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Seattle Seahawks take food operations in-house

The Seattle Seahawks believes its new in-house food and beverage service will help it “truly exceed the expectations” of fans when it launches for this NFL American football season.

The team announced it was creating First & Goal Hospitality (FGH) earlier this year as part of a push to enhance the game-day experience for Seattle Seahawks supporters at CenturyLink Field.

FGH will manage and operate all general concessions and premium dining for all events at the 67,000-capacity stadium.

The new food offering will include dishes from award-winning chefs and local vendors.

David Young, senior vice-president of operations and general manager at CenturyLink Field, said: “All the companies that we had in before did a great job, but to truly do what we want to do, to truly exceed the expectations of our fans we had to do it ourselves, we had to bring it in-house.

“We know what our fans like, we’re local, it’s important for us to be local, so it’s about enhancing the guest experience, it’s about elevating the guest experience.”

Last season, the Seattle Seahawks’ game-day experience ranked No.1 in the NFL’s annual ‘Voice of the Fan’ survey and the club said it hopes the latest move will help the team cement CenturyLink Field’s place at the top of the list.

Young added: “It offers us more control, it offers us the ability to be a lot more responsive to our fans when they tell us, ‘you know what, we’d rather see this’. Or maybe they don’t explicitly tell us, but they tell us with their buying patterns that they don’t like an item, or they like this item, and we can make adjustments based on that.”

Young said that fans can expect a wider choice and enhanced quality of food during the upcoming season, as well as a more timely guest service.

IMAGE: Seattle Seahawks