Viva Las Vegas?

I have always been ambivalent about Las Vegas, not only as a destination but also as a conference location. While organizations want to select locations that will attract conference or convention goers, I’ve always wondered which is stronger, the draw of Vegas or the pull of the city once attendees are in town.

Are conferences more or less successful, from the attendees’ point of view, in a town like Vegas? And how do convention-goers’ bosses view such a destination? Do they believe their companies’ money is being well-spent when their employees head to the city that, even moreso than New York, never sleeps?

And yet there is an excitement, a thrill to being in Las Vegas, and so I still look forward to traveling there, even as I question the wisdom of staging a conference there. Aside from the casinos, Vegas has a lot to offer. You can eat your way through town and never be bored of the choices, and there may be more variety in the type of stage shows on The Strip than there is in Manhattan.

So, despite my mixed feelngs, overall I am excited to be in town for the 2012 national conference of the Society for Foodservice Management. (Of course, it does help that as a member of the conference planning committee I had a hand in the programming.) But one of the things I was most looking forward to this trip was the chance to visit with an operator, he being Charles Anderson, foodservice director for Clark County Public Schools in north Las Vegas. (Shortly after I put this blog to bed I will be leaving to visit the district.)

In a town where gambling is a way of life, Clark County finds itself in an interesting real-life gamble. It, like school districts all across the country, are betting that they can provide healthful food that kids will actually want to eat, at a price point that the district can actually afford. They are following the mandates of new federal regulations regarding school food. In typical government fashion, the regulations are debatable and the funding is laughable, but the result is the same: Schools must find a way to make it work.

I’ll be reporting later on how Mr. Anderson and his team are faring in the first couple of months of this new era for school food. I’ll also clue you in on the proceedings of the 2012 SFM Conference. I might even find time to have a little fun.