{"id":10390,"date":"2015-03-18T11:02:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T18:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=10390"},"modified":"2015-03-18T11:07:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T18:07:57","slug":"qualcomm-stadium-its-time-to-embrace-san-diego-craft-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2015\/03\/18\/qualcomm-stadium-its-time-to-embrace-san-diego-craft-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"Qualcomm Stadium: It\u2019s Time To Embrace San Diego Craft Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chargers<\/a>
Chargers game at Qualcomm Stadium (image source: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The future of food and beverage concessions at Qualcomm Stadium<\/a> will soon be up for a vote at San\u00a0Diego City Hall, giving local craft beer enthusiasts a chance to be heard in the public process. If local\u00a0brewers are to ever gain a toehold at Qualcomm, change will be required at our largest sports facility.<\/p>\n

At issue is the foodservice management contract at Qualcomm Stadium, which is currently up for\u00a0renewal. In January 2015, the City of San Diego issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for foodservice\u00a0management at Qualcomm Stadium, offering potential vendors a lucrative five to ten year contract.<\/p>\n

Currently, the contract is held with Centerplate<\/a>, a multinational food and beverage corporation\u00a0which operates at more than 300 public and private venues, including convention centers, pro sports\u00a0facilities, and restaurants. Centerplate may ultimately be recommended for a long-term renewal by the\u00a0Evaluation Committee overseeing vendor proposals, which should cause alarm for San Diego craft beer\u00a0patrons.<\/p>\n

As Chargers fans and other stadium guests can attest, Centerplate has failed to demonstrate a serious\u00a0commitment to serving craft beer in its time as Qualcomm\u2019s culinary concessionaire. San Diego craft\u00a0beer is for all and intents and purposes locked out of the stadium. The only craft beers this author could\u00a0find available at the stadium are Green Flash and Sam Adams, which are not easily accessible, depending\u00a0on the event and your seating location (the Chargers also have a separate sponsorship deal with Oggi\u2019s\u00a0Pizza, which allows them to sell their own beer in the stadium). More easily found are the \u201ccrafty\u201d brews\u00a0produced by Big Beer and marketed and sold as craft, including Goose Island IPA, Third Shift Amber, and\u00a0Shock Top Belgian White.<\/p>\n

How to explain then, this dismal state of affairs at the largest sports arena in America\u2019s Craft Beer\u00a0Capital? It\u2019s not the $1.2 billion Anheuser-Busch sponsorship deal with the NFL, which some critics\u00a0suggest stands in the way of better beer at football games. Prominent blogs and sports websites have\u00a0reviewed other NFL stadiums with vastly superior craft beer offerings than those found at Qualcomm.<\/p>\n

Nor could blame hypothetically be placed on an obstructive beer distributor that somehow only allows\u00a0macros to be served; a quick Internet search revealed that Centerplate sells a wide variety of craft\u00a0brews at its various other partner facilities, including those local to the respective region. As a publicly-managed, publicly-owned facility, Qualcomm Stadium isn\u2019t limited to the opaque personal preferences\u00a0of an unaccountable manager with total facility control. The answer to this question remains elusive, but\u00a0it likely isn\u2019t surprising.<\/p>\n

Applying Occam\u2019s Razor, the simplest explanation is often the correct one. We can reasonably deduce\u00a0then that, quite simply, neither Centerplate nor the City of San Diego have made serving local craft\u00a0beer a priority at Qualcomm Stadium. To some degree, this is understandable. From Centerplate\u2019s\u00a0perspective, San Diego is only one of hundreds of accounts it has to manage worldwide, and not one\u00a0that has the glamour or attention that its larger and more profitable clients do. The City of San Diego has\u00a0been unable to prioritize far larger issues besetting the aging stadium, including a backlog of repairs and\u00a0deferred maintenance which at last count totaled at a staggering $80 million, according to news reports.<\/p>\n

Craft beer enthusiasts shouldn\u2019t accept the status quo at Qualcomm. It\u2019s our public stadium, and we\u00a0deserve concessionaires that support local business and cater to our tastes and preferences. We have\u00a0good business to offer as well; city documents reveal that approximately $8 to $9 million in revenue is\u00a0generated from stadium concessions each year. With a 71,000 seat capacity and 125 food and beverage\u00a0kiosks, Qualcomm Stadium could be considered San Diego\u2019s largest dining room.<\/p>\n

The Evaluation Committee and the San Diego City Council have an important choice to make.\u00a0Centerplate has shown it can support local craft brewers if it wants to; what it lacks in San Diego\u00a0is higher expectations and public pressure. Research efforts by this author found that Centerplate\u00a0provided far more local craft beer selections to patrons at the sports facilities in serves in other craft\u00a0beer regions, including Asheville (McCormick Field), Portland (Providence Park), and Seattle (Safeco\u00a0Field). Why not San Diego then? What Centerplate and the City of San Diego need is to hear from the\u00a0public \u2013 clearly and loudly \u2013 on what needs to be on tap at Qualcomm Stadium. If you want something in\u00a0this world you have to demand it, and local craft beer at sports stadiums is no different.<\/p>\n

A decision may be coming in a matter of days. A new proposed agreement is expected to be introduced\u00a0first to the Budget Committee sometime in April, and members of the public will have an opportunity to\u00a0provide input before the Budget Committee before any final decisions are made. This author will update\u00a0craft beer enthusiasts when a preliminary concessionaire decision is docketed for a committee hearing, and provide details for public input in a future West Coaster<\/em> online update. Until a new agreement is\u00a0approved by the City Council, Centerplate\u2019s current contract will continue on a month-to-month basis.<\/p>\n

With Dean Spanos the Chargers organization making endless headlines in their pursuit of a new football\u00a0stadium, it\u2019s easy to forget that San Diegans will still own Qualcomm Stadium regardless of the outcome\u00a0of negotiations or future elections. What Qualcomm serves on tap matters; Chargers home games and\u00a0other major stadium events draw thousands of visitors to our region each year, and more local craft\u00a0beer sold means more revenue being re-invested back in the San Diego economy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for a change at Qualcomm Stadium. If our business won\u2019t be taken seriously by the\u00a0concessionaires that serve us, we should take our business elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Further reading:
\nSan Diego Reader
\n<\/a>Research For Proposal posting<\/a><\/p>\n

Vince Vasquez is the Senior Policy Analyst at the National University System Institute for Policy Research,\u00a0an economic think-tank based in San Diego.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The future of food and beverage concessions at Qualcomm Stadium will soon be up for a vote at San\u00a0Diego City Hall, giving local craft beer enthusiasts a chance to be heard in the public process. If local\u00a0brewers are to ever gain a toehold at Qualcomm, change will be required at our largest sports facility. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1359,872,1360,563,1358,1361,1362],"class_list":{"0":"post-10390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","7":"tag-centerplate","8":"tag-green-flash-brewing-co","9":"tag-national-football-league","10":"tag-oggis-pizza-beer","11":"tag-qualcomm-stadium","12":"tag-san-diego-chargers","13":"tag-san-diego-reader","14":"entry","15":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-2HA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}