Two weeks into his new job as VP of Business Development for Delaware North Companies Sportservice, Brett Fuller sees his priority as developing new business for the food and drink firm in the arena and collegiate space. Delaware North Companies has a large and long legacy in baseball and football, he said, but there is always room for growth. He will leverage some of the relationships he developed in seven years as VP of development for sports architecture and engineering firm AECOM and, before that, 10 years with Sprint Corporation. He saw his sometime role as tie breaker at AECOM and believes that will carry over to Sportservice. Venues Today interviewed Fuller while he was visiting Delaware North Companies’ Buffalo headquarters, although he will work for a year or two out of his hometown of Kansas City, where his office will be at Sporting KC, a Sportservice client. He will report directly to Delaware North Cos.' Sportservice President John Wentzel.
Will you have similar clients now to those you dealt with at AECOM?
We sure hope so. AECOM designed Quest Field, now CenturyLink Field, for the Seattle Seahawks. Now I find out it’s a Delaware North client as well. That’s kind of nice. Both companies have relationships with the Green Bay Packers. Darryl Benge, who was in Seattle, has moved to the Tampa Bay Lightning with Tod Leiweke. I was good friends with Darryl at AECOM. So some of the relationships in the professional sports world from AECOM and Sprint have superceded all of those. I’m a relationship guy. I need to continue to educate myself and build my foundation in the world of food and point-of-sale efficiencies but, at the end of the day, I go to conferences and see old friends I’ve known since my Sprint days and before. And once there is trust and a relationship, you have a better opportunity to get your message across. One of the differentiators a lot of times is who they want to put their faith and trust in. Sometimes it can be a tiebreaker. In the world of architecture, it’s really hard to discern the difference between AECOM, Populous, 360, HNTB or HKS. I don’t know this industry quite well enough after two weeks but I’m hoping that ability to build relationships and trust will carry on to this. In a perfect world, there are even previous relationships I can bring from when I was in the trenches with AECOM and introduce the world of Delaware North to some of those clients.
Is your career path unique to the industry?
I think it’s unique in the fact I went from working from one of the largest telcos in the world to one of the largest architecture and engineering firms to one of the largest food concessionaires. In architecture, people bounce around within the world of architecture. I tell people my background is branding, strategy and advertising, and grasping the new trends around analytics. My platform for my career has always been sports marketing. At the end of the day, it’s about relationships and trust. With some folks not as open minded or aware of Delaware North, I can help get our foot in the door. Then we do an unbelievable job.
How do your new bosses frame it?
One of the appealing things I hear from Delaware North people is that I’m bringing a fresh set of eyeballs to the business. I am a fresh person who understands the world of strategy. The common thread is strategy and relationships and applying it to the fan experience. A huge thing in the world of architecture is understanding the fan experience. At AECOM, it was driveway to driveway, architects were somehow accountable for everything that took place. I had an NBA [National Basketball Association] trends presentation I would deliver to presidents of NBA teams on a regular basis as part of my dog and pony show and a big part of that was fine dining. Everyone expects a higher level of culinary experience at our sports venues than we did 20 years ago. You want that farm-to-fork experience. Believe it or not, I talked a lot about fine dining in the world of architecture.
How does the new job tie in to your experience at Sprint?
At Sprint, I did a lot with our suite at Barclays Center. We would entertain clients 25 times in our Barclays suite and I wanted to make sure if we had a college AD or the president of an NBA team that that food experience was top shelf because we were trying to impress potential clients. And we had 350 tickets to the Super Bowl and I was very focused on our high-end clients having an unbelievable experience, in a suite or in a club at the venue. I’ve always , as a part of my career, high expectations for hospitality, and a big part of that is food and beverage. So I don’t come into it blind. I know a lot more about food than I did about architecture.
What are your first priorities at Delaware North Companies?
Delaware North has always had a legacy in baseball and, obviously, football, but I’d like to have a deeper penetration of clients in the arena world and particularly the NBA. That was a big clientele base for AECOM. That’s an area of emphasis for me – relationships I have and maintain in the NBA. A smaller, maybe not the highest priority, is taking a hard look at the collegiate model and assessing if that might be a growth and revenue opportunity for Delaware North. I think once you’ve created a niche in a certain space, whether it’s food services or architecture, the people in that industry talk and visit other venues. There is a higher likelihood of word of mouth and networking and they understand this business model type mentality. That echoes across the industry. People get labeled; they create a niche. AECOM had a niche of being the NBA people. Could they do baseball and football? Of course, but they had a niche. Delaware North falls in that category, so it has a growth opportunity in the NBA space and, potentially, depending upon the valuation and due diligence, in the collegiate space.
What are you bidding on right now?
The next thing, and I’m an innocent bystander on it, is the [New Jersey] Devils. They have an RFQ out now for Prudential Center [Newark]. We’re at Red Bull Arena and also MetLife Stadium with the Jets and Giants, so we would love to be at Prudential Center. For this one I’m taking notes and maybe asking some naïve questions and participating in rehearsals.
How does a bid in concessions compare to a bid in architecture?
The actual presentation is more robust in the world of Delaware North. With concessions versus premium, suites and restaurants and alcohol, there are a lot of moving parts in a food presentation. In the world of architecture, you get 30 minutes to present people, qualifications, experience and then 30 minutes of questions. In architecture your people and experience are most important. At Delaware North, they want to hear what ideas you have for food, concessions stands, food and beverage, maybe they want to taste and sample signature dishes. The experience is more robust than in the architecture world.
Is it more expensive to bid on a concessions contract?
If nothing else, it is for the sheer number of people who attend. In architecture, it isn’t uncommon to have two or three people there. In the food world, it’s not uncommon to have 7-10 people and then, if there is food production, that’s more people. In architecture, if you have to do a model, that’s a $50,000-$100,000 expense. But that was rare. At AECOM, we figured $10-$15,000 for a pursuit, and that was the simplicity of getting 40 hours from a marketing coordinator and three people practicing and attending, without a model. This would be far north of that.
Have you heard yet that the margins are small in concessions contracts?
There are a lot of similarities there, too. There are many projects for architects where there are changes and they spend another 80 hours redesigning that they don’t get paid for. There are many projects where they lose money because there is labor. The business you want to get into is contractor — pouring the concrete. The architect is three percent of the construction value. If you look in the parking lot of a sports architecture firm, you don’t see a lot of BMWs.
What do you do all day now?
You caught me on the beginning of day number 11. I hope the answer would be different on day 100. There are a lot of similarities to AECOM and a lot of parallels. One part of me is cognizant of renewal of our current partners and making sure our general managers have the latest and greatest, whether its innovations or trends or shared experiences. Part of my job is to ensure Delaware North folks in the field are properly equipped to make the fan, clients and current customers happy so we maintain those ongoing relationships with approximately 55-60 current sports facilities.
Is that similar to what you did at AECOM?
No, that half, supporting current clients, that’s not similar to AECOM. But developing new business relationships and bringing in new clients to Delaware North is similar to what I did at AECOM. In the world of architecture, you need to be perpetually filling the pipeline with new opportunities. They take from 12 to 36 months, but then you open the building, cut the ribbon, and kind of move on. It’s not a renewal or sustaining customer. Once you open Barclays Center [Brooklyn], there’s not a lot of opportunity again for an extended period of time. With Delaware North, you retain those relationships. The Detroit Tigers have been a client since 1930 and the Cincinnati Reds since 1936. It’s an ongoing relationship, which is exciting to me.
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