BIGELOW COMPANIES
Chris Bigelow, president
VIP hospitality, particularly in the US,
has become all about customization.
We have been seeing the idea of
whatever the customer wants, we’ll
be able to deliver, and if we can’t,
we need to fi gure out a way to do it.
If you look at the design of new
stadia and arenas, the old days of
having only one or two main
premium clubs is now pretty much
obsolete. Now there may be up to
ten different premium offerings at
different price ranges.
Every stadium or club has their
own unique take on it too. For
example, in San Francisco, it’s a big
wine country so one of the early
ideas when the 49ers were
designing Levi’s Stadium was to
have wine lockers for all the
individual members where they
could bring a bottle in. While a lot
of clubs used to avoid doing things
like this in the fear of losing money,
now they want people to buy the
club membership and if they don’t
make as much money on the food
and beverage side of things, their
revenue is still covered by the price
of the ticket.
The customization of menus, for
instance, is another area where
customers can bring their choices to
the table. At some venues, suite
menus can be changed for special
customers who can work with the
head chefs to design a menu
specifi cally for them. This again
goes back to the design where most
stadia now have multiple kitchens
and it is a lot easier for them to
customize. Just 10 to 15 years ago
everyone was working out of just one
big main kitchen, so it was diffi cult to
be creative for menus.
The biggest shift on the premium
side has been the introduction of the
loge boxes with theater style seating.
The typical suites of having 18 or so
people in a box is market that has
been shrinking at almost every
venue you see. It’s not all aimed at
the super large companies, rather
the smaller ones that don’t want to
buy 18 tickets to host at an event. If
you think about baseball, there are
81 home games – that’s a lot of
events to fi ll that box. The premium
option of a loge seat with great
sightlines and a common club
behind it has proved to be very
successful, despite the fact clubs
have had to rip out some suites and
even general admission seating to
do it. It has driven food and
beverage sales and for the team has
driven ticket revenue.
As a result of Covid-19, we’ve
been talking to a lot of people and
everyone seems to be in a similar
agreement that there will be a two
or three phase program to a return
to live events. The important thing
to think about from a food and
beverage standpoint is the buffet
with customers serving themselves.
Nobody sees that happening going
forward. Instead, it will either be wait
staff serving food or it will be prepackaged,
which is directly going
away from what the sector has been
trying to do all these years in making
the food look more appealing in
displays. But I don’t think people will
want to stand in line and see other
customers handling the food or
cutlery etc. Unfortunately, it’s not
going to be pretty for a while,
particularly with the pre-packaged
food, which will have to be made in
VIP HOSPITALITY
the kitchen and wrapped up,
complete with cutlery and
condiments, and served to the suite.
It’ll be like going back to sporting
events in the 1970s with basic menus
in hermetically sealed packages that
come out of vending machines.
The other big trend we were
seeing was the introduction of selfservice
beverages located on the
concourses. It sped up service and
was very popular but I don’t think
the health department will let
venues have any sort of self-service
equipment like that anymore.
Then there will also be an impact
on sustainability such as those
initiatives of having cups, which are
handed in for a refundable deposit
then washed and used again at the
venue. Until people feel comfortable,
I think that they will go back to
drinking from single-use bottles,
which are thrown away after use.
How the dynamic of social
distancing will work within
hospitality areas is the million-dollar
question. No one really knows what
to do at this point. Even for small
groups, they will likely have to go
someplace else to eat where tables
and chairs are controlled, or it might
be the case that people will just
avoid eating at events altogether.
Until a vaccine is discovered
and people are
once again
comfortable
with being
around other
people, it
will be
tough times
for a major
sporting event.
Angel Stadium,
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