Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., the new home of the San Francisco 49ers. (Photo by www.levisstadium.com)
“We wanted to be environmentally responsible; it’s sort of a mandate within the Bay Area to do that,” said 49ers CEO Al Guido when describing the process of building the new Levi’s Stadium. The new venue in Santa Clara, Calif., opened in July and will host its first National Football League game Aug. 17. Making its home in a region known for environmentally conscious culture, the $1.2-billion stadium’s sustainable features and green operating processes have earned it LEED Gold certification for new construction, making it the first NFL stadium in the U.S. to achieve such a goal.
ON THE CONCOURSE
Instrumental in the stadium’s environmentally conscious operations was the 49ers’ partnership with Centerplate for the building’s food and beverage. The concessionaire placed a heavy focus on local sourcing, stating 80 percent of ingredients used at Levi’s will be sourced from within California and over 70 percent of those ingredients would come from within 150 miles of the stadium.
“With sustainability being so forward in the agenda of the building … the whole scheme for the utility usage and efficiency—the selection of equipment we chose and so on—all of that was overlaid with the LEED Gold objective from day one,” said John Sergi, chief design officer at Centerplate. The 49ers brought Centerplate into the process at the same time as the architect, HNTB, giving the venue and the culinary team a chance to integrate design and culinary strategy, as well as create and refine dishes that were outside the realm of standard stadium fare.
“For 18 months, we met with the team on regular intervals and detailed design on every concept on every club,” Sergi said. “We took almost every food item (the only thing we couldn’t do was the pizza because the ovens weren’t hooked up until recently) and tasted [what] was going into the building.”
The green roof at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., will feature Bay Area-native vegetation, which will play a role in insulation. (Photo by www.levisstadium.com)
Using local ingredients wasn’t limiting, however. As part of the menus, Centerplate developed 26 vegetarian items and 14 vegan items, ensuring that at least one vegan item is available at every concession stand. The venue’s vegan hot dog will also be sold at every concession stand where a regular hot dog is sold.
At the helm of food operations, Centerplate Executive Chef Ryan Stone created some particularly unique meat-free dishes, all without using tofu: the barbecue pulled jackfruit sandwich, which places smoked and braised jackfruit, apple-jalapeno coleslaw and house-made barbecue sauce on a Hawaiian roll; and the nopales torta, a Mexican-inspired item that incorporates cactus. The creation of a robust and diverse menu was another thing particularly important to the 49ers, considering the region’s serious food culture.
“[Centerplate] was willing to think outside the box,” Guido said of the 49ers’ decision to partner with the concessionaire.
“If you go through the different areas of San Francisco, you can get basically any type of meal you would want, so we wanted to make sure we could take that and offer that to Levi’s Stadium fans,” said Centerplate general manager Zachary Hensley.
In addition, 100 percent of the seafood served in the facility will be sourced by Royal Hawaiian Seafood, a South San Francisco company whose products come from sustainable sources as defined by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program.
The new stadium opened in August with a Major League Soccer game, followed by its first National Football League event. (Photo by www.levisstadium.com)
PREMIUM LEVELS
Moving into the suite and club seat menus, the Centerplate team decided they would break the mold by taking the core group of popular food items offered in the general concession areas—hot dogs, burgers, pizza, chicken tenders, garlic fries and sausage—and serve the exact same products in the premium seating areas. The club and suite menus are bolstered with other options such as salads, crepes and grilled meats, but those core items are created from the same ingredients and recipes as on the main concourse.
“There’s this misconception in sports in the United States … that if you pay more for your ticket, for some reason you want upscale food,” Sergi explained. “You can talk to people who have club seats, boxes or suites, and they will tell you story after story about how they leave their seats to go to the general concourse to get the good old, basic hot dog. That’s criminal. So we decided that’s not going to happen in this building.”
In order to prepare all those foods in the same way throughout the building, Sergi explained, the venue needed specific design elements and infrastructure, such as special ventilation to accommodate for live fire cooking that’s conventionally isolated to one area. The 49ers understood this and obliged. Sergi said that everyone on the Centerplate team is, “beside ourselves because it was like somebody came to us and said, ‘If you could ever [make a building] exactly the way you wanted to, what would you do?’ And we were like kids in a candy store. … I don’t ever remember hearing a ‘no.’”
Rotisserie Chicken Mac & Cheese will utilize local ingredients and be featured as part of Centerplate's food and beverage offerings.
PAIRING NOTES
The beverages, too, have been selected with the Northern California region in mind. The Tap Room,, located at the 50-yard line, will offer 40 varieties of beer, with many coming from California breweries. “We have a great partnership with Anheuser-Busch and their portfolio, but we knew it was important, as we talk about the Bay Area culture, to make sure that we incorporated a lot of [local] brands into our offerings,” said Hensley.
“Our wine list will be 100 percent California wines,” he added. “We have seen our wine sales start to increase across [all] our stadiums, but specifically here, where we are, it was important for us to have local, California wines.”
Beyond sourcing and cooking, the 49ers and Centerplate also kept in mind what will happen to waste. “One hundred percent of our service-ware we chose from sustainable qualities—either recyclable, compostable or biodegradable,” Hensley explained. “Inside the stadium, there are going to be three different containers. … Any type of food waste will be composted. [Waste] will be taken off site through a company that will be doing most of the sorting.”
Cooking oil, also, will be recycled. “We partnered with [Krause & Nagy Environmental Solutions] that will come in, do microfiltering of [the oil] but then also recycle all of it,” Hensley added.
In addition to the culinary program, Levi’s Stadium’s sustainable aspects include more than 1,200 photovoltaic panels on bridges that pedestrians use to enter the building as well as on a “green roof.” “We’re going to store the power … and run our 10 football games net-neutral to the grid, totally powered by the sun,” said Guido.
The green roof will also be home to Bay Area-native vegetation, which will play a role in insulation, lowering heating and cooling costs. Centerplate has plans to eventually put a culinary garden on the roof as well. “We’re planning on year two,” Hensley said. “We’d be able to grow our own fresh herbs and vegetables and then be able to use those inside the building.”
Interviewed for this story: Zach Hensley and John Sergi, (203) 975-5910; Al Guido, (408) 562-4949