Sussex County Cricket Club has partnered with Centerplate to provide catering services at its 1st Central County Ground in Hove.
Centerplate has relationships with more than 300 event venues across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom for catering, retail and hospitality services.
The company, whose experience includes design and operations for high-profile professional venues and events such as the NFL American football league’s Super Bowl showpiece and football’s English Premier League, will deliver hospitality services on match days and assist in accommodating parties from 14 up to 800 guests in five areas of the recently extended and refurbished facilities.
Centerplate has established relationships with local suppliers in Sussex after providing its services at the British Airways i360 observation tower in Brighton, which is within close proximity to the club’s ground. It has also catered to the newly reopened restaurant and café on Hastings Pier.
Centerplate is looking to create new menus, which focus on locally-sourced ingredients and regional specialties while expanding the choice of match-day food.
Jim May, Sussex Cricket chairman, said: “We have run our own catering and events operation in house since 2007. We are very proud of the quality of our offering, which was recognised by winning the Best Place to Entertain Clients at the 2016 Sussex Business Awards. However, in view of the need to invest in the business we looked at options last year and decided that a partnership with Centerplate was the way forward.”
The club’s chief executive, Rob Andrew, added: “Centerplate has an outstanding reputation across a whole range of venues in the UK. They are particularly strong in the field of professional sports organisations, including several First Class County Cricket clubs.
“We are looking forward to working with their very experienced management team to drive service standards and delivery for our customers to even higher levels. We are proud of our achievements to date in catering and hospitality events, but we must strive for greater levels of excellence across all parts of our business. We also need to expand our non match day business and we believe our partnership with Centerplate will allow us to do this.”
The club finished last season in fourth place in Championship Division Two and failed to progress beyond the group stage in the T20 Blast and One-Day Cup.
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