5 things: Stadium’s concessions-included ticket strategy deemed a success

In this edition of 5 Things, Food Management highlights five things you may have missed recently about developments affecting onsite dining.

Here’s your list for today:

In 2021, concession sales at Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco grew by 23% over 2019 and fan satisfaction scores increased by 13% over the course of the season in which the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers debuted their plan to include many concessions in the price of season tickets. Put simply, the 49ers and concessionaire Levy Restaurants gambled that customers, freed from the incremental cost of many common products, would reallocate spending to alcohol, premium food items or other merchandise instead of pocketing the “savings,” and that proved to be true as full-building per-caps (including merchandise) grew 29%, from $30.98 to $40.06, while concessions per-caps grew from $24.38 to $24.80.

Read more: 49ers find success in first season with concessions-included ticket strategy

With two new apartment buildings opening this fall providing 3,446 beds, UCLA will become the first and only University of California campus to guarantee housing for four years to first-year students and two years for transfer students. “Residential housing allows us to better ensure that every student gets a good start and is therefore more likely to be successful, so we wanted to give every student an option of having four years,” says UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

Related:5 things: Salt Lake Schools asks businesses to help serve school lunch

Read more: Amid student housing crisis, UCLA becomes first UC campus with four-year room guarantee

University at Buffalo (UB) students will no longer need to make reservations to eat at the Crossroads Culinary Center (C3) starting March 27, as C3 becomes the latest campus entity to loosen its COVID-19 restrictions following UB's removal of its mask mandate on March 5. A reservation system had been in place since Aug. 21, 2021 to ensure the dining hall maintains a strict policy of social distancing, but students expressed concerns that it was complex, with some saying they went hungry and missed meals due to inflexible and booked-up scheduling times.

Read more: C3 will no longer require reservations

The Rathskeller Cafe inside the basement of the Minnesota Capitol reopened to the public on March 21 after being closed since March 2020 due to the coronavirus crisis. However, the other cafeterias around the Capitol campus, which traditionally served the thousands of state workers who office there, have yet to announce their reopening dates. “We’ve got to be really cautious about reopenings,” said Larry Wojciechowski, district manager for foodservice management company Taher Catering Services, which runs the Rathskeller and several other cafeterias in state-owned buildings. “Hopefully, as the word gets out, people will get back into the habit.”

Related:5 tech things: Voice ordering tech growing despite customer hesitancy

Read more: MN Capitol’s stately cafe reopens for first time since March 2020

Chartwells K12 has launched a fully-funded foundational education benefit in partnership with education and upskilling platform Guild Education to pay 100% of tuition for a variety of foundational programs through learning providers like high school completion programs, digital literacy courses and career prep and soft skills certificates. The program is available to nearly all frontline associates, whether they have been with the company for one day or many years. All programs offered through Guild are self-paced, online, and designed with employees in mind.

Read more: Chartwells K12 to Offer Free Foundational Education Opportunities to Support Employee Career Development

Bonus: Morrison Dining adds a stunning food hall to Cornell’s campus dining mix

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]