Matching the demand of fans at sporting events with the capacity of concession stand vendors to serve up food and drinks has been a problem for more than a century. But while most sectors of the economy have been improved or disrupted by digital technology, stadium concessions have remained stuck in the early 1900s.
Until now—as one Minneapolis startup is out to change that.
Image credit: Kinetic
According to the Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Daily News, “Very few jobs have escaped the sweeping changes that the advancement of the microchip brought about over the past several decades. However, one job, stadium vending…has been left untouched by the advancement of time and technology with the earliest concession stand appearing in 1906.”
The century-old system still works—sort of—but is less than ideal for everyone involved. For concession stands, it means lots of downtime punctuated by huge spikes in business during quarter or period breaks. For fans, it means standing in long lines and missing the action on the field, court, or rink.
Roving vendors offer some convenience, but their wares are often limited to beer, sodas, popcorn, and peanuts. And fumbling with cash and change in the crowded stands is awkward.
One Minneapolis athlete-turned-entrepreneur recognized the problems from both ends, and thought: there should be an app for that. Here’s the story of Mu Okonkwo and the company he founded, SitEat.
The Discussion
Tom: Hello everybody. Welcome to another Founders Interview on Webbiquity. Today I’m joined by Mu Okonkwo, founder, and CEO at SitEat. He and I have talked a number of times at Beta Minnesota gatherings and other events, and I’m really excited to have him here today to tell you his story. So, first off, hi Mu. Thanks for joining. How are things going?
Mu: Things are going fine. Thanks for having me on here today, Tom. I really appreciate it.
Tom: I’m excited about telling your story, helping to get the word out.
The Problem
Typically, at basketball games, football games, and other sporting events, large numbers of hungry fans converge on concession stands during the quarter and halftime breaks. Most will end up standing in long lines and missing part of the action.
The food and beverage vendors hustle to meet the surge in demand during those breaks, then have a lot of dead or slow time in between. They inevitably lose some sales as fans at the end of the line give up and head back to their seats, or look for another vendor with shorter lines.
“One of the biggest problems for concession vendors is that 80% or 90% of people that go to these live sports events or entertainment events tries to order at the same time, during quarter breaks and halftime,” says Mu. “The big questions for vendors are how do we handle all of this business during those peak times? And how we can we smooth out demand somewhat to reduce long lines and lost sales?
“From my experience working for Aramark, those are big questions. The problem is not putting in technology, but rather how to manage the demand and set the right expectations for the guest or customers.
“Because if you place your order through an online app, you best believe that you want your food to be ready in five minutes. But if 60,000 people are ordering at the same time, how do the vendors handle it?
“What I’ve seen in stadiums and arenas is that some vendors are very busy, and there are other vendors that are not busy, depending on how full that section of the venue is. So, one thing we’re providing to those vendors or concession teams is the ability to use our technology to spread the demand across the entire stadium, so that every fan can get their food in a timely manner.
“Because at the end of the day, people come to the games to watch the events, not to stand in a concession line for 30 minutes.”
The Product
SitEat is a concessions management platform. In a nutshell, the SitEat app enables fans to place an order, pre-pay for it, then get notified when their order is ready so they can run down and grab it. There’s no fumbling with cash or credit cards, or waiting in line.
For vendors, the app smoothes out demand across time and their different in-stadium locations, increases sales, and improves backend management while providing valuable analytics.
In Mu’s words, “SitEat helps fans like you and me to skip long lines at the events we love going to. That’s the core problem we’re solving. Our app makes it easier for people to order food from concessions, at any sporting arena or sporting venue, be it high school, middle school, college, or pro arenas like the U.S. Bank Stadium, or even your state fair. We’ve built a technology that helps you skip that line and turn your 10 to 20-minute wait time into a 30-second breeze.
“With our app, you scan a QR code, and you place your order. The vendor at the concession stand receives your order, fulfills your items, and notifies you by text when and where it’s ready for you to pick it up. They send you a notification via text to come pick it up.
“On the back end for vendors, we help them manage their concession operations to focus more on fulfillment and back-of-house work instead of front-of-house. So, we take care of the front-of-house for concession vendors.”
Tom: The vendor or the concession management company is your ultimate customer, correct?
Mu: Yes. Our target customers are divided into three core segments: high schools, colleges, and pro arenas like U.S. Bank Stadium. College and pro arenas are mostly managed by concession management teams like Aramark, Sodexo, Levy, and others.
But high schools are what I’m really passionate about because concessions are a big fundraiser for them. Having been a kid who played sports, I know how much those fundraisers helped me to continue to have that opportunity to play. So, I’m very passionate about that particular vertical.
And we get to also influence the kids who are coming up through the ranks, who are watching people like me who have played pro basketball and are now building technology, and it’s a mentorship opportunity for us to keep investing in those kids.
So, the three segments we focus on are high schools, colleges, and pro sports arenas and venues. With our analytic tools, we are able to give these vendors insights to begin to learn more about their guests: what do they like to eat, what time do they like ordering, and what is changing?
That helps the vendors to optimize their menu selection, plan their sourcing, and manage their inventory and back-end functions. Providing them with insights to be able to better manage their inventory and sales is something they really love and are very open to.
The Company
Year founded: 2019
Funding rounds: Self-funded to date, plus friends and family.
Company size: Four full-time and three part-time employees.
The Inspiration
Tom: What inspired you to work on this particular problem? I know you’ve got a great story to tell.
Mu: My first job when I came to the U.S. was as a concession supervisor for Aramark at my college. I worked concessions a lot, but I never thought about technology helping to ease my job.
It wasn’t until my senior night when my mom came to watch me play basketball for the very first time here in the U.S., and…I was super excited. I wanted to impress her, because if you know anything about African parents, you only have three options of what you do in college: you become a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer. Anything outside those three is just wasting your time.
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So, it was already about her coming to the States to watch me pursue my ambition as an athlete. Having her watch me for the very first time, I was ready to show off to her, to show that I’m actually doing this, I’m doing well in the classroom, and they don’t have anything to worry about.
Well, during the game—it was close to the end of the second half—she was nowhere to be found, and I just started having the best stretch of my career. That was my last college game. I was just so disappointed that she wasn’t there to see most of it.
After the game I kind of confronted her with, “Hey, why weren’t you there to watch? Did I suck that bad that you had to leave? Tell me because I over-criticize myself a lot.”
She said, “No, no, no, like, I really enjoyed watching you play. But I was hungry.” She had just flown in that day, she was hungry, and she wanted to grab a bite.
She told me, “I thought it would take me one or two minutes, but it took me more than 20 minutes to get food here.” There were only two people serving concessions, and the whole gym was trying to buy at the same time. Then she added, “Maybe you can build one of your robot things to fly the food to me in my seat, and that way I would never miss seeing you play.”
That is how the idea came up. I thought about how I’ve experienced these problems numerous times, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s experienced it. Many other people have experienced it. And I thought, there has to be a solution for this. That is what started my journey of exploring what SitEat would be.
Tom: And who knows, the drones might be a future enhancement.
Mu: It is good because my co-founder is really good at building drones. He’s been part of other startups around drones. Wherever it takes us to, we are always ready to explore and take challenges head-on.
The Launch
Tom: That’s a fantastic story. So, as you’ve gotten the app developed and into the market, what have been the most effective channels or methods for you to get the word out to prospective customers and generate interest?
Mu: The funny thing is, when we first started it off, like every other company we wanted to go after the big dogs, such as U.S. Bank Stadium and Allianz Field. But the sales process was just too long, and it’s a very high relationship-based industry. You need to have a foot in the door to do business with them.
Realizing this, we asked ourselves, what other people need this solution today? We knew we needed to build some momentum before going back to approach the pro stadiums. I was talking to a friend of mine who is a coach here in Minnesota. He asked, “Have you ever gone to local high school games? Go check out what their concessions look like.”
So, I started digging into high schools and discovered that 87% of high schools in Minnesota still do cash transactions. That’s one of the reasons why they still have lines, and people are moving away from cash to cashless. It was hard for us to understand why no one is building a solution for this segment
I started talking to my networks in the high school realm, asking them to make introductions. So, it’s literally been word of mouth for us. We signed up our first client and decided to focus on this end of the market and make sure things work for them.
While we were doing that, I got connected to U.S. Bank Stadium and Aramark again, and they gave me sort of an internship consulting job. I’ve been consulting every game day, and that’s helped me build relationships within that vertical so that when we are ready to attack, we have an existing relationship.
Our focus to date has been to high schools, and we’ve done this by word of mouth: people telling others about how well the system has worked for them, and how much money they’ve been able to raise through our system. But we’re excited to try different channels in the next year.
Tom: So, plans are to go from a local focus now to regional, then national?
Mu: Yes. Our goal is to start with the 160 schools in the Twin Cities metro area, then expand to key geographies like Texas, Florida, New York, and California, and then go national. We’ve started having interactions in Texas and Florida, so they are in play for us. But ultimately, we hope to go nationwide.
Tom: Yeah, high school football is kind of a thing in Texas…
Mu: It’s big in Texas. They say everything is bigger in Texas. I didn’t believe that until I went to my first Texas high school football game. It’s huge there.
The Lessons
Tom: It definitely is. So, now that you are four years into the business, if you would, finish this sentence: Knowing what I know now, if I were starting over today, what I would do differently is…
Mu: I would have launched faster, gotten the product out there earlier, just to get feedback. The product was conceived in 2019. I started taking interest in wanting to build it in 2020. Actually, in 2021, I called my team in Spain. I was like, “Hey, I’m done. I’m going back home. I’m more excited about something else.”
So, I went full-time on SitEat in September 2021. And if I had to do it over, I would have just launched, and just started talking to customers right out of the gate, and just seeing…piquing people’s interest. But I guess that’s the rookie mistake we make.
Tom: Well, it’s been a challenging few years.
Mu: Yeah, it’s been COVID, it’s been one thing after the other. But I’ll just say: launch as fast as possible, as fast as you can. Get your product into the hands of users, and get their feedback. Because they won’t come to you. You have to go to them.
The Takeaways
Tom: Exactly. You mentioned mentoring earlier. On that topic, what’s the most important advice or guidance you could give to someone like yourself just starting out today?
Mu: One of my biggest pieces of advice is: don’t be afraid to ask for help. And don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Part of the success I’ve had so far has been asking people here, who I felt know it better than me, for help: “Hey, this is my hypothesis, but I don’t know this aspect of it. Can you guys help?”
Just asking for help, not trying to act like I know it all, and just being able to say, “This is new to me. No, I don’t know it, but if you give me some time, I’ll go find out more about it.” That’s been one of the biggest things for me in my growing and learning process. I’m one of those guys who like to do it myself, but I’ve started learning how to get other people involved in helping out.
Tom: Fantastic. And I presume the team at Beta has been helpful in that respect as well?
Mu: Yes, Beta actually was the… I went to Twin Cities Startup Week in 2021, and at that time I was still skeptical: should I launch this or not? I still had my basketball career, that was really good for me at the time.
But, going through there, I got really motivated from Beta. I got connected to them, and they’ve become sort of sewn into my startup story because they encouraged me, “You should do Beta Accelerator. It’s going to help you grow.” And I really grew from that. I met a lot of people who keep pouring into my life until today as well.
The Wrap
Tom: It’s a fantastic organization. Thanks Mu, this has been a great discussion. I really appreciate having you on today. Final question before we wrap up. Where can people find you, connect with you, and learn more about SitEat?
Mu: Our website is SitEatApp.com. Or you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter @SitEatApp, or you can send us an email at Info@SitEat.org, and we’ll talk to you more about what we do and why we’re passionate about this.
Tom: Excellent. Thanks Mu.
Mu: Thank you so much, Tom, for having me. I really appreciate it.
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