While the teams competing in the Super Bowl are decided within a couple weeks of the big game, what the thousands of attendees, stadium staffers, broadcasters, event support, and security will eat, is deliberated for a year.
“Imagine the world's largest football game extending into the streets,” said Myisha Boyce, who oversees supplier diversity for the league’s procurement program, NFL Source. “You have this huge perimeter of opportunity where people are participating in the tailgate and lots of other events who need to be fed and that's where our small businesses come into play.”
Boyce, who is based in Las Vegas but has made regular trips to the Bay this year in preparation for Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, says her main objective is to drive as much business as possible to local companies when the biggest NFL event of the year comes to town. This means inviting local food businesses to enter the NFL Source vendor network to do anything from catering branded or sponsor events to feeding stadium staff to tabling at the big tailgate.
“The goal is to reach into communities and find the untapped talent,” Boyce explained. “We wanted to make sure that those small mom-and-pop shops that don't always get an opportunity at something like this have a chance.”
Vendors this year will include some San Francisco staples such as Flour & Branch, Proper Food, and Underdogs Cantina.
That chance began with an open call for vendor applications across the greater Bay Area, all the way to Sacramento. NFL Source received several hundred applications and hand-selected the ones that they expected could be a good fit for the game and their clients.
Firstly, the food had to be good. Much like how restaurant critics (used to) conceal their identities when dining, Boyce and her colleagues at NFL Source made a point to secretly eat at as many applicant restaurants as possible on their trips to the Bay.
Secondly, in order to qualify, businesses had to be at least three years old and have the potential to benefit from being in the league’s network for years to come. NFL Source also looked at businesses’ marketing materials and online reviews.
Once selected, NFL Source provided business mentorship and gauged their capabilities and growth potential. “The goal is that the next time the league comes back for the next Super Bowl, they're bigger and have larger capacity and we've helped them to get there.”
Lauren Arnsdorff, the owner of Flour & Branch on Third Street near Oracle Park, said she got a call from the league in July. “I guess they had found Flour & Branch through the Eater article and then did some research on the brand. They said that they were really excited by my story and invited us to submit a menu,” she said. That condensed timeline, plus a dispute with their landlord, has certainly kept her even busier than usual these past few months.
Flour & Branch will play a key role in the large tailgate event ahead of the game, as well as some smaller events throughout the weekend, but Arnsdorff couldn’t share exactly what she’d be serving.
Preparation can look different for each local business. “It's requiring us to do a bunch of things that we haven't necessarily done before in terms of dealing with the complexity of an event like this and stadium logistics and security,” said Dana Bloom, co-founder of Proper Food, the grab-and-go lunch spot with a dozen storefronts downtown. “I feel like it's not only given us access to the Super Bowl, but now we'll be able to confidently approach other events like the World Cup or different things like that from what we have learned from this process.”
Proper Food is feeding all of NFL Films’ broadcasting teams for the entire week, as well as providing breakfast, lunches, dinners for a large number of Super Bowl production crews, transportation teams, and support staff. Outside of their direct work with the league, they’ll be preparing for a busy week-plus at their SFO location, as well as their many in downtown San Francisco, as tourists flock to the city for the game and related events.
Vendors must prepare their food at their own facilities, transport it to Santa Clara on their own, and rely on their own staff during the events. This means splitting both kitchen space and staff between Super Bowl obligations and daily operations.
“Everything is coordinated like a dance, down to the minute,” said Arnsdorff. “My head chef and I have been working like, 14- to 16-hour days for the past couple of weeks.”
But overall, both Arnsdorff and Bloom, neither of whom are strangers to large catering clients such as Google and Salesforce, say the league has been helpful in getting them prepared for game day. “I've never in the last five years had a more supportive and engaged partner, just the way that they really hold your hand along the way,” Arnsdorff said.
