The family that built a ballpark nachos monopoly | Hacker News Reader

The family that built a ballpark nachos monopoly

thehustle.co

63 pointsdamir21 comments

Nachos must be a different thing in America. Typically in Australia nachos refers to oven baked corn chips covered in ground beef, salsa and cheese and then served with sour cream and guacamole. Can't say I find the ballpark alternative particularly appetising!

No, they're the same thing in America. We invented them here, after all.

But baking nachos takes time, so this guy's invention was spraying a cheese-like substance on top of some tortilla chips and selling them in stadiums and movie theaters. They're ubiquitous in those sorts of areas, so that's what we'd expect to get if we ordered some there, but if I ordered nachos in a restaurant and they brought me stadium nachos, I'd be upset.

It's the same difference between ordering a cheeseburger in a fancy restaurant and ordering one at McDonalds. They're essentially different products with the same name.

As I understand it nachos weren't invented in America and were originally chips with cheese and jalapenos. The platter style nachos came later.

Here's a link to support the claim. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/dining/nachos-recipes.htm...

The article itself relates the story of nachos being invented in Texas in the 40s.

Which article? Both linked articles describe nachos as being invented in a Mexican boarder town; the post article adds color commentary about a group of Texans ordering them

I had the same reaction to his post. Regional ingredients popularized by the same person…

What you're describing is restaurant nachos, which is indeed a very nice meal. Ballpark nachos are a deliberately simplified version made to be very easy to serve and eat out of a flimsy paper tray. They aren't great, but they're salty and savory and crunchy, which is good enough for munching on at the game.

The ballpark style is complete shit. Nobody likes it except the guy selling it to you.

$8.50 for the worst quality chips available, yellow cheese like spread, and industrial canned jalapeños.

They’re carbohydrates, fat, and salt served with vinegary peppers to cut through it all and pallet cleanse. Super simple but effective at appealing to our lizard brains, which is why they sell millions of them each year.

Ahh, almost the exact same thing you'd be served at a Chili's or TGI Fridays.

Ballpark nachos are similar to Cinema nachos in the UK.

They sell cinema nachos in the USA too and they’re essentially the same.

I still can’t believe things like this are sold at movies. The complete contempt the theaters have for their customers is astounding. Nobody wants to hear someone crunching on chips when they’re trying to watch a movie. And yet the theaters wonder why no one wants to go to them anymore.

Ballpark nachos are a bargain-basement fast-food type thing.

If you order nachos at a non fast-food type place in the US, what you get is what you described.

This is the type of article that keeps me here. Nachos are probably one of my favorite foods, and I'd never once thought about the origin for some reason. This entire article was fascinating!

I now live nowhere near a pro sports team, but often tell my family tales of the nachos mentioned in the article. It's a weird item that you -know- isn't real, tastes cheap, but you still love for some reason. Like Totinos pizzas. Can't really explain why I like either, maybe it's just because I had both as a kid.

You like it because it’s carbs, fat, and salt with a tinge of acid (pickles jalapeños for nachos, tomato sauce for pizza roles) to clean it up. It is reduced to its essentials in these cases, but effective none the less.

The line about jalapenos being mandatory to cause customers to crave soda and beer gave me a good chuckle.

Site has a refresh loop on mobile safari. Why do these sites think that trick they’re trying works?

What’s the trick? More page views?

Back button hijack?

> The team was interested but feared the new item would cut into popcorn sales. Fans were paying ~12x the wholesale cost per box, making it the highest-margin food at the ballpark.

If you buy raw popcorn in the grocery store and pop it yourself, you know this. It costs next to nothing. And it's dead easy to make the traditional way.

Nachos, on the other hand, are a little more work, as this article makes clear.

Seems to me like the business is for sale.

I don’t know how much of a brand this business is. I am a Coke guy if given a choice, but if all the stadium is offering is Pepsi so be it. I don’t recall ever seeing the brand of cheese melted on my nachos when served to me. I suspect this goes for a small 1-2x multiple of sales.

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