Utah does graduation season in about three weeks. Late May into early June, every driveway in the neighborhood has a canopy and a sign with a kid’s face on it, and half of them are on the same Saturday.
The format is almost always the same: an open house. Doors open at some point in the afternoon, people drift through for two or three hours, they say congratulations, they eat something, they leave. It is a good format. It is also a format that quietly eats the host alive if the food needs tending.
Guests at a graduation open house never arrive all at once. They trickle in across the afternoon, which means one machine goes a lot further here than it does at an event where everybody breaks at the same time.
A company party with eighty people on a thirty minute break is a harder job than an open house with a hundred and fifty people spread over three hours. If you want the detail on that, we have a whole post on how many guests one machine covers. But the short version for a grad party is that the math is usually friendlier than people expect.
This is the actual pitch. At most open houses somebody’s mom spends the afternoon refilling trays, and somebody’s dad is at the grill instead of talking to the people who came to see their kid.
We deliver, set up, run the machines through the whole window, then clean up and haul everything out. The family stands around and enjoys their own party. That is the entire product.
We have used Phrozen for our big high school graduation party the past few years. It is hands down the favorite food of the night, and we have LOTS of food. [Phrozen] is fabulous at setting everything up and then coming back when the party is over to take it away. I LOVE that they do ALL the work!
Kathleen B., high school graduation party, June 2018
Residential is one of the easier setups we do. Our smaller machines run on standard 120v outlets, so a garage outlet and a cord usually covers it. Our larger machines need a dedicated 240v outlet, which most houses do not have somewhere useful, so for a driveway party the smaller machines are normally the right answer anyway.
If you are setting up somewhere with no power in reach, we can bring a generator for a 200 dollar rental. It runs outdoors and we place it well away from the party. There is more on all of this in our guide to venue power.
Not July warm, but warm enough that an afternoon in full sun is worth planning around. The shady side of the house, a canopy, or an open garage all work. Tell us roughly where you are thinking of putting us and we will tell you honestly if it is going to be a problem.
If the forecast turns, we have a post about rain as well.
A graduation open house is one of the most age-scrambled crowds there is. Grandparents, the graduate’s friends, neighbor kids, aunts and uncles, teachers, and a couple of toddlers running loose. There is no single dessert that lands with all of them.
Soft serve does. Every machine we own is double barrel, so you pick two flavors plus a twist of the two, out of thirteen options: vanilla and chocolate ice cream and eleven Dole Soft Serve flavors. The Dole flavors are dairy free, which takes care of the guests who normally have to skip dessert without anyone making a production of it.
And it is all you can eat, which is the part teenagers notice.
Worth mentioning because people do not always think of it. If two or three families in the same neighborhood are graduating the same year, a combined open house is common, and it makes the per family cost of something like this a lot easier to justify. Same machine, same setup, three times the guest list.
This is the one thing to take away. June Saturdays are the first dates we fill every year — graduation parties, end of school events and the start of wedding season all landing on the same handful of days. Fridays go next. Sundays never fully book locally, so a Sunday open house is the easiest date in the season to get.
If your kid is graduating in the spring, call in March. If you are reading this in May, call anyway, but be flexible on the day.
Have a look at pricing and packages, or our backyard and at-home events page for what a residential setup looks like. We are based in Lehi and serve Utah County, Salt Lake County, and the surrounding areas.
