Stadium Snacks Step Up to the Plate
A lineup of traditional and innovative equipment keeps back-of-house foodservice operations at sports stadiums nationwide up to a major league level.
By Laura Doty, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 4/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
Grabbing a hot dog and a cold beer at the stadium has long been an enjoyable and integral part of the sports fan's experience. Peanuts and popcorn remain a tradition at ballparks and stadiums everywhere, and hot dogs remain the most popular food item, but fans across the country can now expect to find a wider variety and higher quality in food offerings when they visit a stadium. From brewpubs to four-star restaurants, dining destinations within a ballpark or stadium are growing in popularity. Ethnic offerings and regional cuisines offer fans their hometown favorites when they attend games, and concessions that offer items for vegetarian and health-conscious fans are also increasingly easy to find in a stadium.
Foodservice operations at stadiums across the country have also increasingly become important revenue builders for owners, not just seasonally, but throughout the year, as stadiums have successfully worked to market their facilities as popular venues for parties, catered events and corporate meetings of all kinds. New stadium design helps food and beverage departments meet the challenges of all visitors' expectations, with expertly managed warehouse and storage areas and well-equipped kitchens to support both restaurant-style and bulk preparations in back-of-house operations.
Savvy stadium foodservice managers and stadium executive chefs also find advantages in the use of flexible, innovative equipment to support menu services in suites and skyboxes, and for catered parties. The ongoing foodservice trend of bringing back-of-house menu preparations to the front of the house, finishing off menu items in front of the customer, is evident in stadium foodservice operations as well. Out-front grills are becoming the norm in stadium concessions, and skilled chefs may finish off food preparations at out-front stations in the stadium's upscale restaurants, banquet areas and catered skyboxes. For example, partygoers at Baltimore's Oriole Park and M&T Bank Stadium may choose a variety of foods from fabulous buffets using portable, granite-topped "kitchens" on wheels, outfitted with tabletop induction ranges, grills, carving stations and heat lamps.
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"Everyone on the facility and beverage support staff pretty much came back with the same three attributes important to them for equipment purchased for the ballpark: It should be easy-to-clean, easy-to-use and reliable and durable," says Kevin Tedesco, Aramark F&B regional manager at Citizens Bank Park. |
Through its Sports and Entertainment Division, the Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. manages foodservices at more than 130 stadiums, arena and concert venues including Citizens Bank Park, which opened in 2004 as the new home of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team. The ballpark includes 40,000 stadium seats and 82 suites. Food and beverages are available for spectators throughout the park at 24 permanent concession stands, numerous portable stands, and two restaurants: the four-star Diamond Club and the sports-oriented McFadden's Restaurant and Saloon. The two-tiered Hall of Fame Club level in the stadium houses numerous concessions, including Harry the K's Broadcast Bar & Grille, named for the famed sportscaster Harry Kalas, as well as special banquet and meeting rooms for catered foodservices.
The most popular concession area for fans, Bull's BBQ, featuring pit-cooked beef, barbecued ribs, pulled pork and barbecue turkey legs, finished off on large outdoor char grills, and hosted on game days by former Philly Greg "The Bull" Luzinski, is located in Ashburn Alley, an outdoor picnic and concession area just outside the stadium. "In our food and beverage operations at Citizens Bank Park, we look at our operation as one big, huge restaurant — a very well-equipped restaurant, that offers something for any visitor to the ballpark," says Kevin Tedesco, Aramark regional manager for food and beverages at Citizens Bank Park.
The design for all kitchens and other foodservice operations built for Aramark contracts are provided by Design Solutions, a separate entity under the Aramark Corp. umbrella.
"Aramark operations managers and chefs generally have input as to the space and equipment needs in new facilities," Tedesco says, "and because we were located only a couple of miles from Aramark's corporate headquarters here in Philadelphia, we found it very easy to communicate back and forth throughout the planning and building of the Citizens Bank Park facility."
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BOH support for the preparation and service of the amazing volume and variety of Citizens Bank Park's foodservices begins in the warehouse built off the ballpark's main concourse level. Three truck bays accommodate deliveries to the warehouse, where all perishables are immediately temperature-checked with digital thermometers in order to meet HACCP requirements, according to Rich McFate, warehouse manager, who works along with a full-time warehouse HACCP manager to ensure food safety and fulfill health-code mandates. Wet storage areas in the warehouse include three refrigerated boxes and two freezer boxes, each capable of accommodating forklifts and electric pallet jacks used to transport delivered foodstuffs. In addition, wet storage areas are equipped with heavy-duty racks with rubber-coated wire shelving for storage holding.
The warehouse also houses the commissary kitchen, used to support cold prep for the adjacent Diamond Club restaurant, as well as providing back-up support prep for Bull's BBQ, with equipment including two walk-in coolers, one walk-in freezer, four tilting skillets, four convection ovens and a large standing mixer. About 500 freshly made pizzas are sold at every game, and the commissary kitchen contains a large, double-deck pizza conveyor oven as well as a newly acquired automatic pizza dough rounder, to help support pizza preparation for stadium concessions and restaurants.
The heart of BOH support for foodservices at Citizens Bank Park is the main 12,000-square-foot suite-level kitchen overseen by Executive Chef Glen Richmond, which provides prep support for concession areas and suite service. The kitchen contains two walk-in coolers, one walk-in freezer, cold prep areas with numerous stainless worktables and a well-equipped hot line and hot-holding staging area to load prepared foods into wheeled hot-holding boxes for delivery to different locations in the ballpark.
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Equipment should also be flexible enough to support a variety of menu preparations, according to Tedesco. |
Hot-line equipment under the hood includes two 25-gallon tilting skillets; a 25-gallon jacketed kettle; three double-basket fryers with an adjacent hot-holding station; two side-by-side char grills; a flat-top griddle with conventional oven beneath; four convection ovens; a steamer; and a four-burner range top that is being upgraded to a six-burner range this year, according to Richmond. While Richmond feels that the kitchen is very well-equipped and laid out for work flow, his wish-list would include a blast chiller for increased efficiency in bulk food prep and holding. "We do, however, use more cold- and hot-holding and transport boxes than I could count."
Three smaller satellite kitchens support finishing and staging for suite service, and for catered service on the hall-of-fame level. Kitchens are equipped with walk-in coolers, grills and fryers. "One of those satellite kitchens also contains a recently purchased, two-level combi oven that has become one of our favorite pieces of equipment because of its versatility," says Richmond. "We're hoping we can add combi ovens in the other satellite kitchens in the near future."
"One of the very best things to support food and beverage service in the building is the bulk CO2 system used to pump most of the soda and beer for the ballpark," Tedesco says. "We requested this type of beverage delivery system when the stadium was still on the drawing board." The system operates off of eight tanks, located in a secure area next to the warehouse, and pumps keg beer and soda through cold lines from four main pump rooms located below the main concourse level.
The pump rooms supply about three-quarters of the ballpark's pumped beverage service, with various kiosks on the top tier providing direct pours for the remainder of needed beverage service. "All our kegs are in place before the start of a game, and we can serve an entire event without having to transport additional kegs during the course of a game, simplifying beverage service," says Tedesco. "The bulk CO2 system can actually accommodate beverage service for about eight games before tanks need refilling."
Stadium foodservice operations require a tremendous volume of ice. Citizens Bank Park contains 48 large-bin ice machines, each capable of making 13,000 to 16,000 pounds of ice in 24 hours. Ice machines are located in small BOH kitchens in every one of the 24 concessions in the ballpark (along with sinks and cooler storage) and in kitchens as well, sometimes in multiples where needed. "We can make about 70,000 pounds of ice for game days, and we use every last cube. Actually, we generally need an additional 10,000 pounds of bagged ice, which is delivered and stored in the warehouse," explains Tedesco.
In downtown Baltimore, foodservice operations for Oriole Park at Camden Yards, opened in '92 as the home of the Orioles baseball team, and M&T Bank Stadium, opened in '98 and home of the Ravens football team, were both constructed on the site of the old Baltimore railyards, and are contracted to Aramark Corp.'s Sports and Entertainment Division. Oriole Park utilized one of the old yard warehouses as the ballpark's warehouse and center for BOH foodservices. "Of course, the old building was renovated for our use, but in this case, we do have to deal with the existing infrastructure in equipping BOH storage warehousing and for the four kitchen areas located there," says Nick Elgin, Aramark regional manager, first for Oriole Park and now at M&T Bank Stadium.
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Suppliers should be aware that operators need local service companies that are able to repair recommended equipment quickly when necessary, Tedesco says. "We were adding fresh roasted peanuts to concessions last year, and while a certain roaster might be used in ballparks all across the country, if we have to ship faulty equipment somewhere for servicing, we’re not likely to choose that brand of equipment." |
The BOH storage and kitchen areas at Oriole Park and M&T Bank Stadium are well-equipped to support a wide variety of high-volume menu prep for concession areas, suites and skyboxes and catered functions, including a blast chiller for modified cook-chill prep. But one interesting aspect of foodservices in the Baltimore facilities is the way that the addition of cutting-edge suite-service equipment has changed some preparation and service processes for the food and beverage operations. The 119 catered suites and skyboxes in M&T Bank Stadium are now equipped with induction-style range tops for finishing and hot holding menu items, including three range tops per box and another 50 units in use on the club level. The 75 boxes in Oriole Park are being renovated with induction equipment in phases, and are now about three-quarters induction-equipped, according to Elgin.
"There are many advantages for us in the use of induction range tops in our suite and club-level service areas — they provide a sleek, attractive look, and they take up less space than chafing dishes," Elgin says. "Induction units are safer in these small spaces because they use no flame or open fire, they are cost-effective because we no longer need to bulk-buy sterno, and they provide more accurate temperature control for finishing off preparations, hot holding food, and providing for a higher-quality product."
The use of induction range tops in suites has changed the way the main kitchen mass-produces and serves some popular food items for suite spectators, according to Elgin. "Some kinds of products such as hot dogs or crab cakes can retain their quality in hot-holding boxes, but some cannot. For example, chicken wings and tenders come out of the fryer banks, and rather than being placed in pans and stored in hot-holding cabinets for a couple of hours before service, they go directly into specialized induction pans and are transported to the suites immediately. Now, instead of getting soggy, they are served crispy and hot."
Arthur Ashe Stadium, located at the United States Tennis Association's National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow, Queens, N.Y., opened in 1998 and was built specifically by the USTA to host the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament — two weeks of smashing tennis action every year around Labor Day. The USTA-owned stadium features seating for 22,547 spectators, 90 luxury suites, five restaurants and 46 concession stands including an outdoor Food Village.
New York-based Restaurant Associates is in charge of catering for the U.S. Open, serving more than 630,000 hungry tennis fans annually during the two-week event. Executive Chef Lou Piuggi, of R.A. Patina Group's Sports and Entertainment Division, oversees the event and is in charge of the production kitchen at the stadium, as well as generally overseeing all sports and entertainment operations for R.A. Albin Khouw, vice president of design for consultants Cini•Little International Inc., was responsible for the initial designs and specs for foodservice equipment for all restaurants and kitchens at the Tennis Center, and Cini•Little continues to oversee ongoing design responsibilities at the Center. A second production kitchen, built to serve the Food Village, has been torn down and is being completely upgraded, according to Piuggi.
The stadium's state-of-the-art central production kitchen supports the restaurants, hospitality for the suites, and numerous private on-site functions, as well as provides quality and volume control over food distributed around the stadium. The stadium's main food storage walk-ins are located adjacent to the production kitchen providing convenient accessibility, and the walk-in storage area is connected to truck delivery bays by a refrigerated vestibule, to ensure the maintenance of proper product temperatures. Three large separate walk-in coolers store produce, fish and meat, facilitating the maintenance of HACCP requirements for food safety at the stadium.
"The most important support equipment to handle the amount of production that we do in the kitchen is refrigeration," Piuggi says. Besides the food storage walk-ins, other storage includes a bulk storage freezer, separate storage areas for ice and beer, dry storage, linen storage and a separate production walk-in for finished products. A separate cold room for on-site butchering, equipped with a band saw, is also located off the production kitchen area.
Large reach-in refrigerators that can accommodate roll-in speed racks of product are located at production stations in the kitchen. Other equipment found in the stadium production kitchen includes several tilting brasiers, several 40-gallon jacketed steam kettles, two char grills, a bank of six convection ovens and two six-burner range tops. Piuggi says that the facility uses over 350 rolling hot and cold boxes for product holding, and to transport food from the kitchen to other facility locations. Satellite pantries to support suites contain walk-in coolers to store the roll-in racks of food for platter service, and suites are equipped with induction burners for hot food finishing and holding.
Talented R.A. guest chefs and their staffs, including Chef Ed Brown, of Rockefeller Center's acclaimed Sea Grill, take over operations at the stadium's upscale restaurant kitchens for the duration of the event. Chef Brown oversees the kitchen at the airy, club-level Aces restaurant featuring the season's best seafood, where a chromium-plated plancha grill has been added to the kitchen battery because of the high-quality results Brown has had in preparing fish dishes with this equipment at his Sea Grill Restaurant.
Some other high-end kitchen equipment anchors three other kitchens for restaurants at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Two top-of-the-line broilers and a rotisserie are found in Champions Bar & Grill to support preparation of the signature steaks, chops and rotisserie chicken served there, and at the ground-level U.S. Open Club an open kitchen equipped with convection ovens, fryers and a char grill supports multiple carving stations on the front service line. Tropica Restaurant's Chef Eric Basulto, former executive chef for Asia de Cuba restaurants and the first executive chef for the Latin Grammy Awards, is the supervising chef at the stadium's Mojito Bar & Grill, where an open kitchen contains an island cooking suite, equipped with a plancha, bain marie, two salamanders, char grill, a fryer and eight range tops, as well as cold holding for salad ingredients.
"All the kitchens and foodservice support facilities at Arthur Ashe Stadium are notably well-designed and well-equipped," comments Chef Brown. "Serving memorable meals at the U.S. Open is a unique, intense experience for us, and we all hit the ground running and then go non-stop for the duration of the event."
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