordered,” he says. Says Gloria Johnson, secretary for German Almond Roasters, “These nuts are addictive!” For more information, visit www.nutroastingmachine.com. At the convention, J&J Snack Foods was giving out full-sized 16-ounce servings of its new Barq’s Frozen Root Beer Floats. Stacey Inglis-Baron, food service marketing manager for J&J, says the company did this to “show prospectivecustomers exactly what the park-eating experience is, to show them what their own customers will be buying.” J&J swept the Best New Product award at the show with a first place for its Barq’s Root Beer Float and garnered an Honorable Mention for its Chill Strawberry Banana Smooth Fruit Ice, which is the company’s first product to feature bilingual packaging. According to Inglis-Baron, “Based on the growth of the Hispanic population, we saw the need to rethink our packaging. We’ve also geared some of our flavors to this growing demographic.” Kings Island, Valley Fair, and Cedar Point are stocking one or both products, and Inglis-Baron says that there was “definitely a lot of interest,” after the prizes were announced. J&J Snack Foods, which is the exclusive licensee/manufacturer for Coca-Cola products worldwide, also distributes Super Pretzel-brand Pretzelfils, which are available in a bunch of flavors, from the sweet—Cinnamon Apple Harvest, to the spicy—Hollerin’ Jalepeño. It’s the company’s largest-growing food category, according to Inglis-Baron, who says that parks like Valley Fair have discovered that deep-frying, as opposed to the prescribed baking or microwaving, the pre-cooked Pretzelfils has increased their popularity, and thus increased revenue. Last but not least, J&J Products now provides toppings for its already-popular funnel cakes. For those for whom fried dough with powdered sugar is not decadent enough, funnel cakes can be had with ice cream, chocolate syrup, and strawberries. Inglis-Baron says, “Funnel cakes have never decreased in popularity, but the topping has shown recent improvement in our amusement park markets.” For more information, visit www.jjsnackfoodservice.com. It’s Good for You… Sort of If, while sitting in the food court at your favorite amusement park, you see the man next to you diligently remove the contents of his hamburger and discard the bun, that man is probably one of the millions of humans on the low-carbohydrate Atkins Diet, or a variation thereof. Magic Ice Products of Stockton, Calif., is one of the companies that has rushed to accommodate those Americans wanting to shed pounds (or who are diabetic) but who are hesitant to give up Sno-Cones. The company advertises “the finest sugar-free flavoring available in the marketplace today,” and we are inclined to agree. It is called Flavor Magic Super Lite, and it is made with sucralose, a no-calorie, sugar-free sweetener. Rikki Ann Figueroa, a salesperson for Magic Ice Products, says, “The body doesn’t recognize this sugar-like product.” Yikes! We mean, Yum! Figueroa says the concentrate has been designed with no aftertaste and is the product of 20 years of research. It is so new that Magic Ice hasn’t received much feedback, except pallet-load after pallet-load of the syrup being ordered. Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, Calif., dispenses the new sugar-free syrup and Figueroa says the product was garnering much attention at this year’s show. “So far, we’ve gotten many inquiries and leads,” she says. The syrup is an eight-to-one concentrate (one pint makes one gallon of ready-to-use syrup), and it comes in 10 different flavors with not one, but two types of raspberry, blue and red. For more information, www.magiciceproducts.com. More Trade Show Goodies Davis Cookie Company offers Josephine’s Quarter-Pound Cookies, individually wrapped, five inches in diameter and available in three different varieties: chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and double fudge. The company touts their nutritional content and great value. Visit www.daviscookie.com. Gold Medal Products had several new items on display, including The Breeze cotton candy floss machine and the El Nacho Grande bag cheese dispenser. For more info, visit www.gmpopcorn.com. “Why scrub?” the folks at PanSaver want to know. The PanSaver provides sanitary cooking and protects pans from burned-on, baked-on food. Less labor, less cost, less food waste... everybody wins. Safe at temperatures as high as 440° F and in ovens, microwaves, steamers, and slow cookers, the PanSaver comes in a range of sizes. For more info, visit www.pansaver.com. We won’t get into the particulars, but trust us when we say that the Vita-Mix 5000 is one powerful blender. Commercial grade, and of the type used at Jamba Juice and Orange Julius stands nationwide, the Vita-Mix is perfect for the demands of a busy food outlet. For more info, visit www.vitamix.com.