The ‘concourse experience’ at many sports venues – including football clubs – is often still grim: unattractive ambience, mediocre food offerings, slow service…
This is in sharp contrast to the corporate and private hospitality offered which is now high quality – as witnessed by H&CNews on our recent visits to Aston Villa and Brighton.
As organisers of The Football Pie League, H&CNews was therefore interested to accept an invitation from the Lindley Group to take a first-hand look at their new football ‘food retail concepts’.
And delighted because it gave us the excuse to visit Stoke City FC’s Britannia Stadium, where the new concepts are already at work.
Lindley Venue Catering and its ‘food retail concepts’
Lindley Venue Catering is the specialist sports stadia catering division within the Lindley Group, responsible for over 50 football, rugby and other sports stadia around the UK.
Their recent announcement of the roll out of a range of branded, food retail concepts at sports stadia attracted H&CNews’ interest because it directly addresses the issue of raising the quality standards and presentation of food, as well as improving the speed of service on sports stadia public concourses.
Of course, the concepts are also designed to attract, retain and increase the numbers of customers and their spending, which is the ultimate measure of success for stadia owners. In the words of Adam Elliott, Lindley Group CEO:
“The aim of our new foodservice retail brands is to raise the bar in terms of quality, customer service and, ultimately, spend per head in the stadia market, and the results achieved have been extremely positive prompting us to roll out these brands at other sites.”
The importance of design and service
Customers today experience high standards of design, quality of food, and prompt, friendly service in the high street, and even at motorway service stations. It’s expected and required as part of delivering value for money.
And Lindley recognises that sports stadia should deliver to the same standards if they want to be commercially successful especially at a time when many sports fans are forced to economise.
Lindley have invested a great deal of time and effort in researching and testing the design and equipping of their new outlets: sports concourses experience extreme demand in the hour or so before the start of the game, and still greater demand at half time. The outlets are ergonomically designed and equipped to make it possible for staff to prepare for and service that demand, staff confirmed this is working well for them and more importantly their customers, as queues are shorter and move faster.
The new retail outlets not only use bright, modern design, their staff also now wear modern, branded uniforms and staff confirmed that these too help to communicate a positive impression to customers.
It’s the food that counts! What’s on offer?
All these positive developments would count for little, however, if customers didn’t like the food. The dedicated Lindley Development Chef Team, headed by Creative Director Gary Bates, has invested heavily in research, development and trialling the new food concepts.
Here’s a brief round-up of the new outlets, including those sampled by H&CNews in a very busy and filling tasting session.
Frank’s Original New York Streetdogs – a premium hot dog naturally smoked over kiln dried Beech wood, and made with high-quality pork and a natural casing, the hot dogs are served in a soft dough roll with American mustard or ketchup and thyme flavoured onions. H&CNews can confirm that, unlike most hotdogs in our experience, this one is genuinely ‘premium’, generous, tasty and with a firmer bun, so good we ate almost all of it before moving on to the pies!
The Pie Factory – another trademarked retail concept for the new bespoke pie range which has been developed in partnership with an artisan baker.
With no artificial flavours or preservatives, the pies have a lean, high-quality meat content and the broader range includes…A Bombay Vegetable Pie, the Pea Supper Pie – lean minced British beef in an onion gravy on a bed of Lockwoods Mushy Peas; and a Chicken Balti Curry pie in a spice infused pastry.
H&CNews sampled and enjoyed all of these, and was particularly impressed with the Pea Supper Pie, a full meal delivered hot and in practical packaging – it didn’t threaten to fall apart!
Henry’s Chicken offers southern-fried in either a delicious burger or wrap with crisp salad and fresh salsa, with options of an original ‘Hot & Spicy’ or ‘regular’ recipe. Here again, H&CNews’ dedication ensured that we sampled both the wrap – apparently and understandably proving very popular – and the burger, which uses a high quality bun. We particularly recommend the ‘Hot & Spicy’ version.
FGB – Flaming Good Burger outlets serve flame-grilled high quality, burgers made with prime lean cuts of 100% British beef, served in warm ciabatta rolls with a selection of delicious salads and dressings. Not sampled by us, but on the evidence above we believe Lindley when it claims the flame grilled taste really stands out against ‘standard’ burgers while the quality of the ciabatta roll really helps to emphasise that this is a premium product!
The Deli will also feature and serve fresh high-quality deli sandwiches, baguettes, wraps, boxed pasta salads and extend to homemade soup and freshly made salt beef and smoked salmon bagels.
A note on packaging
As touched on above, packaging needs to be functional, as well as attractive, and – these days – sustainable. Lindley use fibre-pulp trays which are 100% from a renewable source, compostable, and cool to touch when taken from the oven.
The early results
Frank’s Original New York Streetdogs, The Pie Factory and The Deli branded concepts were all launched at Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane last autumn and, as well as receiving very positive feedback from fans, have produced an 18% increase in total cash takings; a 28% increase in hot dog sales; and 19% increase in pie sales.
This initial success is being followed by the gradual roll-out of the new concepts at Lindley’s other stadia clients – with Stoke City FC, Ipswich Town FC, and Warrington Wolves RUFC leading the way, and many more to follow.
About Lindley Catering
Lindley Catering Limited was established in 1968, is based in Stoke-on-Trent, and operates exclusively in sports, art and entertainment venues. It is the UK’s leading sports stadia caterer in professional football, cricket and rugby, operating over 50 contracts in these sectors.
In 2006 Heathcotes Outside, the specialist event catering operation established by award-winning chefs Paul Heathcote and Gary Bates in 1997, became part of The Lindley Group.
The Green’s St James’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar was opened by Simon Parker-Bowles in 1982. The business has expanded to include Green’s Events, Green’s Picnics and Green’s Select – a gourmet hamper gift service for food connoisseurs.
Every week, Lindley Group caters for 300,000 people from exclusive parties to serving 50,000 hungry fans in 15 minutes. It has a turnover of £50-plus million and employs 500 full-time and 15,000 part-time employees.