Fighting the NEX Power: the squadron geedunk thread

[DanMa1156]

Nobody likes you.

I always love the first night PR debrief, everyone's back at like 0200 and in comes the helo crews an hour+ behind everyone else who seems to have already had their first beer pre-debrief: "where were you guys?" "Well pal, let me tell you, first of all, I'm doing 130 knots back, second of all, my hangar is 4 miles way, and third of all our duty driver for one of the two damn vans we got for AWF isn't answering the duty phone because he probably put it on silent, so it took me a hot minute to get here!" ?

 

[MIDNJAC]

The only place I ever saw non-FRS squadron geedunk was in VP, and that changed to vending machines in the early-90s. The only one in the Mayport HSL hangar was HSL-40.

A lot of Oceana VFA squadrons have them....can't speak to Lemoore, though I'd guess they do.

 

[Brett327]

Who wants to write the CNAF Geedunk standardization instruction? Clearly one is needed. Surely someone needs a FITREP bullet. LOL (and no, I'm not serious).

 

[sickboy]

If I remember right, there was an OPNAV...

 

[SteveHolt!!!]

Who wants to write the CNAF Geedunk standardization instruction? Clearly one is needed. Surely someone needs a FITREP bullet. LOL (and no, I'm not serious).

I’m very sad to know that there is an opnav aro instruction (5100ish?). It has lots of rules and silliness that most don’t follow with good reason. Amongst other things, you technically need an approval letter from your base demonstrating that the nearest nex provided food is unavailable/too far for normal duty hours.

 

[DanMa1156]

I’m very sad to know that there is an opnav aro instruction (5100ish?). It has lots of rules and silliness that most don’t follow with good reason. Amongst other things, you technically need an approval letter from your base demonstrating that the nearest nex provided food is unavailable/too far for normal duty hours.

From what I recall, you couldn't sell anything above or below NEX prices if you were selling the same things. As a result, we sometimes benefited from this because the NEX would be priced higher than Costco where our guys shopped. I remember the intent of the instruction was basically a non-compete with the NEX. Things like cooking though were obviously fair game since the NEX doesn't serve hot food. It took a while to get in compliance, but it ultimately helped out our sailors with generally better prices and got our MAs and CSs to understand how to price things and count money properly. Where we got in trouble was square, the original LT who registered it did it in his name so after he left the squadron, come the following tax year he got a tax bill on the order of $25k in income that took a long time and explaining to auditors that wasn't his income. Lesson learned.

 

[sickboy]

I had hoped this penguin was long gone, but I don’t think we were allowed to cook anything. We got around that by claiming everything that the CSs cooked was a MWR fundraiser. The FOD walkdown omelettes were a big hit.

There was also a requirement to operate cash only. Every other squadron ignored that expect for us, so we lost a lot of business despite having lower prices. That job was a surprising pain in the ass.

 

[nittany03]

I’m very sad to know that there is an opnav aro instruction (5100ish?). It has lots of rules and silliness that most don’t follow with good reason. Amongst other things, you technically need an approval letter from your base demonstrating that the nearest nex provided food is unavailable/too far for normal duty hours.

I wonder how far a smart lawyer could get poking around in this whole “people writing instructions that give the NEX a captive market” thing.

 

[Jim123]

Nice touch on the thread title.

 

[Brett327]

I wonder how far a smart lawyer could get poking around in this whole “people writing instructions that give the NEX a captive market” thing.

Not very far.

 

[RedFive]

I ran the HSC-23 Geedunk across the street from the IBar as a JG. The guy I took over from had bought a fuckton of something nobody would buy -- I can't remember, maybe coins or something along those lines. We couldn't get rid of them and our balance sheet was in the red. We had our own little building in the middle of the parking lot so we renovated it ourselves. My first class found some old tile and put it in, we painted with paint I commandeered from the NASNI Seebee DET, got some refrigerators from a distributor and craigslist, installed a computer and barcode scanner, credit card machine, did regular inventory, made fresh Dunkin coffee, etc. We also had to abide by the aforementioned ARO Instruction, but there was nobody to really enforce it. How the hell am I supposed to check the prices at the NEX for everything in our inventory? I think once a year some civilian comptroller on base wanted to see our numbers, but it was pretty benign. We had frozen and hot foods, multiple refrigerators full of drinks, snacks, candy, donuts, you name it. Within a month or two we were bringing in $18,000 per month and I managed to get my first class a NAM. People all over North Island would stop by the HSC-23 Geedunk because we had so much inventory -- it a was a mini 7/11. A couple years later they moved to the Dolly Partons, I'm not sure what became of it.

Sooo....why are we talking about Geedunks...?

 

[DocT]

Not Navy but every HMM and VMM I’ve been in has had a manned squadron run geedunk. Best one was in a big closet off the ready room, it had shelves, 2 microwaves, and 2 full size refrigerator/freezers. The squadron S-5 used Costco free delivery to restock it each week and payment was through an iPad and square only. The ODO monitored people‘s honesty during flight ops. If nobody was flying we had the A-duty sit in the readyroom with the iPad. Night crew still had access because our armed duty sat there during off hours?

The thing was a total racket since both adjacent squadrons used it as well. My last year there our ball was free for E-5 and below.

 

[Jim123]

 

[nittany03]

I ran the HSC-23 Geedunk across the street from the IBar as a JG. The guy I took over from had bought a fuckton of something nobody would buy -- I can't remember, maybe coins or something along those lines. We couldn't get rid of them and our balance sheet was in the red. We had our own little building in the middle of the parking lot so we renovated it ourselves. My first class found some old tile and put it in, we painted with paint I commandeered from the NASNI Seebee DET, got some refrigerators from a distributor and craigslist, installed a computer and barcode scanner, credit card machine, did regular inventory, made fresh Dunkin coffee, etc. We also had to abide by the aforementioned ARO Instruction, but there was nobody to really enforce it. How the hell am I supposed to check the prices at the NEX for everything in our inventory? I think once a year some civilian comptroller on base wanted to see our numbers, but it was pretty benign. We had frozen and hot foods, multiple refrigerators full of drinks, snacks, candy, donuts, you name it. Within a month or two we were bringing in $18,000 per month and I managed to get my first class a NAM. People all over North Island would stop by the HSC-23 Geedunk because we had so much inventory -- it a was a mini 7/11. A couple years later they moved to the Dolly Partons, I'm not sure what became of it.

Sooo....why are we talking about Geedunks...?

Because threadjacks are a time-honored AW tradition.

I split this one off because people have preferred to keep the buffoonery and shenanigans off the serious thread about the KNPA incident.

 

[CommodoreMid]

VP squadrons in Jax all have their own geedunks in 511 since they didn't build a greasy spoon like in 1000. As pointed out, in Whidbey hangar 6 has the micromart. some Whidbey squadrons do geedunks but they're on a much smaller scale as they're not allowed to compete with the micromart. Translation, if the micromart sells only 20 oz sodas, geedunk sells cans. Micromart charges sailors more and doesn't fund squadron MWR to the same degree.