Sports venues are playing a losing game with their current approach to foodservice. In a stadium with upwards of 70,000 fans, and with only the short breaks in play to serve them food and drinks, operators and vendors are losing out on a lot of potential revenue.

One of the biggest pain points for fans attending live events is the lengthy queues that they face to access concessions during these breaks. Forcing fans to choose between catching all of the action or grabbing a bite to eat, it’s no wonder that 45% of fans are abandoning concession lines if the wait time seems too long.

A solution that suits both fans and vendors

SeatServe offers a solution to this challenge, providing vendors with a way to serve thousands of hungry sports fans throughout an event. Its unique platform enables stadiums to offer mobile ordering and in-seat stadium food delivery, which helps to ensure that operators aren’t losing out on sales due to wait times, and in turn maximizes revenue and fan satisfaction.

SeatServe’s unique technology platform also encourages vendors to push its workforce to operate at maximum efficiency. Multiple runners are stationed around the stadium, for example, fitted with devices that enable them to track, collect and deliver orders as they come in. SeatServe’s platform allows vendors to incentivize fast and accurate work through a tip system that rewards runners for the number of orders that they successfully deliver.

However, there are also systems in place to ensure that stadium vendors and staff aren’t overwhelmed with orders. Load balancing algorithms, designed to maximize the efficiency of kitchen staff and servers, are in place to ensure that orders are spread appropriately across the numerous points of fulfillment (POF) throughout the stadium. Likewise, SeatServe’s TimeSlot feature allows concessionaires to set the amount of deliveries that are permitted during a particular period of time. These features ensure that vendors can continue to deliver in a timely fashion throughout an event, maintaining the happiness of both fans and staff.

SeatServe: More than just a stadium food delivery app

SeatServe was founded to provide the ultimate in-seat experience for sports fans, offering food, drinks and merchandise in just a few taps. However, four years of intense design, development, and collaboration with the biggest sports stadiums in the world led to the creation of something that is far more than a stadium food delivery app.

SeatServe’s technology also doubles up as a marketing solution, providing ways for venues to keep track of fans’ purchasing habits and grow revenue through a variety of marketing techniques.

Each sale made through the SeatServe smartphone app (or its white-labelled, venue/team specific apps) generates valuable data for stadium operators. This data is presented in an advanced analytics platform, which provides insight on what, when and how fans like to order. This allows venues to make more informed decisions on the concessions and merchandise that they offer, while also providing data-driven opportunities to upsell with offers and promotions that are likely to convert. Alternatively, users may be offered the same items they previously ordered upon returning to a stadium. Through SeatServe’s technology suite, for example, venues are able to send push notifications directly to users’ phones with offers for concessions that they are likely to want at a time that they are likely to want it.

The simplicity of the platform also helps to introduce fans to the full range of products on offer and ultimately convince them to make purchases that they otherwise would have been unlikely to make. With little time between play to spare, a hungry fan is unlikely to spend their time standing in lines to buy merchandise, for example. However, by deploying offline to online marketing techniques with the help of SeatServe, venues allow fans to purchase more without consuming those valuable minutes. SeatServe’s technology enables fans to buy goods from multiple vendors in one transaction, ensuring that time doesn’t stop fans from purchasing all of the goods they desire.

While sports fans ultimately want to witness sublime touchdowns, goals and home runs, food and drink is a big part of the sports experience. According to a report published by Oracle, fans in the US and UK rank food and drink as the third most important element of the fan experience, behind only safety and the environment. Technology is a close fourth.

SeatServe is the missing piece of the puzzle for sports venues to connect various parts of the fan experience. Fans get a technological solution that delivers the foodservice they want, and stadium operators get a solution that solves the logistical challenge of catering to tens of thousands of fans without compromising its bottom line. Better yet, through SeatServe’s suite of tools, stadiums can unlock additional revenue by tempting fans with offers that they didn’t know they wanted — after all, 65% of sports fans admit to purchasing food and drink based on impulse.

Image by Halvorsen brian (CC BY 3.0)