Concessions

Overview

One recent summer, Flavor Catering was approached by the Columbia University Athletics Department to do the preseason training meals for the university’s football team.

This ran approximately six weeks and included lunches, breakfasts, dinners and a number of events, in addition to simply feeding the football players.

The department was happy and asked us if we could do the concessions throughout the entire regular season, including five home games with attendance upwards of 10,000 guests.

The menu consisted of classic concession fare, including hot dogs, burgers, salads, homemade cookies, chips and snacks. We also featured weekly specialty items, such as New England Korean Barbeque Braised Short Rib with Kim Chi, Clam Chowder, Barbequed Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Chili.

The main challenge was that the games occurred every other week, so it required setting up and breaking down every two weeks and assembling a crew of 40 cooks, managers and servers to oversee the operation, with up to 12 different points of sale.

Lastly, there is no kitchen facility, just storage space. Our catering experience certainly helped in developing an on-site kitchen facility suited to feed thousands of Columbia University football fans.

It ended up being a great series of events.

From the Client

“The relationship between Columbia Athletics and Flavor Catering continues to grow and has never been better. Last spring, our Department of Student-Athlete Enrichment Services hired Flavor Catering to do our 4.0 Luncheon, the event that recognizes student-athletes for academic excellence.

The audience that day of student-athletes, their parents and a number of University administrators was so positively impressed with the food, service and management of the event that we began to consider Flavoring Catering for other events.

That dialogue between Flavor Catering and Athletics continued through our Football Office in the Campbell Sports Center at the Baker Athletics Complex. Flavor Catering proposed a full schedule of on-site team meals, during training camp and then during the season.

Our Head Coach and his staff have been overwhelmed by the combination of quality food in quantity (we feed about 120 football players/staff) and the service provided.

Little did we know that over the summer our food concessionaire at Wien Stadium opted out of our contract with them, leaving us with no viable food concessions for home football games.

I reached out to Flavor Catering and asked if they’d like to do this. They bailed us out of a tough spot, and now our stadium food concessions have NEVER been better. Our fans have welcomed the upgrade and the customer service mantra we share with Flavor Catering has merged very well on the stadium concourse.

Needless to say, we are thrilled with the growth and progress of our relationship with Flavor Catering and look forward to extending it.”