Minor League Park Offers Remote Ordering for All Seats

A number of sports venues have debuted in-seat ordering systems, often based on cell phone platforms. But these are usually confined to certain sections, usually club seats and loges.

Roger Dean Stadium in Palm Beach, FL, has democratized the whole thing, giving fans in all 7,000 of its seats the opportunity to order food and drink without leaving their seats by using their smartphones. The service, called GeeBo, is available from a vendor called JCS Enterprises, which has provided the equipment, software and technical support.

Each seat in the ballpark, which hosts the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins for spring training games and a pair of minor league teams during the regular season, faces a QR code affixed to the back of the seat in front of it. After downloading a free application, fans can scan that code with their smartphones to bring up a menu.

They then order their food and drinks, enter credit card information (which can either be saved for future transactions or deleted after one-time use) and a tip amount and get their food delivered (deliveries trigger an automatic 6% surcharge on the bill total). They can also pick up at designated stands if they prefer.

The pre-order option is also available at eight kiosks around the ballpark. Fans picking up orders themselves can also receive promotional coupons to local businesses.

GeeBo began with the order kiosks, “but then we decided to add the smartphone option for everyone,” says Assistant General Manager Melissa Cooper. “We started it with the busier stands but we’ve added more as we’ve gone along.”

Roger Dean retains in-person concessions stand service as well as the familiar “hawkers” who roam the stands. GeeBo is simply an alternative ordering mode. So far, only about a hundred or so fans a game have used it, but the numbers have been growing as word has spread, Cooper says.

Go here for a video showing how the system works.