CityPark concessions, Part 7: How does it all work?

With still more than an hour and 15 minutes until kickoff, the main concourse at CityPark was already getting busy. Matt Sebek, chief experience officer for St. Louis City SC, confirmed the perception with a quick check of his phone.

“It’s 6:15 and there are already 5,000 people in the park,” said Sebek, who was in the process of conducting a short stadium tour. Clearly, the St. Louis fans had taken the team’s idea of arriving early to heart, and were already enthusiastically lining up at the concession stands, either to order or to pick up orders already placed through the team app.

Getting so many people inside so quickly is part of the stadium’s design. With the pitch dug down to about 40 feet below street level, the team was able to build a tunnel to provide access for broadcast and back-of-house supply vehicles without having to close off any side of the stadium.

“All four walls are open to fans, we have no ‘back door’ by design,” Sebek said. “You can see, the flow through is pretty good.”

Helping the quick entry was CityPark’s decision to use the Evolv weapons detection system, which allows groups of fans to walk through the security screening technology without having to take anything out of pockets or bags.

As we slowly walked around the perimeter of the main concourse we could watch in real time fans pick and choose which stands they wanted to get food from, with lines forming quickly at spots like Balkan Treat Box, Farmtruk and Beast BBQ.

While we were inside early we could still hear music and sounds coming from outside on the stadium’s east side, where a large plaza was hosting a pregame party of sorts. According to Sebek the plaza celebrations with DJs or bands are just another part of the “get here early” program, a promotion that also attracts fans who don’t have tickets to get inside the stadium.

Balkan Treat Box and Steve’s Hot Dogs, Sebek said, were the two top vote-getters in the fan poll about which food providers they wanted in the stadium. As such, both have unique east-side stands that not only serve the main concourse but also have windows opening to the stadium’s outside, so fans on the plaza can order concessions without having to come in. Some fans, Sebek said, just stay outside, watching the game on a big screen or relaxing on the nearby lawn across the street.

Fans embrace ‘get here early’ strategy

As the stadium continued to fill up our guided tour ended, and Stadium Tech Report spent the rest of the pregame time seeing how the concession technology worked with a live crowd. Our first stop was Balkan Treat Box, which by 7 p.m. (a half hour before kickoff) had a full snaking line for walk-up orders and a full screen of order-ahead orders ready for pickup.

One couple who picked up an order-ahead order said the process was fast — their order was ready 10 minutes after they placed it when they got past security. The only drawback, they said, was that the online menu didn’t offer a specialty cocktail that the stand was serving, which was available on the in-person menu.

Farmtruk’s main stand also had a full line of walk-up customers when we passed them, watching the staffers behind a glass partition as they smashed fresh meat into sizzling burgers next to a pile of bacon. The rainbow tie-dyed T-shirt-wearing owner, Sam Mitchell, was playing quarterback at the middle of the booth, finishing burgers with condiments while also fulfilling the order-ahead line, which like Balkan Treat Box had a full screen of order numbers.

For Beast BBQ, a similar situation was in place at the main stand, where a walk-up line filled the zig-zag queue while a separate order-ahead pickup area had a full screen of order numbers. Another nearby Beast stand that offered loaded nachos did not have order-ahead capability, but instead had a large walk-up line stretching into the concourse.

Checkout-free performace: 49 seconds for a sandwich, popcorn and a beer

On the checkout-free side, our first visit was to a stand run by Wally’s, perhaps the most intriguing of the food providers since it isn’t really a restaurant but instead a business with two 24-hour highway service stations, the closest one southwest of St. Louis off Interstate 44. According to Hatch, the Wally’s stops are somewhat of a local phenomenon, with huge numbers of filling pumps and a high-end food service with specialty sandwiches, gourmet coffee and signature beef jerky.

At the CityPark stand, two employees wearing Wally’s-branded shirts and caps were the perfect carnival barkers, espousing the stand’s technology and its ability to get fans food “within 27 seconds!” Inside, the hot food window offered pulled pork and pulled chicken sandwiches, along with Wally’s popcorn and Wally’s jerky.

We timed one customer’s journey through the Wally’s stand as he leisurely looked at the hot food offerings, selecting a sandwich, then getting a box of popcorn and a beer. When he strolled out through the exit gates, the total elapsed time inside the stand was 48.92 seconds.

Two other customers at Wally’s showed that while the checkout-free stands have been in place since the season’s opening, their method of operation are still new to many fans. One woman was holding her items but had to be coaxed by the employees to keep walking, through the exit gates. “It just doesn’t feel right,” she said, laughing. Another fan told us after she got out that the checkout-free experience was “fun, but kind of crazy.”

On the other side of the stadium, we watched fans at the Pie Guy Pizza stand deal with lines, a phenomenon we’d seen at checkout-free stands in other stadiums. Because of the way the overhead cameras work to process purchase information, checkout-free stands typically have a limit to how many customers can be in a store at a certain time. So sometimes the stands — which are advertised as being able to eliminate lines — get lines anyway because of their popularity.

At the Pie Guy stand, there was a short line outside the entry gates, and then another short line inside the stand by the hot-food window, where fans were waiting for slices to be ready. But once the fans got their slices and other items they were able to quickly walk out. One fan said the entire process was fast overall. “The slowest thing was the time it took to scan my credit card,” he said.

On the other side of a long belly-up bar was the Anthonino’s checkout-free stand, where the hot food window offered the famous toasted raviolis along with gyro and chicken sandwiches, and even chicken strips with fries. We timed a customer at the Anthonino’s stand and watched while he took his time surveying the hot options and then the drink coolers, ending up only getting a couple beers. Total time elapsed: 43 seconds.

So far, the concessions plan is a growing success

Like any new technology, some of the deployments used for concessions at CityPark may take some more time for fans to be truly comfortable with their operation. At one stand we saw a couple consecutive families struggle with the Mashgin terminals, eventually needing a staff member to help them process their transactions. At some deployments of the Mashgin terminals we have seen at other stadiums, a close-by instruction chart tells customers to make sure the items are spaced out so that the cameras can pick up the individual items.

“They can be tricky for first-time users but once they use it once they usually get it,” said one staffer whose stand had a couple Mashgin terminals.

With the game finally underway at 7:30 the concessions crush subsided, and Stadium Tech Report went around to the Farmtruk stand to get a firsthand taste of the food before the halftime crowds arrived.

At the walkup line we ordered a burger and a local craft beer, a CityWide Pils from 4Hands Brewing. We used the stadium app’s ability to load a payment card and were able to complete our transaction by simply scanning the QR code into the terminal. Mitchell herself finished up our order with a smile, saying she was ready for the halftime crush to arrive.

We took the food to a nearby stand-up bar, which overlooked the south end stands, allowing us to watch a corner kick while we enjoyed the fresh, juicy burger and the crisp, cold brew.

While the halftime crowds didn’t seem as thick as the pregame one (according to CityPark 35 percent of all concession orders happen at halftime), we still needed to stand to the side on the concourse to make way for people trying to get more food and drink before play started again. In another only-in-St. Louis food moment we watched while a stadium halftime “fan camera” segment ended up at one point showing a fan in a City SC jersey, who also had a “toasted ravioli” mask surrounding his head.

Our overall impression was that CityPark’s concession operation was a growing success, one that will only get better as providers and fans learn the process of how to marry great food with technology that allows it to be dispersed more quickly.

“What we’re seeing is that through 10 games, our plan is already validated,” said Sebek. “If we just had belly-up stands this wouldn’t work. We’ve found a way to flatten the ordering curves.”