Chef's Showcase - SYSCO Corporation

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Volume, One Customer At A Time

		Senior vice president of foodservice and hospitality: Mario Etemad Operating company: Palace Sports and Entertainment Parent company: Guardian Industries Entertainment venues: The Palace of Auburn Hills, home of the Detroit Pistons; DTE Energy Music Theatre, a 15,000-seat amphitheater; Meadow Brook Music Festival, operated on the Oakland University campus in Rochester, Mich.; and The Ice Palace, a 21,000-seat arena in Tampa Bay, Fla. Concept: A wide range of dining options - from hot dogs to veal meat loaf and everything in between - offered for special events, visiting artists, team members, ticketed guests and suite occupants in all sports and music entertainment venues. Annual foodservice sales: $25 million -$30 million Number of potential diners any given day: 4,000-10,000
Certified Executive Chef Chef Mario Etemad

How do a chef and his team balance superhigh volume with superhigh quality? - Questions & Answers

What overriding philosophy allows you to prepare food successfully for so many thousands of people, with so many different needs, day in and day out?
You can't look at how big the whole thing is. Each event is an event as itself. Every artist backstage is an individual. Each suite host and every single guest in a seat is a single person, and it's your job to take care of them. If you think in terms of the volume or the number of people you're serving at any given time, you'll loose sight of the quality of the food. Guests don't care how many different things you may have going while they're enjoying a show or a game. They just want the best possible experience, and we feel lucky to have their business.

What drives the quality of the food at Palace Sports & Entertainment venues?
It's the freshness of our ingredients. We're able to order in large quantities, and we have sufficient inventory turnover to provide guests with the best ingredients available. They can have a fine-dining experience if they want, or they can have a hot dog. It doesn't matter in terms of quality.

Do you have a commissary or a central kitchen?
No, I'm anti-commissary. You lose too much quality to transportation. Instead, we're structured so that each executive chef at each operation runs an autonomous business and is responsible for all his or her own food preparation. Each orders individually, but all the bills come to one address, which gives us good purchasing leverage.

What's the in-suite dining experience like at The Palace?
The menu runs about 30 pages, for one thing, although we'll also work with hosts to create other special dishes. The total number of suites is 180- the largest amount of all the arenas that size in the country - and during most events about 178 of them are full. The number of occupants ranges from 12 to 20. We give a 5-percent discount on all food if you order the menu ahead of the event, but a lot of people just wait until they're already here. Unlike most places, we're still happy to accommodate that.

What are some of the other dining options available to ticketed attendees of The Palace?
For club level guests there's the Covisint Club, where we will offer multiple courses. Dishes range from appetizers like Cajun beef tips with chipotle mayo or platters of domestic and imported cheeses with crackers. Salads range from traditional mixed greens to BBQ beef with tomatillos or redskin potato salad. There will be several kinds of soup and pizzas, and then for entrées we might offer fettuccine Alfredo or hand-carved glazed ham. Desserts could include red velvet cake or raspberry éclair tart.

The Palace Grille is the restaurant open to the ticket-holding public before events and to the general public for lunch during the workweek. We recommend reservations and start taking them 30 days in advance because The Grille fills up fast. There's also a lounge there, with a smaller menu where people can go for cocktails before the event.

What other sorts of dining options are there at some of the other PS&E venues?
At the Meadow Brook Music Theater, we cater parties in on-site hospitality areas as well as supply concessions. We feed the people in the orchestra and even have thrown parties in the orchestra pit. The other venues have private party as well as concession outlets.

We also prepare and serve food to all the entertainers and athletes during each event. Sometimes some of the things requested back stage I've never even heard of. But it's so rewarding when I get word that someone wants me to come down and introduce myself and talk about the food because that's how much they enjoyed it.

What about that concession food? Is it true that there's a trend toward making it more and more upscale?
Arena food is still the king. Items like chicken fingers, popcorn and hot dogs always will be what people really want. We have developed a number or stations where we do stir-fry or say grilled sandwiches to order. They're well received but have a limited audience. Believe me; we have tried everything, even sushi. But in the end you have to give people what they want. I would like to tell you as a chef that everyone likes to eat something besides hot dogs and hamburgers, but that's just not reality.

With so many customers, and since you're often at such a distance from them, how do you and your chefs gather feedback?
In our market we have very loyal season ticket holders, so you have to keep changing and evolve to keep them interested. We try to listen to our guests, within reason, of course! Say Mr. Jones loves Dover sole and makes a request. I'll get it for him. I find simple, specialized touches to take care of the guests whenever I can.

Watching trends and being pro-active are a big part of that. So we're not reacting to something that already happened but rather anticipating needs. To do that, we welcome feedback of all kinds, and we have many ways to conduct market research, from Web site to casual comments to focus groups. We even have a buddy program, where everyone in the organization has a list of 10 buddies whom you occasionally would call personally to get feedback. It's a great way to hear how you're doing, and people seem to really appreciate being asked what they think.