SBJ Facilities: Proof of the Pudding looks to scale without losing its flavor

After spending several days studying grout colors, I’m officially ready for McCormick Renovation 2026 to reach a conclusion that results in me sleeping in my own bed and a subsequent several years’ long break from decision-making. We went with “mushroom,” “avalanche,” “raven,” and almond," by the way.

In America’s capitalist corporate culture, growth can feel like a company’s primary reason for being.

I was mulling this deep thought while eating oysters and gelato in The Nest, the premium space perched over the 12th green at the recent Truist Championship, the PGA Tour’s stop in Charlotte.

Proof of the Pudding provided me with those delicacies after members of its team and I logged thousands of steps tromping around a sodden Quail Hollow while touring the company’s complex pro golf food and beverage operation. Since 2020, the company has handled F&B for all PGA Tour-operated events, including, as of last year, the Truist.

The PGA Tour is among Proof’s higher profile clients, alongside the Circuit of the Americas and some of college football’s biggest stadiums. But in a cut-throat sports venue F&B world featuring six financially strong, multinational companies — Aramark Sports + Entertainment, Delaware North, Legends Global, Levy, Oak View Group and Sodexo Live — Proof sits a distant seventh.

Making the “big six” a “big seven” wouldn’t be easy, in part because venue F&B contracts don’t hit the market often.

During my day at the Truist Championship, I’d heard that Proof (Bruin Capital has been its majority owner since May 2023) makes all of its food from scratch. That includes the chow chow (if you’re a Southerner, you know what that is; if you don’t, you should find out) spread over the barbecue cheesesteak I sampled alongside Chief Culinary Officer Nick Klug, a chef recently added to the C-suite.

Later, as I dabbed hot sauce into an oyster shell, I wondered: Could Proof’s made-from-scratch premium F&B ethos scale up without compromising standards?

The first indication of Proof’s willingness to try came when it competed for Inter Miami’s new stadium F&B business in 2024, pairing with Austrian F1 hospitality mainstay Do&Co and apparently making a memorable impression. It projected the future Nu Stadium onto a white bubble-ceilinged room, making it feel like Inter Miami executives were sitting at midfield of the then-under-construction stadium.

Proof fell short in that bid (Delaware North won), but it represented an increased ambition from the Atlanta-based company founded by the Noyes family (Adam Noyes is the CEO and still owns a minority stake).

Bruin Capital founder George Pyne helped grow NASCAR from a regional sport into a national one, and he had a similar impact on what’s now Learfield. Could that happen to Proof? I can say with confidence that people at the company are thinking about it more than ever.

Bruin’s financial support and sports industry connections, which enabled Proof to acquire several smaller F&B providers and begin to pursue venue business in the biggest pro sports leagues, are big reasons why.

In January, Bruin raised $1 billion for its fourth investment vehicle, with backing from TJC and Josh Harris’ 26North Partners. The Harris connection is especially interesting for Proof: Two teams he oversees, the Sixers and Commanders, are building new venues.

At this stage, Proof presents itself as a premium F&B option. Is there a scenario in which it could handle only a stadium or arena’s premium food and drinks? Yes, but that would likely only come about through a venue owner’s decree. It’s unlikely any of the other companies would team with Proof in such a bid, in part because of the message it would send: We need to partner with someone else for the most lucrative part of your F&B business (premium).

Other companies in the “big six” have navigated a similar transition. Levy was supercharged by Compass Group. Legends Global got a nice initial boost from its owners happening to also own the Cowboys and Yankees. OVG Hospitality scaled quickly through acquisitions and developing its own arenas (and F&B business).

For as long as companies have tried to serve tens of thousands of people in three- and four-hour increments, the juggling of growth and food quality standards has been one of the hardest tricks to nail.

It might be Proof’s turn to try.

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The Ravens are poised for Thursday’s release of the 2026 NFL schedule with a new premium product to sell, one that’s outside of M&T Bank Stadium: The Flockyard.

It’s a modular (but permanent) three-story structure sitting on the venue’s northeast side facing Camden Yards, consisting of 20 16-by-16-foot loft suites and a rooftop area, cradling a courtyard. It looks, and I say this without derision, like a motel.

Each loft-suite package — the Ravens didn’t share pricing details — includes 20 lower-level game tickets and two parking passes, as well as all-inclusive food and beverage (liquor sold separately). The suites, featuring TVs and upscale furnishings, open two-and-a-half hours before kickoff on game days. A DJ will set up in the courtyard alongside games like cornhole and a gathering area.

The Ravens are also selling a standing room-only product that lacks access to the suites but does admit fans into the courtyard and onto the rooftop. The team is considering whether to allow fans to return to the Flockyard at halftime.

“We wanted this to feel almost like a suite experience, only on the outside,” said Rich Tamayo, Ravens SVP/stadium operations and fan experience.

The Flockyard assembly project (which cost a little over $7 million) should wrap up in time for when K-pop sensation BTS visits M&T Bank Stadium on Aug. 10-11, an example of how the permanent, fully permitted structure will see use year-round. Thanks to The Flockyard’s shallow foundation, utilities, which pass under the stadium’s northeast corner, didn’t need to be moved, saving a lot of money and aggravation.

The Flockyard, along with the two-story Miller Lite Gatehouse and Roof Deck, have replaced what in the past was roughly two dozen tents used for pre- and postgame hospitality. The tents were sold on a per-game basis, but The Flockyard’s permanence means it could be offered as an entry-level premium product sold on an annual basis.

“In the past when we’ve had tents, you didn’t have any access to this on a non-game day,” said Tamayo. “Now it becomes part of our building footprint. If we have an event in the north plaza, just north plaza, we can use this as part of that event.”

The L-shaped structure is assembled from modular structures called ModStax. Filmwerks, which builds Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” sets and contributed to TGL’s SoFi Center, designed The Flockyard. It’s the first permanent use of ModStax.

One goal of the roughly $500 million M&T Bank Stadium renovation (designed by Gensler and built by Gilbane) is to improve the food and beverage experience on the north side of the stadium, especially outside of the actual structure. The advent of the Gatehouse, with its 2,500-square-foot kitchen, and The Flockyard — taking food to one location instead of 25 tents — is helping the Ravens and Levy, its F&B provider, step up the service and quality.

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In its 15th year, 4Topps’ business is taking off. During that time, the sports venue seating company has worked with more than 250 sports and entertainment customers, putting a variety of products — built around its innovative mesh seat — in underutilized parts of (mostly) stadiums and helping them generate more revenue.

The college market — rapidly adapting its venues to modern standards — has proven especially lucrative to 4Topps in recent years. It put 25,000 mesh seats into Florida State’s renovated Doak Campbell Stadium last year, with another 17,000 ordered for South Florida’s under-construction football stadium.

The company is rolling out a more durable 2.0 version of its mesh chair and it’s gaining traction with a pop-up loge box concept that consists of a prebuilt table with four chairs that can be forklifted around a university campus. Miami (Ohio), for example, lined a beer garden with them at its football stadium, then moved them to the basketball arena later in the year.

Universities tend to own and operate numerous sports venues, which can create a compounding effect for a successful vendor. At FSU, 4Topps is also putting mesh seats into soccer and baseball stadiums.

“When you wow somebody in one venue, they’ve got other venues to bring in your stuff,” said 4Topps President and Chief Commercial Officer Deron Nardo.

New business

As more venues, especially in sunny, hot climates, adapt mesh seats and 4Topps’ core business rolls along, it’s preparing to launch a new direct-to-consumer business line in the $24 billion outdoor furniture market. It features five mesh seating products made from stainless steel and aluminum — a version of an Adirondack chair, a folding chair, folding and non-folding barstools and a dining chair.

4Topps’ positions its chairs as stadium-tough and -tested, ready for consumers’ backyards. Nardo said the company is pursuing licensing agreements with NCAA schools and plans on some of its outdoor furniture line to bear the marks and colors of a to-be-determined handful of college athletic programs. He said it’s close to deals with eight to 10 schools and expects to roll out the product lines midsummer.

“It’s an enormous market,” Nardo said. “If the market size of stadium seating is X, then the [outdoor furniture] market is 10X, 20X.”

When surreptitiously quizzing people about their deck furniture, Nardo has found the most people think they either spent too much and never use it or bought cheap stuff that disintegrated in the elements. The mesh, again, could be the solution the consumer market needed.

And with outdoor furniture’s 6% annual compound annual growth rate, “We don’t need to carve out a lot of the market for this to be a big part of our business,” said Nardo.

I’ll be at SBJ’s Brand Innovation Summit June 9-10 in Chicago, so, in a nod to that assignment, let me get my brand activation juices flowing with this week’s “Would you eat this?” It stems from a deal between the New York Liberty and Shake Shack, which is offering the Liberty Cake Shake. It’s a Statue of Liberty-colored, birthday cake-flavored milkshake with custom sprinkles (same colors as the Liberty, too). This sharp-looking desert costs $7.49 and is available for a limited time at Shake Shacks in New York City’s five boroughs.

Popular Science writes that if you want stronger concrete, just add oysters. They already make their own.

• My SBJ colleague Austin Karp chatted with former ATP player Chris Eubanks, now a TV analyst, and he told SBJ that the Cincinnati Open would be the tournament that he’d most recommend to fans, largely due to the facility upgrades at Lindner Family Tennis Center, which is in the running for Facility of the Year at next week’s Sports Business Awards. “They’ve done a great job of throwing some money into that and building up the facilities really, really well,” said Eubanks. “Typically, everyone will say Indian Wells, because it’s Tennis Paradise, and it’s so nice. The scenery is great. And don’t get me wrong, it is amazing in Indian Wells, but I’m thinking about Middle America, Midwest. It’s far more affordable to be able to go to check out Cincinnati. You can go from the courts to a Waffle House right around the corner.”
• The Fire’s new $750 million soccer stadium on Chicago’s riverfront will be known as McDonald’s Park, as the fast food giant agreed to its first-ever naming-rights deal in the U.S. for a professional sports stadium, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• Intermountain Health is building a state-of-the-art, 60,000-square-foot sports medicine center next to the existing and future training facilities of the Mammoth and Jazz. The facility will serve the Jazz and Mammoth’s players’ sports medicine needs, as well as the public’s.
• Carter and Front Street Capital, with the support of Wake Forest, acquired the Best Western Plus property adjacent to The Grounds, the 100-acre mixed-use development next to Allegacy Stadium.
• The largest renovation in Delta Center’s 35-year history will resume this offseason with continued emphasis on reshaping its seating bowl to accommodate basketball and hockey, the addition of gondolas high over the court and ice, and the completion of an appended parking structure.
• This week’s SBJ Tech newsletter features my colleague Rob Schaefer checking in with Mappedin, whose 3D mapping tech helps fans find their ways through venues, from their cars to the entry gate and eventually their seat (with maybe a stop at a concession stand for a tasty beverage or snack).
• U.S. Soccer officially opened the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center (NTC) last week, giving the federation a permanent training center and HQ for the first time in its history, notes Silverman.
• North Carolina unveiled a handful of improvements and initiatives ahead of the 100th season at Kenan Stadium, such as a $10 million project that features two new Daktronics video boards and nine LED ribbon boards, writes SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
• The Sports Facilities Companies, which manages the nation’s largest network of sports and recreation facilities, announced Wednesday that acquired fitness center management company Power Wellness, notes SBJ’s David Broughton.
• Airbnb reached a deal with NASCAR Holdings and Speedway Motorsports to embed its listings into some of their tracks’ websites, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.