00:00:02
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: Podcasts. Radio.
00:00:06
Speaker 3: News.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: It's about tennis here at the U.S. Open, but it's not just about tennis. Anyone who has been here understands that the tennis gets almost as much attention as the food and drink. And the man who makes that happen is Chris Studley. He is back with us. He's managing director of event services for the USTA. He joins us here. at the U.S. Open. Chris, you did not bring any chicken nuggets.
00:00:27
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry.
00:00:28
Speaker 1: Or caviar. Caviar nuggets.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Or Heineken's, but we got those earlier.
00:00:31
Speaker 1: We did get those earlier.
00:00:32
Speaker 3: They're delicious, aren't they? They're pretty good.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Can you just give us, we talked to the folks at Bacardi yesterday, just some staggering numbers of, you know, expecting close to 800,000 Honey Deuces sold this year. What are the other numbers that you can tell us about what goes into the food and drink at an event like this?
00:00:48
Speaker 3: You know, everything's up this year. The fans are up, everything. We did over 300,000 people during Fan Week, so You're seeing more sales across the board just naturally, but the honey deuce number is always like the tracker, right? So that 800,000 number, it would be a jump from the 738 we did last year. Fans love it. Across the board, the salt tank experience, I think everybody's seen that.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Mine was too long for us today.
00:01:12
Speaker 2: We were hoping you were going to bring us one.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: We could probably make that happen a little later. We'll get one dropped off.
00:01:17
Speaker 1: I will tell you that we'll have to pay for it, guys. Just so you know, we pay for everything.
00:01:21
Speaker 3: Before we go.
00:01:21
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely.
00:01:22
Speaker 3: Um, but no, they, they, uh, they usually do about 300 sandwiches in the city a day and they're doing over 1500 a day.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: They do 300 sandwiches a day in the city.
00:01:30
Speaker 3: And then they close. Oh my God.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: I think I saw it from, uh, the founder who's been out here. He was saying, what is it? Like 1500 pounds of beef they go.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: Through every day or something crazy.
00:01:40
Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, you know, we've talked a lot about influencers on this show and, Yes, a lot of them are out there with the ring lights, showing you the outfits, what to wear to the U.S.
00:01:49
Speaker 3: Open. There's a lot of food.
00:01:50
Speaker 2: Influencers, too.
00:01:51
Speaker 3: There are. And to touch on the influencer thing for a second, we have a code of conduct, and we've educated our staff to try to make that all stop.
00:01:59
Speaker 2: With the ring lights, you're saying.
00:02:02
Speaker 3: Exactly. There's a whole new element of fan that's out, too, that's helped grow in the game of tennis, and we want to make sure people are enjoying it properly in the way it's meant to be. So never want to impact the fan experience whatsoever, but There is the food influencer that's out. And, I mean, it's a culinary experience when you're here watching tennis. So we do enjoy it.
00:02:20
Speaker 1: How do you guys choose the restaurants that are here and that are allowed to be here?
00:02:25
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we work with our partners, Levy Restaurants, who run a number of major arenas, stadiums across the country. And they're best in class in everything they do. And we look for what is the latest in food, right? I mean, in your own personal lives, you probably experience different foods. And sometimes you're into things. Sometimes you're not. And we'll look at what's hot at the moment and also what fans are craving. When you come to the U.S. Open, you're spending more time here than you would at any other sporting event, right? You go to a baseball game, they've actually sped it up. And it used to be one of the longer length of stays. Hockey, football, you know.
00:02:55
Speaker 1: Well, let me, hold on. I want to pause there because not everybody listening or watching right now has had the experience of being here. But just to give some context, you could get an 11 o'clock entry here during this week. And you could likely be here until... 10 p.m. watching tennis with that one ticket, even if you don't have a night pass.
00:03:12
Speaker 3: You can even come at 9.30 in the morning this week. You know, we don't switch our gates until 11 until next Thursday. So you're going to spend multiple meal periods here. So we want to have the best offering in all of sports and enable you to try one thing. Let's say you go to Miznan, which is new with us this year at Court 7, and you want to try their special green beans. And I am not a healthy eater, but they're amazing, so I do recommend them. And then you go to Saltank later on for dinner. I mean, you can have those great experiences across.
00:03:37
Speaker 2: You've talked about the time spent here. We're going to talk about the money spent, too, because this is a very premium offering, as you've said. Talk about the pricing decisions that go into for the food, the drink. We had the Bacardi execs on here the other day talking about the honey juice. They said they don't price the honey juice. Is that something that you and your team do?
00:03:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, the USTA works alongside Levy Restaurants. There's a number of factors that go into it between labor, product costs, all the above. I can tell you that any funds raised, obviously, with USTA goes back into growing the game of tennis. So at the end of the day, it's doing good, right? But we're very conscious. We look at every other venue in this tri-state area to make sure our prices are in line with others. You know, you're not seeing things that are way out of whack. And by the way, when it is a little higher, it's better quality usually when you really dig deep into it.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: And also the logistics of getting the food out here from a kitchen, from a restaurant, and doing it out here, there are costs associated with that. We'll take Salt Hank, for example, $ 39 for the sandwich that everybody's talking about. The line was huge for that. Is there any sort of breakdown that you could give us about, okay, how much of that goes to Solve Hank, how much of that goes to the USTA, that sort of thing?
00:04:42
Speaker 3: There's definitely shares there. I can't get into the specifics. But, yeah, I mean, it's all pretty proprietary.
00:04:47
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:04:47
Speaker 3: But, yeah.
00:04:48
Speaker 1: Is that the right way to think about it? Like, okay, there are a lot of different stakeholders here. So there's the USTA part of it that does the infrastructure, that puts on the events. There's the actual food costs associated with it, getting the food out here, and the labor costs associated with it. Am I thinking about the stakeholders, right?
00:05:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. And then USTA operating it and providing the facility to do so. Yeah, those are the keys.
00:05:10
Speaker 2: Talk to us a little bit more about who gets to be in these stands here. as the food and drink vendors, are they almost like, you know, there are some that are here every year. Are there others that are almost like auditioning, like a rotating cast of like, who's going to get that next spot?
00:05:23
Speaker 3: We get, we get inquiries all year long. I mean, we'll get them now saying, can I come next year? Um, and a lot of it is what are our fans responding to? We'll look at all the data afterwards. I mean, we see how many sandwiches they'll sell at the end. We'll look at that. Right. Um, it also goes into who can operate, you know, at this level. Because when you talk about like Salt Tank, for instance, 300 sandwiches in the city closes down. We're doing 1,500 a day. Can you scale up? And the team at Levy does a phenomenal job of getting in that stand with them and making sure we can turn food out that's still high quality.
00:05:53
Speaker 2: You know, something I've always even wondered, too, is like the guys who are out here selling ice cream. And it's like it is a hot day. Like, I mean, that's up to them, of course, to get the freezers, make sure this is all cool. But, like, there's a lot of logistics.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: Involved in this.
00:06:05
Speaker 3: A lot of logistics. And, you know, ice cream's a great one. As an example, we worked with Van Leeuwen to develop our own custom flavor.
00:06:11
Speaker 1: I know. My son loves it.
00:06:12
Speaker 3: It's amazing. It's my personal favorite, and I wasn't the only voter on it.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Can you get it outside of the U.S. Open or no?
00:06:17
Speaker 3: You can't.
00:06:18
Speaker 1: You can't even buy it?
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Just here.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Interesting. I wonder if it will be so successful they will decide to.
00:06:24
Speaker 3: We have to talk about it, for sure.
00:06:26
Speaker 1: That's something you guys have to figure out. I came during Fan Week with my son. We were here on Arthur Ashe Kids Day. It was a great experience. It was incredibly crowded, as it shows the demand for this. Some of the lines for food were really long. How do you manage that? What's the math that you do to try to figure out, okay, we don't want people spending too much time in lines and missing too much tennis?
00:06:49
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Fan Week in particular and Kids Day this year, now was the first day that we were actually really open after our concert the Friday before. So a lot of stands were just getting going, not an excuse by any stretch. We always want the first experience somebody has the first day to be just as good as final Sunday, right? So we work with Levy to try to figure out operationally, how many bodies do you need making drinks? How many bodies do you need serving that burger? You know, that type of thing. I think... The popularity of the Savannah Bananas brought more people out here. That's interesting.
00:07:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't even get to see the Savannah Bananas because they were so popular. The line to meet them was like an hour long, which is fine. We weren't here to see the Savannah Bananas, but we were able to get some ice cream. But there was also like, would you say that you, for next year, you learned a lot from that day because it was a different day this year and it was so popular?
00:07:36
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, you know, Savannah Bananas in particular, selling out stadiums across the country, right? And I'm talking baseball stadiums, football stadiums. We brought them here to Arthur Ashe, and obviously it doesn't hold as many people, and they came out in droves to see them. So weather plays a big role. You never know. I mean, year over year, you've got to look at every single aspect of it. Totally.
00:07:54
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us, Chris Studley. He's Managing Director of Events Services for the USTA here at the US Open. One last thing before you go, Chris. What are you having for dinner tonight?
00:08:03
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like to wander the food village and kind of pick.
00:08:07
Speaker 1: But there are sit-down restaurants, too, here.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:08:09
Speaker 1: That people forget about.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: And we didn't even mention we have a brand new one this year with Cosme. Oh, my goodness. You know, I highly recommend it.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: We've got to talk about it next year. Absolutely. You'll come back to join us?
00:08:16
Speaker 3: For sure. Okay.
00:08:17
Speaker 2: And you'll tell us what you have for dinner.
00:08:19
Speaker 3: Will do. Perfect.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: You know, the one thing, Tim, that I want to get that I haven't gotten yet this year is that, you know, we talk a lot about these $ 100 chicken nuggets.
00:08:27
Speaker 1: With the caviar. But you don't have to get the caviar. You can just get the nuggets.
00:08:31
Speaker 3: That's right.
00:08:32
Speaker 2: Maybe the cost comes down a bit on that. But something else that they have there. is this chocolate chip cookie, this brown butter cookie that I went to try to get the other night. They were sold out.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, maybe tonight you can get one.
00:08:42
Speaker 2: Maybe. You've got to go early.
00:08:44
Speaker 1: All right. Talk to Chris. He's Managing Director of Event Services for the USTA, joining us on site here at the USF. And Chris Dudley, thank you again. Good to see you.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: Podcasts. Radio.
00:00:06
Speaker 3: News.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: It's about tennis here at the U.S. Open, but it's not just about tennis. Anyone who has been here understands that the tennis gets almost as much attention as the food and drink. And the man who makes that happen is Chris Studley. He is back with us. He's managing director of event services for the USTA. He joins us here. at the U.S. Open. Chris, you did not bring any chicken nuggets.
00:00:27
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry.
00:00:28
Speaker 1: Or caviar. Caviar nuggets.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Or Heineken's, but we got those earlier.
00:00:31
Speaker 1: We did get those earlier.
00:00:32
Speaker 3: They're delicious, aren't they? They're pretty good.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Can you just give us, we talked to the folks at Bacardi yesterday, just some staggering numbers of, you know, expecting close to 800,000 Honey Deuces sold this year. What are the other numbers that you can tell us about what goes into the food and drink at an event like this?
00:00:48
Speaker 3: You know, everything's up this year. The fans are up, everything. We did over 300,000 people during Fan Week, so You're seeing more sales across the board just naturally, but the honey deuce number is always like the tracker, right? So that 800,000 number, it would be a jump from the 738 we did last year. Fans love it. Across the board, the salt tank experience, I think everybody's seen that.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Mine was too long for us today.
00:01:12
Speaker 2: We were hoping you were going to bring us one.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: We could probably make that happen a little later. We'll get one dropped off.
00:01:17
Speaker 1: I will tell you that we'll have to pay for it, guys. Just so you know, we pay for everything.
00:01:21
Speaker 3: Before we go.
00:01:21
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely.
00:01:22
Speaker 3: Um, but no, they, they, uh, they usually do about 300 sandwiches in the city a day and they're doing over 1500 a day.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: They do 300 sandwiches a day in the city.
00:01:30
Speaker 3: And then they close. Oh my God.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: I think I saw it from, uh, the founder who's been out here. He was saying, what is it? Like 1500 pounds of beef they go.
00:01:38
Speaker 3: Through every day or something crazy.
00:01:40
Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, you know, we've talked a lot about influencers on this show and, Yes, a lot of them are out there with the ring lights, showing you the outfits, what to wear to the U.S.
00:01:49
Speaker 3: Open. There's a lot of food.
00:01:50
Speaker 2: Influencers, too.
00:01:51
Speaker 3: There are. And to touch on the influencer thing for a second, we have a code of conduct, and we've educated our staff to try to make that all stop.
00:01:59
Speaker 2: With the ring lights, you're saying.
00:02:02
Speaker 3: Exactly. There's a whole new element of fan that's out, too, that's helped grow in the game of tennis, and we want to make sure people are enjoying it properly in the way it's meant to be. So never want to impact the fan experience whatsoever, but There is the food influencer that's out. And, I mean, it's a culinary experience when you're here watching tennis. So we do enjoy it.
00:02:20
Speaker 1: How do you guys choose the restaurants that are here and that are allowed to be here?
00:02:25
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we work with our partners, Levy Restaurants, who run a number of major arenas, stadiums across the country. And they're best in class in everything they do. And we look for what is the latest in food, right? I mean, in your own personal lives, you probably experience different foods. And sometimes you're into things. Sometimes you're not. And we'll look at what's hot at the moment and also what fans are craving. When you come to the U.S. Open, you're spending more time here than you would at any other sporting event, right? You go to a baseball game, they've actually sped it up. And it used to be one of the longer length of stays. Hockey, football, you know.
00:02:55
Speaker 1: Well, let me, hold on. I want to pause there because not everybody listening or watching right now has had the experience of being here. But just to give some context, you could get an 11 o'clock entry here during this week. And you could likely be here until... 10 p.m. watching tennis with that one ticket, even if you don't have a night pass.
00:03:12
Speaker 3: You can even come at 9.30 in the morning this week. You know, we don't switch our gates until 11 until next Thursday. So you're going to spend multiple meal periods here. So we want to have the best offering in all of sports and enable you to try one thing. Let's say you go to Miznan, which is new with us this year at Court 7, and you want to try their special green beans. And I am not a healthy eater, but they're amazing, so I do recommend them. And then you go to Saltank later on for dinner. I mean, you can have those great experiences across.
00:03:37
Speaker 2: You've talked about the time spent here. We're going to talk about the money spent, too, because this is a very premium offering, as you've said. Talk about the pricing decisions that go into for the food, the drink. We had the Bacardi execs on here the other day talking about the honey juice. They said they don't price the honey juice. Is that something that you and your team do?
00:03:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, the USTA works alongside Levy Restaurants. There's a number of factors that go into it between labor, product costs, all the above. I can tell you that any funds raised, obviously, with USTA goes back into growing the game of tennis. So at the end of the day, it's doing good, right? But we're very conscious. We look at every other venue in this tri-state area to make sure our prices are in line with others. You know, you're not seeing things that are way out of whack. And by the way, when it is a little higher, it's better quality usually when you really dig deep into it.
00:04:23
Speaker 1: And also the logistics of getting the food out here from a kitchen, from a restaurant, and doing it out here, there are costs associated with that. We'll take Salt Hank, for example, $ 39 for the sandwich that everybody's talking about. The line was huge for that. Is there any sort of breakdown that you could give us about, okay, how much of that goes to Solve Hank, how much of that goes to the USTA, that sort of thing?
00:04:42
Speaker 3: There's definitely shares there. I can't get into the specifics. But, yeah, I mean, it's all pretty proprietary.
00:04:47
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:04:47
Speaker 3: But, yeah.
00:04:48
Speaker 1: Is that the right way to think about it? Like, okay, there are a lot of different stakeholders here. So there's the USTA part of it that does the infrastructure, that puts on the events. There's the actual food costs associated with it, getting the food out here, and the labor costs associated with it. Am I thinking about the stakeholders, right?
00:05:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. And then USTA operating it and providing the facility to do so. Yeah, those are the keys.
00:05:10
Speaker 2: Talk to us a little bit more about who gets to be in these stands here. as the food and drink vendors, are they almost like, you know, there are some that are here every year. Are there others that are almost like auditioning, like a rotating cast of like, who's going to get that next spot?
00:05:23
Speaker 3: We get, we get inquiries all year long. I mean, we'll get them now saying, can I come next year? Um, and a lot of it is what are our fans responding to? We'll look at all the data afterwards. I mean, we see how many sandwiches they'll sell at the end. We'll look at that. Right. Um, it also goes into who can operate, you know, at this level. Because when you talk about like Salt Tank, for instance, 300 sandwiches in the city closes down. We're doing 1,500 a day. Can you scale up? And the team at Levy does a phenomenal job of getting in that stand with them and making sure we can turn food out that's still high quality.
00:05:53
Speaker 2: You know, something I've always even wondered, too, is like the guys who are out here selling ice cream. And it's like it is a hot day. Like, I mean, that's up to them, of course, to get the freezers, make sure this is all cool. But, like, there's a lot of logistics.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: Involved in this.
00:06:05
Speaker 3: A lot of logistics. And, you know, ice cream's a great one. As an example, we worked with Van Leeuwen to develop our own custom flavor.
00:06:11
Speaker 1: I know. My son loves it.
00:06:12
Speaker 3: It's amazing. It's my personal favorite, and I wasn't the only voter on it.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Can you get it outside of the U.S. Open or no?
00:06:17
Speaker 3: You can't.
00:06:18
Speaker 1: You can't even buy it?
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Just here.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Interesting. I wonder if it will be so successful they will decide to.
00:06:24
Speaker 3: We have to talk about it, for sure.
00:06:26
Speaker 1: That's something you guys have to figure out. I came during Fan Week with my son. We were here on Arthur Ashe Kids Day. It was a great experience. It was incredibly crowded, as it shows the demand for this. Some of the lines for food were really long. How do you manage that? What's the math that you do to try to figure out, okay, we don't want people spending too much time in lines and missing too much tennis?
00:06:49
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Fan Week in particular and Kids Day this year, now was the first day that we were actually really open after our concert the Friday before. So a lot of stands were just getting going, not an excuse by any stretch. We always want the first experience somebody has the first day to be just as good as final Sunday, right? So we work with Levy to try to figure out operationally, how many bodies do you need making drinks? How many bodies do you need serving that burger? You know, that type of thing. I think... The popularity of the Savannah Bananas brought more people out here. That's interesting.
00:07:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't even get to see the Savannah Bananas because they were so popular. The line to meet them was like an hour long, which is fine. We weren't here to see the Savannah Bananas, but we were able to get some ice cream. But there was also like, would you say that you, for next year, you learned a lot from that day because it was a different day this year and it was so popular?
00:07:36
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, you know, Savannah Bananas in particular, selling out stadiums across the country, right? And I'm talking baseball stadiums, football stadiums. We brought them here to Arthur Ashe, and obviously it doesn't hold as many people, and they came out in droves to see them. So weather plays a big role. You never know. I mean, year over year, you've got to look at every single aspect of it. Totally.
00:07:54
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us, Chris Studley. He's Managing Director of Events Services for the USTA here at the US Open. One last thing before you go, Chris. What are you having for dinner tonight?
00:08:03
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like to wander the food village and kind of pick.
00:08:07
Speaker 1: But there are sit-down restaurants, too, here.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:08:09
Speaker 1: That people forget about.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: And we didn't even mention we have a brand new one this year with Cosme. Oh, my goodness. You know, I highly recommend it.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: We've got to talk about it next year. Absolutely. You'll come back to join us?
00:08:16
Speaker 3: For sure. Okay.
00:08:17
Speaker 2: And you'll tell us what you have for dinner.
00:08:19
Speaker 3: Will do. Perfect.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: You know, the one thing, Tim, that I want to get that I haven't gotten yet this year is that, you know, we talk a lot about these $ 100 chicken nuggets.
00:08:27
Speaker 1: With the caviar. But you don't have to get the caviar. You can just get the nuggets.
00:08:31
Speaker 3: That's right.
00:08:32
Speaker 2: Maybe the cost comes down a bit on that. But something else that they have there. is this chocolate chip cookie, this brown butter cookie that I went to try to get the other night. They were sold out.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, maybe tonight you can get one.
00:08:42
Speaker 2: Maybe. You've got to go early.
00:08:44
Speaker 1: All right. Talk to Chris. He's Managing Director of Event Services for the USTA, joining us on site here at the USF. And Chris Dudley, thank you again. Good to see you.
