Plant-Based Food Concessions Growing In Sports Stadiums
From the Beyond Burger in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to the Impossible Burger patty Camelback Burger in Phoenix’s Chase Field and the Vietnamese noodle salad at Portland’s Providence Park to the veggie taco at Chicago’s United Center, the plant-based expansion is happening.
TIM NEWCOMB: ‘The plant-based trend started taking shape in the restaurant world across the country, so Levy, one of the leading sports concession companies on the continent, wanted to follow the trend, bringing plant-based products to more sports venues and in more ways…
From the Beyond Burger in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to the Impossible Burger patty Camelback Burger in Phoenix’s Chase Field and the Vietnamese noodle salad at Portland’s Providence Park to the veggie taco at Chicago’s United Center, the plant-based expansion is happening…
“We saw a few of these (new plant-based offerings) come up and we weren’t sure if they were a trend or real,” says Tom Funk, Levy executive vice president and COO. “Where we saw them picking up was in the restaurant side of the business and that helped drive our jump on the bandwagon”…
The trend is still new, yet growing. In 2019 Levy ordered twice as much plant-based product as in 2018. While still somewhere between just 1 and 2 percent of overall concession sales within stadiums, Funk says Levy is positioning itself so that it can continue to quickly ramp up offerings as demand increases. “We are keeping an eye on purchasing behavior, fan demand and actual results on what we are serving,” he says. “There are new categories being introduced and as they become available to us, we will introduce them.”
The plant-based effort from Levy really started to take shape in 2016, when the dishes expanded beyond one-off options. “We are pretty enamored with the products, the quality of the products,” Funk says. “So, it has evolved from burgers to lettuce wraps to wraps in general. We’ve worked it into suites, chef table programs, all-inclusive areas and concessions. You can find these plant-based products in a number of different offerings and there are not any areas that it doesn’t cover. It is very versatile to incorporate into the menu design”.’ SOURCE…
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