Every fair committee has its folklore about which stalls "do well". Takings and profit aren't the same thing, though — the BBQ takes the most money at half the fairs in Britain while making less than the tombola. The clean way to see it: stalls fall into three margin families.
Tombola, bottle stall, cake stall, second-hand books and uniform — the stock arrives free from families, so nearly every pound taken is profit. These are the engine of fair profit, and their real cost is asking: the donation drive in the weeks before decides the stall's takings ceiling. A £200-takings tombola with £15 of tickets and prizes-topping-up beats almost anything else on the field, and scales with how well the request letter worked.
Splat the rat, hook a duck, penalty shootout, guess-the-sweets — equipment is owned or built once, prizes cost pence per winner, and each go is 50p–£1 of nearly pure margin. Individually small, collectively significant, and they're what makes the fair feel like a fair. The lever here is throughput: a game a six-year-old finishes in twenty seconds out-earns a fiddly one four times over at the same price.
BBQ (stock, gas, and the person who knows food hygiene), bouncy castle (hire fee eats the first ~90 goes), face painting (paid artist or a volunteer with actual skill), refreshments (stock plus urn logistics). These can profit well — but they're the stalls where optimistic "expected gos" quietly turn projected profit negative, and where last year's actual numbers matter most. They earn their place partly as footfall anchors: the BBQ smell sells tombola tickets.
A good fair needs all three families — all-games is a fete without lunch, all-BBQ is a car park with a queue. The planning discipline is just honesty per stall: real costs, realistic gos (last year, not hope), and someone willing to say "the candy floss machine hire has never once paid for itself".
General guidance from published PTA practice, August 2026. CAAC.
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