Lindley Venue Catering launches branded retail food outlets

The caterer is making several new branded premium food retail concepts including Frank's Original New York Streetdog, The Pie Factory, Pie & Mash Co, FGB - Flaming Good Burger, Henry's Chicken, as well as bespoke deli concepts - available to its 30-plus professional football and rugby stadia clients. Stoke City FC's Britannia Stadium, Ipswich Town FC's Portman Road and Warrington Wolves RUFC's Halliwell Jones stadia are amongst the first venues to benefit from the branded retail roll-out. In addition, Lindley - which has an established partnership with Starbucks Coffee Company (UK) and has introduced the 'We Proudly Serve' Starbucks coffee proposition into stadium environments – is expanding the provision of Starbucks, making it more widely available to stadia both on the public concourse and in hospitality areas. Adam Elliott, chief executive officer at The Lindley Group, said: "Stadia public catering has long been Lindley's core business and, with our substantial experience in this marketplace, we believe that we are in the best position to lead the field when it comes to enhancing the food experience of sports fans around the country. "The quality and innovation that we have seen in branded retail food outlets on the high street, in mainstream visitor attractions and within other leisure venues hasn't, until now, been evident in sports stadia." "The aim of our new foodservice retail brands is to raise the bar in terms of quality, customer service and, ultimately, spend per head in stadia market, and the results achieved have been extremely positive and have prompted us to roll out these brands to other sites." He added: "Gary Bates, The Lindley Group's Creative Director, and our Executive Development Chef, Andy Wardle, have been instrumental in developing the new retail concepts and we have taken a holistic approach to improving the foodservice offer within our public kiosks. "As well as introducing innovative and premium quality food products such as - hot pork torn sandwiches, homemade hot pot and homemade curries; we've also improved the packaging of hand held food; and our new branded kiosks have also been ergonomically designed to optimise the speed of customer transactions with the aim of enabling serving staff to complete an average transaction in 30 seconds or less."