The lack of a formal restaurant isn’t stopping The Mahaffey Theater (St. Petersburg, Fla.) from offering a dining experience to its guests. The theater has recently partnered with Food Now, a local food delivery service, to allow guests to order meals from their favorite St. Petersburg restaurants to be delivered directly to the theater. Guests can now enjoy food and beverages and restaurant-style service in a specially designated seating area overlooking the bay.
Setting the Stage
The partnership is the brainchild of Windy Lawson, director of marketing at The Mahaffey. “We had ordered from Food Now a couple different times for different functions and [Windy] said, ‘What if we had a program where … when you bought your tickets … you could order food from one of your favorite restaurants and have it delivered?’” explained Joe Santiago, general manager of The Mahaffey Theater. Santiago said he also witnessed someone order a pizza and have it delivered to the theater. “We thought, ‘Gosh, these people are ordering food for themselves. What if we helped out with that process?’”
The Mahaffey team then reached out to Tanner Loebel, owner of Food Now, a meal delivery service that works with more than 115 restaurants and serves about 220 square miles around the St. Petersburg area. Loebel, a local who started the business three years ago, said that he’s always been a proponent of local businesses and the arts community. “At first, we started just by doing some advertising for [The Mahaffey], and then we got a call from Windy,” he explained. “[The idea] was presented as kind of a dinner theater.”
About 50 restaurants currently offer meal service to The Mahaffey through Food Now, most of them in downtown St. Petersburg. Favorites with theater-goers include Gratzzi Italian Grille, Sushi Rock Grill, Fresco’s and The Hangar Restaurant & Flight Lounge. “The restaurants are loving the program because they’re not losing the business,” Loebel said. “They’re retaining the customers, just in a different venue, and [service is] provided by us.”
Spotlight on Food
There’s no added fee to use the delivery service to The Mahaffey. Ticket holders place their orders at least a day in advance by visiting the Food Now website or calling the company’s dispatch center, and they are given the added benefit of entering the theater 30 minutes before doors open to regular ticket holders. Diners can stay in the seating area and enjoy their meal after doors open as well.
Before the show, food is delivered to the theater by Food Now, which also has staff at the theater who plate meals in a room designated for food prep before being presented to guests, as if they were in a restaurant, only one without a kitchen. “Everything is set just like a formal dining room,” Loebel said. The designated dining area is also equipped with a bar from which guests can order drinks. “We try to replicate the same great service you would get in a restaurant, there at the theater, which is a beautiful backdrop for any customer. … We’ve got it down to a science.”
Round of Applause
So far, the reception has been positive, with orders averaging over 10 per show, depending on the time and day of the particular event. The Mahaffey hosts about 200 events per year, although not all are publicly ticketed, and Food Now service is not available for Florida Orchestra shows. Santiago estimated that they will be offering food delivery service for 40 to 50 events per year.
“We’re just trying to make the experience as great as possible by doing some things innovatively, doing some things differently, going against the grain,” he added. “[There are] a lot of places you can eat at a restaurant … built in. This is just a different spin on it. We’ve got 30 restaurants represented within a five-minute distance from our theater. … People don’t have to park downtown, walk into a restaurant, valet their car, have to get it out of valet, then come to the show, have to valet again or park their car again—they can just come to one place. It’s a one-stop shop.”
Loebel echoed those sentiments, explaining that the downtown area gets busy and this allows theater goers to beat traffic by coming to the venue early, and avoid sitting in additional traffic coming from a restaurant to the show. “Customers order in advance, so they know exactly what they’re getting,” Loebel said. “There are really no menus to look at; it’s just time spent with family and friends or whoever you’re going to the show with.”
Food Now currently does not offer food delivery service to other entertainment venues, although Loebel mentioned that he has received inquiries. “I think one of the things that works so well with myself and my staff is that we’ve been going to The Mahaffey,” he added. “I’ve been attending shows at the Mahaffey for just shy of 30 years now when it was the Bayfront Center back in the day, so the opportunity to be there on a weekly basis and assist with the growth of The Mahaffey has been professionally fulfilling but also personally at the same time.”
Interviewed for this story: Joe Santiago, (727) 893-5746; Tanner Loebel, (727) 244-8217