KFC Yum Arena

Is definitely lacking in service and there are way too many kinks to work out before U of L Basketball starts up.

It is a Beautiful building! It's nice to know my tax dollars were well spent.

From what I witnessed at several outlets, there is not a service first mentality. Every one that waits on you is worried about the MAN! This place must have more cameras than a Vegas casino......Centerplate SUCKS!

Dan,
"Centerplate SUCKS!"? I take that personally.
I am well aware that we have kinks to work out and we will work tirelessly on continuous improvement and make the necessary changes to always Execute Extraordinary Experiences. I'm sorry your experience was less than that.
Can you please be more specific on your concerns last night? I'll take any information anyway I can get it if it helps us improve.
SUCKS!, sullen, and lackluster all seem to be reoccurring themes regarding Centerplate on this forum. I assure you and the other members; I did not move to Louisville to be any of those things and will approach all challenges and service issues aggressively and with fervor for all of our Centerplate locations here.
I am about Results not Rhetoric.
Thank you for the input.

SPK

[Robin Garr]

Hi, Sean, and welcome to the forum! Glad to see you hear to speak for your position, and of course I appreciate that you responded in a strong but civil tone.

I'm really interested in seeing how food service plays out at "the bucket," and also enjoyed Marsha's profile of you and your mission in the LEO dining guide.

As for Centerplate, I'll tell you frankly that the attitude you see here springs from 10 years of experience for many of us at Slugger Field, where a group of us have been Club Level season ticket holders for quite a while. I must be honest and say that terms like "sullen" and "lackluster" are the only fair way to describe what we've consistently seen from the firm there over the years.

But again, I admire your pride in the arena food service, and I for one am certainly willing to hold those attitudes in abeyance while we see what you guys are bringing us.

Anyway, a warm welcome. We're glad you are here.

I'll echo Robin's sentiment: very glad you are here! I think we all are better off when there is more and open communication between diners and their hosts/servers/chefs, etc.

Robin is also right in that there is a lot of mind-changing that will need to happen to help ease the lackluster experiences many here have had with Slugger Field.

That said, I am definitely ready to see what Centerplate has to offer in the Whale-Arena!

SUCKS!, sullen, and lackluster all seem to be reoccurring themes regarding Centerplate on this forum. I assure you and the other members; I did not move to Louisville to be any of those things and will approach all challenges and service issues aggressively and with fervor for all of our Centerplate locations here.
I am about Results not Rhetoric.
Thank you for the input.SPK

Thanks for being here, Chef. Robin said it all with his usual tact and precision, and because these are qualities I don't possess, merely permit me to welcome you.

So I guess I'm mildly curious...Does Centerfield provide -all- the food at the venues (250+) is serves, or do they just cater to the high and mighty sky box crowd ?

[Robin Garr]

So I guess I'm mildly curious...Does Centerfield provide -all- the food at the venues (250+) is serves, or do they just cater to the high and mighty sky box crowd ?

Centerplate. At Slugger Field, they're responsible for all the concessions, from hotdog stand to the Club Level Suites as well as catering special group events. If I remember correctly from Marsha's profile in LEO, it's a similar setup at the Chicken Bucket.

I was curious as to whether or not Centerplate does all the concessions ( bar service included) or just the food, sodas, and domestic beers. My experience at the bars there on Friday was pretty bad. There seemed to be an abundance of first time bartenders who did not know their product very well. The no "doubles" rule is also pretty annoying. They were however willing to serve me two singles, let me pour one into the other and then throw away the cup. Just wondering if this is a regular occurrence, how much plastic is gonna be wasted over the course of a year. Any one in this industry knows that even a tiny thing like that over the course of a year can translate into huge amounts of $$$ wasted. The rest of the arena was pretty spectacular and I look forward to attending as many games, concerts, etc. as I can. And welcome to our forum Sean.

We went to the open house at the arena. My son wanted KFC. 3 small strips were $8 with no sides/drink. A 3 strip meal with a wedges and a drink was $13.50. So I guess we know how YUM is going to make their money back on sponsoring the arena, with highway robbery! I understand this probably has noting to do with Centerplate but really, $13.50 for a small KFC meal??? $8 or $9 would be high but I think YUM pricing inside the arena is almost criminal.

It is honorable that the chef from the arena chimed in, maybe feed back on this site will help improve the food offerings.

Wow. That's near a good steak dinner for one person. And seriously (nothing to do with Centerplate), I hate YUM. It's a Microsoft/APPLE/*insert your own brain zombie-money sucking corporation*.

Perhaps if I smuggled a 10 piece of Chicken into the Yum Bucket; then I'd save $50.

I The no "doubles" rule is also pretty annoying. They were however willing to serve me two singles, let me pour one into the other and then throw away the cup. Just wondering if this is a regular .

Probably. Most of these places use the number of cups used to account for the amount of product served. If they pour a double in the same cup then that system doesn't work.

Dan,
"Centerplate SUCKS!"? I take that personally.
I am well aware that we have kinks to work out and we will work tirelessly on continuous improvement and make the necessary changes to always Execute Extraordinary Experiences. I'm sorry your experience was less than that.
Can you please be more specific on your concerns last night? I'll take any information anyway I can get it if it helps us improve.
SUCKS!, sullen, and lackluster all seem to be reoccurring themes regarding Centerplate on this forum. I assure you and the other members; I did not move to Louisville to be any of those things and will approach all challenges and service issues aggressively and with fervor for all of our Centerplate locations here.
I am about Results not Rhetoric.
Thank you for the input.

SPK

I apologize for my disparaging remarks with out being specific; as it really isn't fair to you or your food service operations at the new arena.
Most of my less positive experiences with Centerplate do stem from many years of attending events at Freedom Hall and at Louisville Slugger Field.

However, I was really disappointed with the service at the beverage outlets I tried to purchase from, as they generally appeared to be quite unorganized. A simple acknowledgment of the patrons waiting in the line would be a great place to start. I waited at the Woodford Reserve bar that faces the river with only four people in line in front of me for about 15 minutes. I watched everything from bartenders that fumbled with the Bev-guns and registers to bar backs that had a hard time keeping the supplies fully stocked.
I do understand there will be growing pains that any new endeavor might have, but I was hoping that many of those kinks would have been worked out after the Eagles show which I'm told had several more thousand people in attendance.

If you notice the time stamp on my original post, it was made very late and I obviously didn't have my better judgement hat on at the time. For that, as a fellow food service professional, I really hope that you accept my sincere apology for my classless and rather curt description of your employer.
I really hope that your efforts are successful and hopefully will carry over into your company's other concession operations here in town. I look forward to your contributions on this forum.

Two thumbs up for Sean's response and Dan's after-response. I'll bet Sean would appreciate our suggestions - the actionable ones, anyway.

Who's up for a basketball offline this winter?

Sean-

If you have any input into what goes on for the food at Slugger Field, while I appreciate the addition of veggie burgers can you please see about getting veggie dogs added? I mean you can get them in most major league parks including nearby Cincy. I nearly ate myself into a coma at SkyDome last year because they had them available.

We purchased most of our drinks at the main bar on the Suite Level. I never saw more than two bartenders. They were both very nice, but they couldn't keep up with the demand. There needed to be 2 more bartenders in that location. They ran out of the bottled water around 9:30pm. Only about 2/3's of the suites seemed to be filled and I know the entire crowd came in at around 7,500 people (not nearly the size of a basketball game or really big concert)

Side note: None of the tampon machines in the ladie's suite level bathrooms had any product. I checked three.

Additionally, there was a weird system for shutting down the bars. It seems most of the bars were supposed to close at 11pm (and hour before the end of the show). .......But! I was told that some of the bars on the ground floor (Evan Williams) and (can't recall the other name) were allowed to stay open until after the concert. I watched that cause a lot of confusion as people scrambled trying to figure out which bars were still open. Not sure if the scattered bar closing schedule is due to some sort of permitting/licensing issue/law, but it was confusing for the patrons. If that has to be the case, then perhaps some signs indicating closing times of each concession area would be helpful.

Finally, a little nit. But worth noting. As we were filing out after the concert on Saturday, we noticed that at least one of the (nacho?) vending carts (MC level) was just left with the cold/gross food in it. Cheese with the skin layer, cold/dry meat sitting in the other tray...and peppers or something in the other I think. You could tell it had been sitting there abandoned and unheated for awhile. ....And 1/4 of the people in the concert had to file right past it. Not pretty.

All-in-all we enjoyed the show a lot. And I think the new Yum Center is going to be a great asset for the community. Just need to get the kinks worked out. Best of luck in your endeavors. We'll certainly be coming back for years to come.

PS - Someone really needs to re-think the name "Vomitory A, B & C" All I could think of was Roman Vomitoriums.