We had the opportunity recently to visit the new Red Bulls soccer stadium in Harrison, NJ. If you haven’t been, its basolutely magnificient and a fabulous place to watch soccer. any place where I go and I get to see Dads with young children gets high marks from me. It takes me back to so many wonderful days with my late Dad attending games at Fenway Park and the Boston Garden.

What I can’t understand is why teams and thier food servcie partners that have so much at stake, can’t seem to get it righ when it comes to feeding guests. In this case its a company named Delaware North that operates the concessions at Red Bulls Stadium I certainbly give them high marks for the creativity of the offfering. There’s everything from empanadas to all tacoes and beers from all over the world.

If you are a socccer fan, tou kow that there are no “between innings” or time out breaks that we are used to with traditional american sports. So the concessionaire needs to be able create a system that minimizes the time spent in line.

As you can see from the picture I took the Delaware North system creates very long lines. I’ve been blessed to see some of the very best concessionaires in the business like Centerplate and Aramark in operation.

I’ve never been a fan or people that “bitch” and don’t have a solution. Mine in very simple. Delaware North needs to seperate the function of taking the order, fufilling the order and cashing out the customer.

The system simply makes no sense. I even called Delaware North’s
Rick Abramson, President of their Sportservice concession division in Buffalo, I’m still waiting to hear back from him.

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