Some NFL Draft food vendors are speaking out after going home with a lot more supply than originally anticipated. Now they're trying to get rid of the leftovers, so food doesn't go to waste. April 29, 2025. PC: Fox 11 Online
KAUKAUNA, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Some NFL Draft food vendors are speaking out after going home with a lot more supply than originally anticipated.
Now, they’re trying to get rid of the leftovers so food doesn’t go to waste.
“I know for us, it was not the kickoff we had hoped for,” The Wandering Table owner Heather Karisny said.
Utter disappointment. That’s how some vendors from the NFL Draft are feeling after a less-than-impressive amount of foot traffic over the course of the three-day event.
“We were with some other food trucks that we all kind of felt the same, where we prepped and planned and anticipated so many people and none of us saw the outcome of that,” Karisny said.
The Wandering Table in Kaukauna, along with several other vendors, were located just outside the draft footprint in the parking lot of Bellin Health near Titletown. While it was an ideal spot in theory, it’s not where fans were being directed — and they ultimately missed those vendors altogether.
“We heard from a lot of people that they couldn’t find us, that they had no idea how to get out of the actual draft experience, that it was very confusing to find the exit and then figure out how to get to where we were,” Karisny said.
The Wandering Table sold only about 25% of what they prepared for the draft. They came back with tubs of pasta salad, fresh vegetables, bread, eggs, sauces and half of their 500 pounds of ground beef, along with much more.
Karisny was worried it would all go to waste, until she made a post on Facebook. That post turned things around within 24 hours.
“It works out. We don’t have to throw it away,” she said.
Sweet Treats Candies & Sweets in Kaukauna is another vendor that said business at the draft was a letdown. They were left with an avalanche of candy and ice cream.
“We had 18 bins of chocolate, 75 half-pound containers in each bin. We had 210 peanut butter cups, we had 20 dozen cookies, we had 20 dozen cupcakes. We were loaded,” owner Stacey Hummell said.
That’s not to mention the 720 pints of ice cream they had ready to go, only to sell a mere 30 during the draft.
Out of all that preparation, they sold less than 10% of their food at the draft.
But again, social media came to the rescue, and Kaukauna community members came out in droves over the past day. Their post on Facebook had been shared more than 1,000 times.
“I had another business that called. She’s like, ‘I’ll bring in $200, so whatever I can get with $200, that’s what we’ll take.’ It’s been fantastic,” Hummell said.
Learning a lesson that sometimes, maybe the best place to be is home sweet home.
Both business owners still have plenty of leftover food. If you’d like to get your hands on some, you’re asked to stop by during business hours.
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