How Aramark Served Over 200,000 Fans at the U.S. Open

The U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania may have looked like a four-day event yet it was anything but that when planning and executing the food and beverage setups around the course and selling items to the hundreds of thousands who attended the third major of the season.

“If you think about this type of event, it’s really built from the ground up,” said John Fitzgibbon, vice president of operations at Aramark, which does the food and beverage at the tournament. “When we leave, this all gets taken down. But the buildup, start to finish, this is years’ work with the planning process that it takes to really develop this and build it from ground up and all the infrastructure.”

Aramark had approximately 4,300 staffers on the course during the week manning the Trophy Club and 45 concession stands around Oakmont. There were 2,900 pieces of equipment on site including point of sale machines, refrigeration, cooking, storage and more that Aramark uses through partnerships with rental companies both locally and nationally. Staffers came from as far west as California and far south as Florida for the event.

“We work pretty closely with the USGA understanding where the traffic patterns are on course to make sure that at certain positions where there’s going to be a stopping point or a grandstand, we want to make sure that we can satisfy the guests there,” Fitzgibbon said. “The level of service that we want to provide, it’s right up there with any event.”

Because each round started so early, concession stands started the day serving breakfast items including orange juice, bananas, coffee and a breakfast sandwich until 10 a.m. with either egg and cheese on an English muffin or sausage, egg and cheese. Midday and afternoon favorites included a cheeseburger, Italian sausage, all beef hot dog, asiago turkey sandwich, southwest veggie wrap and Caesar salad. Snacks ranged from chips, cookies and candy to Uncrustables, Kind bars, a Bavarian pretzel and Planters nuts.

“We want to make sure that throughout the course, we give a vast array of offerings and that’s not only just food, but its beverages as well,” Fitzgibbon said. “The way that we like to approach it is when we come into a community, we want to make sure that we sprinkle in some of the local, along with some of the fan favorites. A hot dog’s a hot dog, and that’s still one of the most sought after items. How do we elevate that hot dog and how do we implement local fare as well?”

On Thursday’s first round, with Oakmont’s trees all but eliminated over the past decade, shade was a rare commodity and hydration was the highest priority. Water was a big seller during the first round while as the tournament’s conditions changed, food and beverage patterns would change as well. Fitzgibbon said Aramark was tracking the traffic and sales patterns around the course through an analytics dashboard that also considered tee times and marquee groups as they moved around the course.

Through all the logistics, however, there is one mantra: keep the hot food hot and keep the cold food cold.

“This course specifically is unique in just the way that it’s laid out with the highway going through separately east to west,” he said. “So there’s logistical challenges that we try to make sure that we can accommodate for as well.”

Throughout each day, one of the more boutique offerings was the ‘Lemon Wedge,’ a cocktail mix of lemonade, club soda and Dewar’s which returned for its fourth year in a can or made by a bartender at certain locations.

“It’s absolutely amazing how much that this specific drink is taken off,” Fitzgibbon said. “It sounds so simple, but, I mean, you can’t go wrong with liquor and lemonade on a golf course.”

And even before the Open finished Sunday, the planning was underway for next year and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York, which is the oldest incorporated golf club in the U.S. and was one of the five founding member clubs of the USGA.

“It really doesn’t stop,” Fitzgibbon said. “We’re taking notes as we go to make every event that much better.”