“
W
e tr y to fin d a r e a s i n b u i l d i n g s t h a t a r e u n de ru til i z e d a n d s o met i mes eve n fo r g o tte n , a n d w e b u i l d t h e m i n t o de s tin a tio n a re a s t h a t a v a s t ma j o r i t y of pe o pl e w a n t to f i n d t h ei r w a y t o .”
—Eric Wooden, Senior Vice President, Hospitality Solutions Group
only exist in the Pacific Northwest and poutine that has Asian flavors. It is fantastic and gives you something to look forward to when you step into that building.”
CREATING INVITING AMBIANCES
The design of the building’s F&B spaces can also be a highlight of the guest experience. Wooden, who leads the company’s facility design service, describes Centerplate’s approach to venue enhancement: “We try to find areas in buildings that are underutilized and sometimes even forgotten, and we build them into destination areas that a vast majority of people want to find their way to,” he explains. Centerplate’s Las Vegas Convention Center renovation is a case in point. “There were two very uninviting food courts that you just kind of wanted to get in and out of. And our idea was to turn them into these places where you could work, eat, mingle, have a conversation, do business and build memories about the event you’re at.” Design highlights include individual tables, communal seating and high tables for standup dining, to offer guests maximum flexibility in how they wish to gather. Examples of the Hospitality Solutions Group’s work can also be found at the KFC Yum! Center; Newark, NJ’s Prudential Center, where Centerplate designed and built out all food service related spaces; and T-Mobile Park, which is now an even more successful dining and entertainment destination thanks to Centerplate’s multiyear renovation work. The company transformed a dimly lit, cramped and underutilized outfield concourse into a lounge with specialty concessions and event space, in consultation with the Mariners and James Beard Award-winning local chef Ethan Stowell. The second phase of the project replaced a poorly attended seating area in the outfield with a new restaurant, “Edgar’s Cantina,” named for Mariners’ Hall-of-Famer Edgar Martinez. Serving Northwest-Mex fare, the establishment was named one of Seattle’s Top Ten new restaurants when it opened. Most recently, Centerplate overhauled T-Mobile Park’s Club level, adding a specialty cocktail bar and fresh, local seafood stand. The end result of the project is a huge jump in the popularity of the renovated sections, with per-capita sales increasing by 190 percent. “At some point during the game, more than 70 percent of the people find their way down to that area,” says Wooden. “It was so popular that it allowed the team to sell the menu rights to that area. So it was a new revenue stream for the team.” FACILITIES & EVENT MANAGEMENT 2019 SUPERBOOK
FOOD SERVICE TECHNOLOGY
Wooden’s team is also on the cutting edge when it comes to behind-the-scenes spaces. For example, they procure the latest equipment for client kitchens. But in the arena space, a modern, well-equipped kitchen is a fairly new development. “When I started, you’d be hard pressed to find a kitchen in a lot of arenas,” Wooden notes. “If they had a space they called a kitchen, it was two convection ovens, an eight-burner range and maybe a flattop grill. Now these are full-service production kitchens with serious culinary talent utilizing them. When you hire top culinary talent, they expect to have all the tools in the kitchen to be successful, from pressurized braising pans to infrared ovens.” Technology is also assisting Centerplate’s sustainability efforts in the kitchen. “We’re instituting a program called WasteWatch powered by Leanpath,” says Callo. “It’s a way for our chefs and our teams to reduce food waste by weighing and tracking any product that is discarded, giving us the data and the tools to reduce that waste.” In May, Centerplate parent company Sodexo announced it would deploy the food waste prevention program at 3,000 sites worldwide within a year, aiming to cut its food waste in half by 2025. On the futuristic side of food service technology, Centerplate is introducing robots that make and serve everything from pizza to ice cream to cocktails. The pizza-making robot is the result of a partnership with food production technology company Picnic and recently went through beta testing at T-Mobile Park. The automated system produces customizable pizzas consistently and sequentially, at a rate of up to 180 18-in. or 300 12-in. pizzas per hour. Such robots not only supplement an oftenunderstaffed food service industry, but they will also help Centerplate cater to Millennials and Express ordering concessions Generation Z, who tend at the Hollywood Bowl to want customized cuisine. For those guests in particular, “we have to hit that highvolume, high-speed capacity and still allow for customization and on-demand ordering,” Evans explains.
FLEXIBLE ORDERING FOR GUESTS
Ordering apps have made life easier for event-goers, and Centerplate offers that kind of tool as one means for guests to order their F&B items. But there is such a thing as “app fatigue,” and Evans has found that people are downloading apps less frequently these days. So the company also offers the option of web-based ordering. “Each seat is labeled with a sticker that has a QR code, and if you want to do in-seat ordering you scan the code on your seat, it launches the menu and you can transact there without ever having to register or download an app,” she explains. 25