Most of us grimly accept the unavoidable reality of queuing for food. Even at restaurants purporting to be of the ‘quick service’ variety, standing in line is fairly common nowadays. It’s the same with stadium-based food outlets too, particularly those hosting sporting events like football, where the clientele is, how shall we say, rather more demanding.

In such an environment, a fear of missing pivotal in-game moments during feeding time ignites a primal urgency among fans that’s far, far removed from the more delicate sensibilities of your typical high-street grazer.

Often, the phlegmatic British approach to queuing is scattered to the four winds. Such a high-pressure environment presents its own unique challenges for those looking to start a third-party catering company or independent franchise. Here’s what you’re up against.

High Order Volume

With a customer-base of thousands literally yards from your counter, demand is never far away. In larger arenas, a population roughly the equivalent of a small town will be vying for food and drink. Because of this, POS systems are put under constant strain with infuriating lags and occasional system crashes a nagging issue. It also doesn’t help that the UIs of many POS terminals aren’t very user-friendly. Confusion and mistakes often reign.

Demand Surges

In contrast to restaurants and pubs that surround a stadium, there’s absolutely no down time during matches. Unless you’ve set up in a National League South field shack, the customers will keep coming. And with half-time breaks and in-game intervals come demand surges. Having to meet ongoing demand while preparing for these surges is a major challenge for back-of-house staff. Preparation bottlenecks and stockouts are a constant menace.

Inventory Headaches

Limited space means of course that you won’t be able to keep as much stock on site. Frequent stock replenishment is often required, sometimes from distant storage areas in and around the stadium. The potential for staffing inefficiencies is pronounced here - for example, a staff member who takes 10 minutes to fetch supplies could otherwise be serving customers or helping with kitchen prep. This can result in overworked order takers and delayed food prep.

Limited Space

Even in the larger sporting arenas, space often comes at a premium. Chances are, you’re not going to have a great deal of elbow room, regardless of whether you’re dishing out prawn sandwiches to executives or serving burgers and beer to the heaving masses. This can dictate the number of staff you’re able to hire, the efficiency of their workflows, the size of your inventory and the kind of hardware you’ll be able to use.

Staffing Problems

Staffing is difficult across the food and beverage sector – but it’s worse in the food concession vertical. The work is often seasonal or part-time, the hours are irregular and the workload intense. Unsurprisingly then, turnover tends to be high, with employees often moving to more stable, better-paid jobs. This begs the questions: how much do you spend in training new starters if they’re not going to be around for very long? Is the investment worth it?

The Syrve Solution

While the above challenges may seem daunting each and every one of them can be overcome by implementing a stadium POS system powered by next-gen technology. This is where Syrve comes in! With this in mind, here’s the hard sell, pain point by pain point.

Dealing With High Order Volume and Demand Surges

Because Syrve is a cloud-based POS and restaurant management system, it’s not as dependent on the kind of localised hardware that’s often prone to failure. Off-site redundancy and backup systems solve this problem, helping to avoid system failures and downtime.

Our POS terminals are also intuitive and easy to use – they’ve been expressly designed to reduce manual inputs and simplify ordering. Every single order is injected into a single production pipeline in real time. As a result, kitchen staff are able to see each order as it comes in and start preparation without having to interact with order takers. It’s a time-saving, stress-relieving feature that can have a big impact on overall efficiency and your staff’s sanity.

Ensuring an Efficient Operation When Space is Limited

Once again, Syrve’s cloud-based architecture means that it’s particularly beneficial for space-restricted operations. For one thing, all data is stored remotely, so there’s no need for bulky on-premises servers or hardware. To save counter space, we feature compact, flat-screen POS terminals as well as hand-held devices. These present an infinitely better alternative to the bulky cash registers that, due to budget constraints, are often still in use at older stadiums.

We also feature two potentially transformative tech solutions that can dramatically save space and also cut-down on queues: a self-service kiosk and in-seat mobile ordering.

Our kiosk lends itself very well to stadium food services. As with our POS terminals, it’s intuitive, reliable and fast. Apart from reducing queues, it also frees up front-of-house staff to perform other pressing tasks such as stock replenishment.

Our mobile ordering system can be set up for in-seat delivery or as a grab-and-go service. For both services, all orders are injected directly into the system's production pipeline along with till-based orders. Your kitchen staff will see them on their kitchen display screens, just as they do for those made at the counter. When they're ready, customers can collect them or they can be delivered directly to their seats. 

Overcoming Inventory Headaches

Syrve’s inventory management system is fully synced with your POS and kitchen. Operating in real time, it provides up-to-the-second information about stock availability. As each item is sold, inventory levels are adjusted instantly.

When stocks are low, you’ll receive an alert, thus allowing your team plenty of time to replenish items before they run out. You can also set alert thresholds as an extra precaution – this is especially useful for high-demand items.

And to ensure that your storage area contains the precise amount of stock, our next-gen platform uses machine learning to analyse past sales data. From this data. Syrve provides precise forecasts about expected demand, while also generating accurate prep plans including batch production.

The result? A balanced, optimised inventory that’s comprising only the items that you need - accurate prep plans that eliminate guesswork about ingredient quantities.

Empowering Your Staff

So what about your staff? There’s obviously little you can do about the working hours. That’s just the nature of the business. But there’s plenty you can do to ease the stress of working in such a pressure-cooker environment. And it starts and ends with next-gen technology.

As we’ve already seen, our intuitive POS terminals and their kitchen connectivity make an enormous difference in terms of order processing speed and food prep.

Not only do they dramatically improve efficiency, they can also have a soothing effect on staff morale – something that’s sorely tested by a POS system that becomes slow or unreliable at critical moments. In terms of training, our POS systems are very easy to pick-up. Because of the ease in which they can be used, very little onboarding is required.

Final Thoughts

As you’ve probably surmised, the stadium food service vertical is replete with hurdles and challenges. For some operators, the potential pitfalls are just too numerous. Yet with the right technology, the majority of these challenges can be overcome. All that’s required is the courage of your convictions. And a thick skin!