This App Wants To Disrupt Long Lines At Stadium Concession Stands

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/ Vendor At A Baseball Game

It’s an idea so brilliantly simple you can’t believe no one has thought of it before. Say you’re at a stadium and want to order some food and drink. Rather than get up from your seat, wind your way through the sticky foyers and stand in an endless line, why not just have food delivered to your seat through your smart phone?

Stadium eating

SeatServe is a new app that was launched last Sunday at Amsterdam’s 53,000-seat ArenA stadium. It allows fans to evaluate the menus of nearby kiosks from the comfort of their stadium seat. By creating a profile and filling out their section, row, and seat number they will see exactly what is available to eat and drink around them.

Then they can either express pick up their food, or have a runner deliver it to them.

Jeroen van Iersel, Marketing Manager at the Amsterdam ArenA, commented in a press release  ‘The app allows fans to get a quick snack or drink without queuing up for hours. It brings a little luxury!”

Photo Credit: PR, screenshot/ SeatServe

SeatServe was founded by Israeli expat Shai Dadush, who is now based in New York City. The system consists of hardware as well as three mobile apps, one for the vendor, one for the user, and one for the delivery person.

It also contains load balancing algorithms, so that no single food kiosk is swamped while the others remain empty. The apps provide detailed analytics to vendors so they can know, for instance, what stock is running low and how low the temperature has to be to see a spike in sales of hot drinks.

The system is free of charge to stadiums but customers will pay $1 per order for orders under $20 and $2 per order for higher amounts. The company hopes to achieve 5% penetration of stadiums worldwide.

Sound far-fetched? The company reports it has attracted interest from Coca ­Cola Enterprises, which “is assisting with further development of the app. “

Surprised no one has thought of this before? Well actually, quite a few people have.

SeatServe follows in the footsteps of several other stadium food-ordering apps, including FanGo, GrubRunner, Yoderand Snagmobile.

However, a cursory web search suggests that most of SeatServe’s competitors failed to achieve any significant market share.

As of this writing, SeatServe CEO Shai Dadush was unreachable for comment on the company’s prospects and the competition.

We can only speculate that with the backing of a company like Coca Cola, perhaps SeatServe can succeed where others fumbled the ball.