Jays vendor scores a hit with cold call

“Ice … Coooold…. Beeeeer.”

It’s high summer in the city, and the call for chilled brew has never sounded so appealing. Nowhere, though, is the pitch for pints drawing more interest than at the ball yard at Rogers Centre, the monolithic sports ground where the Blue Jays play and where Wayne McMahon excites crowds with a signature plea.

Here he comes up the isle, lugging a blue cooler bag just roomy enough to handle three-dozen bottles of the malted product. Mr. McMahon, at the age of 59- the oldest beer vendor on staff – is lean, grey and fit. At certain angles, he looks something like Wile E. Coyote. As he moves up the stairs, he scans the crowd for dusty throated beer buyers, and every so often he pauses to let loose his singular gravel-voiced sales shout.

“Ice.”  The first word is delivered sharp, more abruptly than the two that follow, in a way that grabs awareness. “Cold.”

The middle utterance is key to the call’s success. Mr. McMahon lends a specific physicality to it, cocking his neck and head to the side as the syllable is emphasized and stretched out for an extra second or so. And then come the finale, “beer,” which is delivered in a breathy John Houseman tail-off that ends things nice and chilly-like. By the cry’s conclusion you half-expect icicles to be hanging from the yeller’s craggy mug.

And do people respond? Do they buy the Bud Lite? Sure they do. On a good day, Mr. McMahon sells up to six cases, pouring them 341 milli-litres at a time as he crouches in the aisle, so as to not to disturb the sightlines.

It’s almost as if some of the folks come to see the vendor as they do to watch the ballplayers on the field. Wee tykes giggle in delight as the “Ice Cold Beer Guy” does his thing. Older children mimic him often initiating the call themselves, yelling out “Ice!” to which Mr. McMahon finishes with “Cold” and “beer.” A young man invites the celebrated vendor over to his seat, not to purchase a beverage from him, but to get Mr. McMahon to utter his famous pitch into a cell phone.

“it’s a lot of fun,” Mr. McMahon says when asked about the fanfare that surrounds him. “It’s escalating to the point where they’re recognizing me when O go sown the aisle. I can hear them behind me, ‘There he is, there he is – there’s the Ice Cold Beer Guy.”

Mr. McMahon, who draws $13 per hour in addition to an average tip take of 50 bucks a game, has peddled brew for five years now, ever since he answered a newspaper advertisement for a job fair. It took a little time to develop a signature shtick, but for the past two seasons he has used it to champion effect.

“When I started with ‘ice cold beer,’ it wasn’t stretched out as much,” he says. 

McMahon, a former sales manager who is looking for full time employment in addition to his ball park gig, used his professional background to create his vendor cry. “I’ve always had a great voice, always been in sales, and I know how a voice’s inflection can influence people.”

But although he’s selling more beer and the tips are up, there’s more to it than that, the sudsman says.

“Even the people who don’t buy beer are enjoying it. I had one woman, who didn’t drink, pass me a $5 bill from the middle of the row and thank me. That cracked me right up, but, you know, I was glad I could entertain her a little.”