Pocono Raceway has signed a 10-year deal with
Spectra Food Services & Hospitality to upgrade the track’s food operation, marking a major change for the independently owned facility.
For more than 20 years, Mountain Concessions — a company owned by Looie McNally, the mother of raceway President and CEO Brandon Igdalsky — has run the food service in-house. But as the fan base across sports has changed, and food plays a greater role in shaping the event experience, Pocono officials thought it was time to take the next step by hiring a national vendor with experience at multiple big league venues, Igdalsky said.
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Pocono Raceway has been operating concessions in-house.
Photo by: POCONO RACEWAY
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Pocono Raceway officials issued a proposal for food service and selected Spectra, in large part because of the track’s ticketing deal with
Spectra Ticketing & Fan Engagement, the food service firm’s sister company. Both are
Comcast Spectacor divisions, and
Xfinity, the digital media firm that holds naming rights to NASCAR’s second-tier racing series, is owned by Comcast Corp. For the first time in the track’s 48-year history, the Xfinity Series has scheduled an event at Pocono, and those ties also helped Spectra land the deal, Igdalsky said.
Spectra’s strong regional presence, extending from its corporate headquarters in Philadelphia to PPL Center, the new arena in Allentown, Pa., 45 miles south of Pocono — where Spectra operates the building, food and ticketing — was another feather in Spectra’s cap, he said.
At Pocono, technology is also driving the change. As part of its agreement, Spectra plans to install a new point-of-sale system at Pocono Raceway, providing a universal system across all food outlets to accept debit and credit cards and supply data collection points and inventory control for the new vendor. Those systems have been in place for years at arenas and stadiums. At Pocono, which to this point has had no point-of-sale technology, it’s another improvement worth noting as the track gets up to speed with other sports facilities.
Spectra’s upgrades will include a mix of local food purveyors tied to a Taste of Pennsylvania theme, and in-house brands such as Hot Dog Nation and Blue Taco, said Martin Thorson, Spectra’s vice president of development and client relations. Food trucks will be featured as well at Pocono Raceway, a facility with no permanent concession stands and which relies exclusively on portable stands beyond the 30 suites and multiple club spaces.
Spectra officially takes over in 2017 after overseeing the food operation this year. Pocono is Spectra’s third motorsports account after Iowa Speedway and Portland International Raceway.
> PARAMETRIC SYSTEM: Bypass has acquired Parametric in a deal consolidating the firms’ mobile food service technology into one comprehensive platform covering all aspects of sports food operations, according to principals from both companies.
Officials would not disclose a sale price, but the transaction involved cash and equity, they said.
As a result, Parametric CEO Geoff Johnson becomes Bypass’ chief innovations officer and the Parametric brand goes away in favor of Bypass, a 6-year-old company that provides mobile applications and point-of-sale systems for about 130 big league, college and minor league facilities.
Parametric is a 2-year-old company specializing in mobile ordering in suites. Its first deal was at United Center, followed by U.S. Cellular Field, Nationals Park, PNC Park, Fenway Park and T-Mobile Arena, the new building opening in April in Las Vegas.
For Bypass, the acquisition now brings it into premium spaces through Parametric’s SuiteMate mobile application, which allows suite patrons to order food and drink on their own without having to place a call to the kitchen or flag down an attendant.
For the concessionaire running the venue’s food operation, its suite attendants use smaller devices branded as CheckMate to process those orders. Both the Suite-Mate and CheckMate brands remain intact as part of the Bypass deal, Johnson said.
“We both want to build a full venue solution,” he said. “Separately, we both would have spent a bunch of capital to expand our services.”
Bypass co-founder and CEO Brandon Lloyd said, “They become the core of our premium operation. It’s all one system now, providing more ways for fans to interact in a self-service manner.”
Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @breakground.
