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I have been approached by variuos patrons to my theater and asked why I don't sell food at my conccession stand. Things like hot dogs and nachos. I know that that other theaters sell these items,but the idea of food in the theater bothers me. Its bad enough scraping the Jujfruits and chewing gum off the floor.
I would like to hear from some of you who have wrestled with this problem and what you did about it. There probably is a happy medium to this but I can't seem to get past the mess aspect.

Actually Hotdogs were a real good seller at my theatre. They did not create very much mess. You had the occaional half eaten one that would get stepped on and mashed into the carpet. For nachos crumbs were the problem, but popcorn leaves about the same amount. If you choose to serve hotdogs and nachos do not use individual packets of mustard and ketchup they become the mess makers.(Kids squirting, people stepping etc.)
For nachos I reccomend individual cheese packs. the ladel on stuff or the pump on stuff is what makes the mess. the individual packs are less messy in my opinion.

Hot dogs and nachos sell real well here at the Skyline drivein theater.

Use the big pump bottle for the ketchup and mustard. Those individual packets are the mess-makers.

If you sell hotdogs, in many localities the health dept. requires all employees to have food handler's cards/permits. Also you are more likely to get inspected by the health dept. when selling hot dogs.

you should check with your health dept first! here you have to have a 3 compartment sink a restroom within so many feet etc,etc

Nacho's are slow movers here. The bag of nacho cheese usually goes bad before we finish it. Gets a burnt flavor to it if you don't use it up. We place the cheese in the frig every night. Despite the shelf life on an open bag, we throw it out after two weeks. As for a mess, nah, popcorn and spilled soda is worse.

Thanks for all the replies. Thay were helpful in making my decision. One last question. Have any of you tried soft prezels. If you have, were they good sellers?

Soft pretzels were a slow mover but I think it depends on if there is a market for them. I did not have one.

Of the food items we sell, it goes Nachos, Soft Pretzels and Hot Dogs in that order.
Of course, we have sold Nachos for a lot longer than the Pretzels or hot dogs. On busy weeks we sell 100 + pretzels a week and about twice as many nachos, maybe 50-60 hotdogs. Of Course that is really busy weeks, which we haven't seen in quite a while. But I can't say that I regret adding any of it. And the mess really is no worse than popcorn or soda spills.

I was also wondering what kind of cheese you have that has a shelf life of 2 weeks. The cheese we sell has an opened shelf life of 4 days. Normally, we have no problems selling a bag in that amount of time.

I think I'm going to forgo the Nachos and try the hot dogs and pretzels. How about equipment? What do the steamers for the hot dogs cost. And how about the prezel displays with the heating lamps ect.

We use a pizza oven to make our soft pretzels. We make them on request, takes about 5-7 minutes. Doing it this way outways the waste factor from using a steamer cabinet. We used to use the cabinet, but its stored away now. Took up too much counter space and the pretzels tasted better using the pizza oven. Just make sure that you single pack each pretzel when you buy in bulk. Nothing worse than trying to separate frozen pretzels that have stuck together in the case. Heck, you could even serve pizza slices.

As for the brand of cheese we used, I would have to check. (I'm away from the theatre) Shelf life of open package left in nacho unit was about 4-5 days. But, the cheese will last up to 2 weeks if refrigerated daily. If memory recalls, this was stated on the shipping container.

We use a Hot dog roller grill and it seems like it was $300-$400, though I can't remember exactly. My big screw up on that I was over estimated the size needed and ended up with one that cooks 45 hot dogs at one time. Needless to say, we never sell that many at one time so it just takes up lots of counter space.
When we put our pretzels in, J & J Snack Foods had a program where they provided the oven and warmer if you agreed to sell their pretzels. The pretzels are good. As far as I know they have the same program now because when I have a problem with the equipemnt I just call them up and they either fix it or replace it.