From delivering food to fans seated field-side to serving guests in the upper deck suites, the Rocket City Trash Pandas of Madison, AL operate a robust game day food and beverage service. Before moving to this new venue, the Trash Pandas’ F&B ordering and fulfillment process required strenuous, time-consuming tasks:
• Suites managers had to complete full banquet event orders for suites parties, requiring lengthy correspondence with both the customer and the suite kitchen.
• It was difficult to predict labor and inventory needs on a game-by-game basis without knowing the demands ahead of time.
• Long lines at the concession stands deterred both fans and suite guests from placing orders during the game.
To create a more convenient ordering experience for guests — and less stress for the staff — the Trash Pandas partnered with FanFood to craft a tailored venue-wide mobile ordering and payment solution.
For 2021, FanFood’s online pre-ordering Portal is the primary way for Trash Pandas suite holders to book meal packages. Through a single email link, suite holders can browse meal packages and view photos of their options, learn about specific package offerings, and complete their purchase via secure checkout.
“FanFood makes it easy for us to manage meal package orders,” Taylor said. “Suites owners can pay ahead of time for their guests, and the Pre-order Portal takes worrying about their menus and if they’ve been billed entirely off my plate.”
For Taylor, the ability to accept game day orders at the suites level has been the most impactful addition FanFood has brought to their venue. In fact, FanFood opened an entirely new revenue stream for them.
“Before FanFood, we had no game day F&B service. Guests had to walk down to the concession stand and bring their order back up,” Taylor said.
With mobile ordering for game day suites F&B, Taylor’s team is driving larger average orders throughout the game. From their opening homestand to their fourth, the Trash Pandas’ average order value has grown by +8.5%, steadily, indicating that groups are ordering more at once.
“Listing menu options with greater quantities has made it easy for us to bring in more revenue, since we have packages built to serve minimums of six, eight or twelve guests,” Taylor said.
With FanFood, the Trash Pandas have benefitted from the platform’s menu customizability. Real time edits enable their team to keep their products in check and maximize guest satisfaction.
Ahead of game day, FanFood’s pre-ordering portal allows Taylor and her team to better predict the amount of staff and inventory they’ll need. On the inventory side, the Trash Pandas have saved money with the ability to toggle on only the items they have, versus maintaining a static PDF.
“What I really like about it is I can easily edit the menus and add more things. We have a pretty large menu, so the ability to toggle items depending on our inventory makes it easier to control the way the game is going,” said Taylor.
