October 2003
Service Takes Off - New infrastructure delivers real-time management and wireless power at the Air Canada Centre
By Lisa Terry, Contributing Editor
The crowd rocking to the Rolling Stones drinks a lot more beer than Christina Aguilera fanatics. That's a key metric for managers of Air Canada Centre, the 22,000-capacity enclosed stadium in downtown Toronto. The stadium plays host to more than 200 events annually, everything from the National Hockey League's Toronto Maple Leafs and the National Basketball Association's Toronto Raptors to trade shows, skating competitions and circuses. Thanks to its migration to a standard, open IT platform, executives can glean better data about its operations and respond in real-time to conditions that impact the experience of its guests.
"It's our corporate mission to excite our fans," says Eric Wong, director, special projects for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the front office management company for the venue. Wong's role is to make that happen by driving special projects across various operations groups and IT.
"It is critical that we have business strategies driving our technologies and not the other way around," notes Wong. "It is very important for technology managers to understand the business, and for business managers to understand technology."
That approach was the driving force behind Air Canada Centre's decision to replace its food and beverage system, add wireless POS and more widespread credit and debit processing, and lay an infrastructure made for better visibility and future enhancement.
Exceptional amenities
Inside the seven stories of Air Canada Centre is a virtual cornucopia of food and dining choices: three members-only fine dining restaurants serving gourmet fare and a view of the action, premium-seat wireless POS delivering everything from hot dogs to sushi right to the fan, and a full catering service that supports 150 private luxury boxes and meeting rooms and serves outside events as well.
Two public concourses feature foodmarkets with 90 quick-serve outlets whose fare truly runs the gamut: ethnic favorites, deli sandwiches, wraps, kosher foods, pizza, pasta, wings, cafes, trattorias and more.
Its main store is open to the public seven days a week, with 11 more retail outlets and additional temporary kiosks open throughout the arena during events...
Today, food and beverage inventory is managed through Eatec (www.eatec.com) while Microsoft Great Plains handles retail inventory.
The Eatec application is "easy to use, because it's browser-based and uses a lot of point-and-click icons," says Wong. "It's used a lot by our sous chefs to record recipes, etcetera. It was important to get their buy-in, which we got because of its ease-of-use." Their acceptance ultimately helped to trim food inventory by providing critical data on the gross margin of each menu item and ingredient. "We're able to monitor costs on a lot more timely basis and we have better data for decision makers, so we can manage bids, buy product more cost-effectively, and perform procurement tasks." Air Canada Centre hopes to move to Web-based procurement in the future...
This was excerpted from the October 2003 issue of Hospitality Technology and may differ in content or context from the originally published article. To see the full text visit www.htmagazine.com.
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