Eating at a professional football game can be as brutal as a hit from the Atlanta Falcons' safety Keanu Neal.
That became clear to Andrew Zimmern, the chef, television personality and devoted sports fan, on a chilly February evening a few years ago at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
He was watching the Seattle Seahawks pummel the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII when a guy selling hot chocolate walked by. Zimmern ordered a couple of cups and passed a $20 bill down the row, figuring the vendor could keep the change. The vendor waved, but not because he liked the tip. He needed another $20 for the other hot chocolate, which Zimmern recalls as a lukewarm cup of thin brown liquid.
"I was so insulted," he said. "It's the same way I feel when I go to a game and I order a hot dog and it's a $12 piece of c***."
When the opportunity came to create a menu for the $1.13 billion Minnesota Vikings stadium, which opened last year, he vowed to make football food better.
Along with Super Bowl LI today, the Vikings, with a few other teams in the National Football League, are leading a charge to upgrade food in the tradition-bound world of football stadium concessions, one of the last big captive markets to address the broadening culinary sensibilities of fans.
That bad cup of hot chocolate inspired a frozen version made with local cream and dark chocolate, which Zimmern sells for $8 at one of the two concessions he operates at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Along with his cumin-marinated rotisserie lamb sandwich and two other sandwiches he created with his stadium food partner, Gavin Kaysen of Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis, it made a list of the best food at the new stadium compiled by Rick Nelson, the restaurant critic for The Star Tribune.
"The Vikings have done a nice job of making people want to go inside and eat," Nelson said, even though "they're hiding the fact that they are still peddling a lot of schlock."
Food has been steadily improving in places such as airports, movie theaters and concert arenas, where people gather for reasons other than to eat. In professional sports, baseball has led the way, driven in part by 22 major-league stadiums that have been built since 1990.
Although staples including hot dogs, pizza and popcorn still make up about two-thirds of food sales in sports stadiums, baseball menus have matured to include gochujang-glazed eggplant buns, fresh Dungeness crab sandwiches, ceviche, espresso and craft beers.
NFL franchises are starting to respond to complaints about the cost and the quality of stadium food, team representatives said.
"When we ask fans what's the No. 1 pain point, it's food," said Rich McKay, president and chief executive of the Atlanta Falcons, who will play the New England Patriots today. So next season, when the Falcons open their $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium downtown, they plan to sell the least expensive food in the NFL.
Lowering prices was a mandate from Arthur Blank, a founder of Home Depot, who owns the team. He wanted a family of four to be able to eat at the stadium for about $28.
That means hot dogs, soda or a bottle of water will each cost $2. A 12-ounce beer will be $5. The rest of the core menu of what the team calls fan favorites will be priced significantly lower than at other stadiums, where the average price of a hot dog is $5.19 and a beer $7.38, according to the market research agency Team Marketing Report.
To make the economics work, the Falcons struck a deal with Levy Restaurants, one of several national companies that provides food at NFL stadiums. The agreement gives the team more control over setting prices but could cost it in profits. Although concession sales are a small slice of the income for NFL teams, profit margins can reach as high as 77 percent.
The food is likely to taste better than it did at the Georgia Dome, the old stadium, which will be torn down this year. The menu is expanding to include fresh handmade pretzels and the Mitchell dog, which rests in a sweet bun that tastes like a glazed doughnut. It is topped with bacon jam and Gruyere cheese.
Vendors from Atlanta's beloved 89-year-old drive-in the Varsity will roam the stands yelling, "What'll ya have?" just as they do at the restaurant. Booths will offer favorites from other local restaurants, including Antico Pizza, Delia's Chicken Sausage Stand, Farm Burger and Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q. Managers for the Falcons say they will bar the restaurants from charging more for food at the stadium than they do at their restaurants.
Unlike restaurant fare, stadium food depends as much on logistics as on culinary acumen. Even little details like the placement of the napkin holders or the soda machine can make a big difference in waiting times for fans eager to get back to their seats.
To understand how to better design the more than 670 concession stands at the new Falcons stadium, McKay worked the soda line at a game this season.
"Halftime was like, 'Whoa, put a helmet on,'" he said. "I was the bottleneck."
Managers realized that they could save 17 seconds per transaction if they moved soda machines from behind the counter and let customers serve themselves. They also decided to pull more beer from taps; it's faster than opening a bottle and pouring into a cup. And everything is priced in dollar increments so servers don't have to make change.
Those adjustments make a huge difference at games, where the crews working the stands are often volunteers from nonprofit groups that keep a small percentage of the profits.
Still, NFL teams have never made a lot of money from concession stands, and neither do the chefs working to make the food better.
"It's not a moneymaker," said Zimmern, the Minneapolis chef. "It's a business card."
But it's a lot of fun, and a challenge. That is why he will meet several NFL executives and food service executives at the Super Bowl today in a quest to get his food into every stadium in the country.
"It's like a crossword puzzle," he said. "I love it."
SundayMonday Business on 02/05/2017