Corporate Challenge Kick Off vs. Park Food

According to the Kansas City Corporate Challenge Facebook page, there are 30,827 participants signed up for the challenge this year.  Several thousand of them flowed into and out of the stadium for the KCCC Kickoff Walk and block party.

It was quite a festival atmosphere. Many companies had tents and food available for their people to enjoy. Many of them had loudspeakers with music pounding out everyone around them. If you roamed the grounds you could find several groups that were passing out trinkets and other giveaway items.

I attended, as I have for the past several years, with my wife and kids. We all participated in the walk, and then partook of the food at my company’s tent. Ours was standard picnic fare: hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie tray, potato salad, baked beans, chips, cookies, soda. Other companies had more elaborate fare, others even simpler.

What I find interesting is the way the corporations dedicate resources and get together to sponsor and encourage this sort of fitness and camaraderie through this competitive event. This doesn’t directly profit the bottom line, but the corporations see the benefit to the community they live in, the benefit to their employees, and the loyalty of their employees to the corporation, when they support this.

I’m always there when my company wants to offer free food. But Friday was a modest quandary.  Because Worlds of Fun was open 6-11 p.m., and we have paid for the All Season Dining Plan. But after eating hot dogs and hamburgers at 5 p.m., how interested were we in partaking of the dining plan the same evening?

Well, it took us until 8 p.m. to head over to the park, take in a few rides — the lines were shorter than on Saturday and Sunday — and then use the dining plan for and end-of-evening Pizza snack around 9 p.m. The weather was pleasant though slightly cool. Ideal for a park evening. See below for my dining plan summary.

UPDATE: Here are the tables and numbers from the Saturday dining plan usage. Note, that based on the amount of money we played for the plans, and the total number of meals eaten, the current cost-per-meal is now $7.85.