Niagara Falls Blues Fest: Volunteer Barkeeps Get the Blues as Tips Go Off to Big Corporation

The Niagara Falls Blues Festival gets underway tomorrow night on Old Falls Street, leading off with SHAWN HOLT and the TEARDROPS with special guest JOHN PRIMER, followed by
EDDIE SHAW and the Wolfgang with special guest Donnie “Mr. Downchild” Walsh and MAC ARNOLD and Plate Full O’ Blues. The Late Show under the tent will feature The CHRIS O’LEARY Band.

If previous years are any example, adult beverages in the form of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, beer and wine will be available for purchase at one of four outlets scattered around the venue. These refreshment stands, typically staffed by volunteers, are operated through Old Falls Street, USA by Venue Management (formerly Global Spectrum), a subsidiary of Comcast Spectacor, which is in turn part of Comcast Corporation, a multi-billion dollar Fortune 50 media and technology conglomerate that operates Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal.

For 2015, Comcast reported revenues in excess of $74 billion.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, Comcast Spectacor, in addition to running Old Falls Street and the Blues Festival, owns and operates the National Hockey League’s Philadelphia Flyers and the Wells Fargo Center venue.

Supervising volunteers at the Blues Fest beverage stands is at least one Venue Management employee, who is on the clock and whose usual job is at the Niagara Falls Conference and Event Center, which also contracts out to Venue Management for food and beverage services. Volunteers, who are by definition not paid, receive a free Niagara Falls Blues Festival t-shirt for working a four hour shift, serving up $5 cans of beer and $6 Hard Lemonades to the thirsty concert-goers.

If you attend the Blues Fest this weekend, and decide to partake of a frosty libation at one of these impromptu bars, you may notice a padlocked box with a slot on top next to the cash register labeled, “Tips”, and if you’re in a generous mood, you may be inclined to slip a dollar or two into the slot in appreciation for the folks who are donating their time and effort to help out with the Blues Fest, or looking at it another way, enabling a multinational Fortune 50 company with revenues in the tens of billions to avoid paying minimum wage workers to serve drinks for the three nights of the Blues Fest.

And if you do tip, it may be of interest to you that last year, a pair of presumed Venue Management employees made the rounds, opening the blue tip boxes and scooping out handfuls of bills left behind by patrons who thought they were tipping the volunteer staff.

When asked by one volunteer as to the disposition of the “tips”, the volunteer was told that they were “going to the event”.