SBJ Unpacks: The ‘secret weapon’ in Levy’s test kitchen

Tonight in Unpacks: Levy’s downtown Chicago kitchen is the hub of culinary innovation for its roughly 250 venue clients. SBJ’s Bret McCormick gets an inside look at how the food and beverage giant pairs the old and new, tapping Chicagoland’s “Food Guy” with data analysis to serve up success.

Also tonight:

• JPMorgan Chase signs deal with IOC
• HOK acquires sports architecture firm Rossetti
• BravesVision pressing its home field advantage
• Op-ed: The next billion-dollar opportunity

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the early viewership numbers for the NFL Draft, the future of the Vancouver Whitecaps in MLS, rising investor group interest in Las Vegas for NBA expansion and more.

I had been at Levy’s downtown Chicago innovation kitchen for five minutes when the first bite of food, a sliver of 10-day-aged smoked pastrami that fell apart in my fingers, was set in front of me by the company’s executive chef, Robin Rosenberg.

The dark and roughly crusted slab of meat sat on a cutting board next to a 15-day-aged brisket and a 10-day-aged, bone-in short rib. Each duration and the subsequent smoking process resulted in meat the color of red wine.

“Nothing like brisket for breakfast,” said Levy CEO Andy Lansing, pulling up a chair at the test kitchen counter.

I was spending the day with Levy to see how the company approaches menu and dish innovation, and to witness — participate in, actually — its local restaurant research and development process. Levy chefs create thousands of new dishes each year for the company’s roughly 250 sports venue clients, from long-term menu additions to short-term playoff specialty items. And many of those ideas have their origins in either the test kitchen or scouting trips to restaurants and food outlets throughout Chicago or beyond.

“It’s the oxygen for our company, the innovation,” Lansing said.

The Food Guy

Levy has leaned heavily into data and analytics with the 2014 creation of E15 Group, which influences every aspect of the company’s business. But Levy’s restaurant roots dictate that there be a counterweight to an analytics-driven approach.

Seated next to Lansing and sifting through the slices of smoked meat was Steve Dolinsky. He’s known throughout Chicagoland as “The Food Guy,” owing to his 20-plus-year broadcast news career during which he told the city’s food stories and earned 13 James Beard Awards and three Emmys.

Dolinsky was hired in May 2025 in a role specially created for his skill set. The addition of an award-winning journalist provided Levy’s culinary team with a resource it, and the industry, had never had. Dolinsky’s job was one I wanted to better understand.

“He knows as much as any chef,” said Lansing. “But he’s not a chef, which is great because he comes in with this different perspective.”

Lansing described Dolinsky as “Levy’s secret weapon,” but a more accurate description would be “chief scout.” One of Dolinsky’s responsibilities is to arrange restaurant tours, whether in Chicago or elsewhere. Levy intermittently pops in on buzzy, famed or unknown restaurants, “partially for ideas and inspiration, and partly as a test drive,” Lansing said.

At best, a visit to a local joint could spark inspiration or lead to a partnership that ends with the restaurant’s food served in a Levy client venue. At worst, it might provide Dolinsky with another network-building contact.

Offering food specific to markets has become more important than ever in sports venue food and beverage, and Dolinsky’s wealth of knowledge — during our five hours together, he clued me in on ube, a Filipino purple yam; and pandan, a southeast Asian leaf, both of which are hot products — and network of relationships helps Levy’s localization efforts remain fresh and vibrant.

Dolinsky uses his reporting skills, combing social media for viral spots and reaching out to contacts in the food industry, including writers, bloggers and chefs he knows, for his advanced research. On one trip he arranged in Oklahoma City, 15 places were hit in just a day and a half.

“The way I jump into a city and literally devour it … it’s just stuff that I’m really passionate about,” he told me later. “As a reporter, it’s always fun to go find stories.”

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In the field

New sports venues are coming down the pike in Chicago, so the day of my visit coincided with a barbecue-themed scouting trip through Chicago arranged by the Food Guy. Food & Wine recently argued Chicago might be America’s best food city (better than New York!), so this promised to be a day my stomach would remember.

We assembled in the company’s test kitchen on Michigan Avenue, where Rosenberg was joined by Sam Boisjoly, one of Levy’s six chef de cuisines (CDCs) overseeing specific regions across the country. Boisjoly’s turf is the Midwest, ranging from Texas (American Airlines Arena and Q2 Stadium, for example) to Milwaukee and St. Paul (Fiserv Forum and Grand Casino Arena), and he’d spent the week with Rosenberg experimenting with the roughly $250,000 of kitchen equipment, including a new oven with a USB port.

Among the commercial kitchen toys was a $12,000 battery-powered Texas Frozentech Pro Churn V2 gelato machine that Boisjoly had spent part of the week with Rosenberg perfecting. I’d say they’ve gotten close.

One of the machine’s two pots contained a creamy salted caramel gelato, while the other was filled with frozen apple and sugar. The mix of the creamy and the crystalline, with a sprinkle of salt from Boisjoly, produced a caramel apple in my mouth, showing why the machine was a hit when Rosenberg wheeled it into the owners’ suite during February’s Super Bowl.

Dolinsky spends two to three days each week in the test kitchen with Rosenberg. Since Dolinsky was hired, the ideas emanating from the test kitchen often make their way to Levy’s venue chefs via recommendation videos he creates with Rosenberg. The Food Guy uses his TV news background, and his Canon 5D Mark 4 camera, to produce what might be more accurately described as how-to videos, though they’re more suggestive than dogmatic.

Levy’s venue chefs are given leeway to make their own decisions, and sometimes their ideas boomerang from the field to the home office, then back out to the nationwide venue portfolio, like the idea for a cookie dough cart that emanated from Kyle Bowles, Levy’s executive chef at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul. Innovation is not top-down.

“It’s why I’m in the field literally three nights a week,” Lansing said.

Chicago Twinkie

In recent years, Levy venue clients, including CPKC Stadium and Energizer Park, have opted for almost entirely local restaurant-provided food and beverage programs. The concept doesn’t work everywhere, but is an intriguing one in an era when social media and Food Network have supercharged the average eater’s interest in and understanding of food.

Six of us climbed into a black SUV and headed for the Fulton Market neighborhood and Green Street’s Smoked Meats, a hipster Austin, Texas, imitation that served canned drinks nestled in a mound of ice sitting in a sink. Dolinsky’s order included brisket, pastrami, jalapeno cheddar links, ribs, elote corn, mac and cheese, pickles and a Chicago Twinkie — a bacon-wrapped jalapeno stuffed with brisket, hot giardiniera peppers, cream cheese and Chihuahua cheese. The group unanimously agreed that the ribs were a winner and that the Twinkie, while yummy, was not visually appealing.

After a quick chat with the pitmaster, it was back in the SUV to head south, way south, to Beverly, Ill., 12 miles from The Loop in downtown Chicago. The destination was Sanders BBQ Supply Co., which only last year was named as one of the 50 best restaurants in the U.S. by the New York Times, following a visit and write-up by an unidentified food critic.

We passed through the restaurant to a separate party room in the back. Several tables pushed together were soon covered with trays of food, an almost embarrassingly rich spread — ribs, brisket, rib tips, pulled pork, fried catfish, collard greens, BBQ beans, French fries, white bread, a hamburger made from ground chuck and brisket scraps, and pickles. With owner James Sanders out of town at a wedding, pitmaster Nick Kleutsch told us his, and the restaurant’s story, a marriage of his and Sanders’ ideas (and companies) and their shared goal of bringing craft barbecue to Chicago’s South Side, long dominated by a barbecue tradition centered on ribs and rib tips.

The origin story and the surprisingly good sides (often overlooked in barbecue establishments), sticky rib tips, juicy pulled pork and butter-soft brisket made a positive impression on the Levy team, which liked the idea of getting the up-and-coming restaurant into one of its regional venues.

This was familiar terrain for Dolinsky. He helped put Sanders on the map shortly after it opened in 2024 with an NBC5 feature.

“As Nick tells us his story about being a pitsmoker, that’s the kind of stuff that I get excited about still,” said Dolinsky.

Ice Cream Heaven

We were back in the car, with very full bellies, for the drive to the day’s final stop: Margie’s Candies in Bucktown, northwest of The Loop.

The front door of Margie’s, which opened in 1921, is like stepping through a time capsule. The decor — jukeboxes at every table, crunchy leather banquettes, clamshell serving bowls and Tiffany-style pendant lamps overhead — feels like 1965, coincidentally the year that The Beatles ordered dessert there with some friends after playing a Comiskey Park concert.

The Fab Four ate Atomic Busters, which remain on the third page of a five-page menu composed almost solely of desserts. Margie’s offers throwback soda phosphates and at least six types of turtle desserts (the chocolate candies containing caramel and pecans), ranging from the Turtle Tummy Buster to the World’s Largest Terrapin (and its 15 scoops of French Vanilla ice cream).

Even as we labored under the weight of the two previous barbecue stops, Dolinsky ordered a tableful of desserts, including a classic banana split. When it arrived at the table, everyone whipped out their phone to take a picture and Dolinsky poured the fudge over the dish. Margie’s menu says Atomic Busters “will send you to Ice Cream Heaven.” We took a different route, but were there all the same.

Margie’s hit us with a shot of sweet nostalgia that could crack even the most analytical skeptic. In the time of big data and artificial intelligence, Dolinsky offers a contrasting approach to sniffing out food ideas rooted in the senses — what he hears about, then sees and tastes — that’s blended with any successful journalist’s desire to find something new, and first.

“I think it’s definitely a counterbalance. I’m not looking at any data when I’m doing my work,” Dolinsky told me. “I’m looking for a trend, for a commonality, things that keep repeating. If I see a lot of Basque cheesecake, or we talked a lot about ube, right? That’s the kind of intel that I bring. That’s all it’s really based on for me — fieldwork.”

JPMorgan Chase is buying into the Games, signing deals with the IOC and LA28 that will see the U.S. financial services firm backing the Olympics and Paralympics for the near term.

The TOP agreement with the IOC makes JPMorgan Chase the first global banking sponsor in Olympic history, with that category traditionally held by domestic national Olympic or organizing committees. Covering LA28 and the French Alps 2030, the deal gives JPMorgan Chase a broad category at the global level, making it the official sponsor in asset and wealth management and private banking, commercial and investment banking.

Its deal with U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Properties -- the joint venture between LA28 and the USOPC -- will give it the retail banking category.

Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. The price tag had been around $200M each for a TOP sponsorship for one quadrennium and for a founding sponsorship at the organizing committee level.

Both deals include financial health workshops for athletes.

The length of the JPMorgan Chase global deal stands out for its brevity, with typical TOP sponsor deals spanning four or more Games. JPMorgan Chase has considerable business in both the U.S. and France -- hosts of the Games in its deal.

The TOP program has been -- and to some degree, remains -- in a state of flux. It saw five sponsors leave following the Paris Games in 2024, including the likes of longtime sponsor Panasonic and recent heavyweight Toyota.

With the IOC election last year transitioning the organization from Thomas Bach’s 12-year tenure to Kirsty Coventry, it signed only Chinese technology company TCL as a new TOP sponsor.

With JPMorgan Chase joining, it sits at 12 sponsors -- the fewest it has had since 2015.

Changes to the four-decade-old program are expected. Coventry launched a reform process, “Fit for the Future,” and one of the four working groups is examining commercial sponsorships and marketing. Proposed reforms are expected to be announced during a June IOC session.

USOPP has had more success, as of late. It signed 15 new sponsors last year. In the past 12 months, it brought on six new sponsors at its highest level -- Honda, Starbucks, Google, Intuit, Korn Ferry and now JPMorgan Chase.

Alongside its USOPP deal, JPMorgan Chase signed an agreement with NBCUniversal and will invest in technology and innovation.

HOK has acquired Rossetti for an undisclosed sum, a deal that will raise eyebrows in the sports architecture world.

HOK is one of sports architecture’s handful of large and prominent practices based in K.C. (HOK itself is actually headquartered in St. Louis), while Rossetti, led by its namesake, Matt Rossetti, has a smaller but strong practice based out of Detroit, with major sports clients including the USTA.

The deal solidifies the family-owned Rossetti’s future, while increasing its opportunities through HOK’s bigger scale. And the acquisition gives HOK a major presence in Detroit’s rebounding market, while deepening the firm’s sports practice talent pool following the exit of several designers last year.

The combined firm will operate as HOK + Rossetti while integrating, though it’ll eventually just be known as HOK.

All 87 Rossetti employees will join HOK’s sports practice but continue to work out of Detroit, where Rossetti has been based for 57 years. The combined HOK + Rossetti sports practice will be led by directors Nate Appleman, Shannon Bartch, Amy Chase, John Rhodes, Rashed Singaby and Rossetti.

The deal technically gives HOK its first office foothold in the rebounding Detroit market, although the firm has already been active there, designing Little Caesars Arena, which opened in 2017, and Detroit City’s recently announced $153M AlumniFi Field soccer stadium.

Rossetti will become a director of HOK’s Sports + Recreation + Entertainment practice, and an HOK shareholder. Gino Rossetti, Matt’s father, founded the Detroit-based architecture firm in 1969 before Matt took the reins in 1999.

Selling the family’s firm “was something that I wrestled with emotionally,” Rossetti said. “I’m third generation and I also have two boys that work with me in the business, so they’d be fourth generation. I emotionally, honestly, didn’t think I was ever going to tackle that. I recognized that with what we have going forward, I’d been looking at it all wrong.”

He saw the situation as closing the Rossetti firm’s book, a view Rossetti attributed to “emotions talking, ego talking.” Instead, he’s looking at it as a new chapter of the same book, and “thinking about the opportunities for everyone in this office, amazing opportunities to work across the country and the globe,” he added. “Great for them, great for my boys, and great for me.”

The deal’s seeds were planted when HOK and Rossetti partnered on some project pursuits in 2024, which led to their prolonged engagement. Both sides felt compatible with the other, and Rossetti reached out to HOK executives in mid-2025 to gauge their reaction to a potential business combination.

“Since then, we’ve been putting Matt through the ringer, under the microscope, loved everything we found out, and that got us to today,” said Appleman.

Rossetti’s design portfolio lists Ford Field, Titletown, Daytona Rising, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Subaru Park and Sports Illustrated Stadium (formerly Red Bull Arena). More recently, it’s working on a major renovation of the U.S. Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium, a new Arizona Cardinals training facility and Cosm Detroit.

Active HOK projects include the $1.4B EverBank Stadium and $800M Bank of America Stadium NFL renovations, NYCFC’s Etihad Park and the Flames’ Scotia Place.

The launch of BravesVision in Atlanta was a daunting task. Heck, the team’s players had more time at spring training than the staff did in getting a TV network up and running in time for Opening Day.

Normally, executing such a launch would take 12-18 months, but Braves President and CEO Derek Schiller and his team — along with assists from Gray Media on distribution and Raycom on production — did so in around 30 days. “I wouldn’t actually advise anybody to do that [in] record time,” Schiller joked.

Schiller said the direct-to-distributor effort is already showing positive signs from a financial perspective. “For the most part, we can say we’ve preserved — and in some cases even grown — the economics on the linear distribution side," he said.

That includes deals with DirecTV, Charter/Spectrum, Comcast/Xfinity and some other small- and medium-sized carriage agreements around the Braves’ six-state territory. Streaming of BravesVision is also available on Fubo TV and the MLB app.

“One of the things that is actually part of the guiding principle behind why we chose to do BravesVision is if the whole ecosystem is going through this disruption, would you rather at that point in time have your rights managed by a third party, by somebody else, or bring it in house and do it yourself?” Schiller said. “Our view has been we’d rather look at that and see that disruption holding our own cards and being able to make our own decisions.”

Team-first approach

Fans are also enjoying cutting out the middleman in terms of TV production, and the team is leaning into delivering 140 game telecasts and shoulder programming designed for “Braves Country.”

“One of the things that has become apparent by our fans is that the team is running the network, and they can see it in the way that we operate every aspect of the network,” Schiller told SBJ. “We obviously monitor social media and all kinds of other fan feedback, and it’s become clear that our fans really like the fact that their favorite team is running a network without somebody else in between.”

Don’t get Schiller wrong: The team was happy to cash a big check for a long time (whether the RSN was controlled by Fox Sports or eventually Main Street Sports Group). Back in 2019, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei, whose company owned the Braves at the time, estimated that the team was taking in $83 million annually in TV money — and that figure was could have been closer to $113 million by 2027 had Main Street not imploded.

“We liked that type of relationship, but there was still a third party that stood in between our fans and the games,” Schiller said. “We’re not afraid to lean into having our announcers be a little bit more upfront and apparent about who they want to win that game. And obviously, that’s come across. Even what they wear. No illusions — this is BravesVision run by the Braves.”

Startup-like launch

Schiller compared the launch of BravesVision to a tech startup, but one that had a very hard deadline of Opening Day, with millions of dollars at stake. While they kept a few employees from Main Street — including Brandon Howell for ad sales — the Braves have leaned tremendously on existing staff from other departments to get the effort off the ground.

“I can say this with a great deal of certainty — we are much leaner than anybody else doing this,” Schiller said. “You have to have very clear set goals, and that is how we operated from Day 1.”

The team broke out its goals into five buckets — production, distribution, advertising sales, programming and streaming — and then went about putting strategy and planning against each of them.

“We had to have those first games on the air, and we had to have the maximum number of fans that can watch those games, and importantly — from a business perspective — we had to try to preserve, protect and grow as much of the revenue stream as attributable as possible, because that helps fuel all the things that we do to support a quality product and a quality team,” Schiller said.

Friends and neighbors plan?

Within the first few days of executing the BravesVision plan, Schiller noted the team decided it would only be focused on the Braves and would not seek other regional teams to join at launch.

“That mindset has not changed at this point in time,” he said. “There are going to be a lot of teams, including in our territory, that are looking for solutions. We have talked to a lot of them, but I don’t know right now that we’re able to focus on anything other than ourselves today.”

Among the regional teams that are leaving Main Street and need a new home are the Hawks, Hornets, Hurricanes and Grizzlies.

Over the past several years, my team and I have had a front-row seat to one of the most powerful shifts happening across sports and entertainment.

Across every category, the same pattern keeps emerging: The fan demand is already global. The business infrastructure, however, is not.

From Manila to São Paulo to Jakarta, millions of fans follow Western teams, athletes, artists and creators every day. They watch highlights at odd hours, participate in online communities and engage with personalities who may live thousands of miles away.

But while the audience has become global, the systems that convert fandom into business have largely remained domestic.

That gap represents one of the largest untapped growth opportunities in sports today.

Domestic growth is maturing while global demand accelerates

Across sports, franchise valuations continue to climb. Media rights deals remain strong, and sponsorship revenue across major leagues has reached historic highs.

But within many mature markets, growth is increasingly incremental rather than exponential.

Teams and leagues have spent decades refining their domestic business models. Ticketing strategies, premium experiences, broadcast partnerships and local sponsorship programs are highly sophisticated and continue to generate significant revenue. Yet mature markets inevitably reach natural limits in terms of how much additional growth they can produce.

At the same time, international fandom continues to expand rapidly.

Younger audiences around the world are discovering sports not through traditional television broadcasts but through digital ecosystems. Social media highlights, creators, short-form video, and global online communities now act as the first entry point into fandom.

For many international fans, their initial connection to a team or athlete happens through a clip on a phone screen, rather than a live game broadcast.

The demand already exists. What often does not exist is the operational framework required to convert that demand into a sustainable business.

Global visibility is not the same as global operations

Many organizations believe they already have a global strategy simply because their content reaches international audiences.

A team may have millions of followers around the world. A league may distribute games across international broadcast partners. Social media accounts may even exist in multiple languages.

These steps certainly help expand visibility. But visibility alone does not create a business.

Posting content globally or translating social media feeds is only the first layer of international engagement. True global growth requires something much deeper.

It requires operating inside the native platforms that dominate each region. It requires working alongside local creators who understand the cultural language of sports in those markets. It requires storytelling that resonates with regional audiences rather than simply repackaging domestic narratives.

Perhaps most importantly, it requires building commercial relationships inside those markets.

Without that infrastructure, international audiences remain largely passive. They watch, they follow, and they engage, but they are rarely converted into meaningful economic ecosystems.

The difference between global reach and global revenue ultimately comes down to operational presence.

The structural gap in sports organizations

One of the biggest barriers to international growth is structural.

Most Western sports organizations were built to serve domestic markets. Their internal teams, departments, and revenue structures reflect the markets in which they were originally created.

Front offices are typically organized around domestic sponsorship sales, domestic media partnerships and regional marketing initiatives. These structures work extremely well for established markets.

But they were not designed to manage complex global ecosystems.

As a result, international initiatives often become secondary priorities. A digital team might oversee global social media channels while commercial teams continue focusing primarily on domestic partnerships.

Opportunities abroad certainly emerge, but there is rarely a dedicated operational framework designed to pursue them consistently.

Building international capabilities internally can also feel overwhelming. Operating across global markets requires navigating different regulatory environments, cultural dynamics, platform ecosystems and commercial landscapes.

For many teams, leagues and talent groups, the complexity alone slows progress before expansion even begins.

Infrastructure is the missing piece

The real barrier to global monetization is not fan demand. It is infrastructure.

Turning international fandom into sustainable business requires capabilities that most sports organizations simply do not have in place today.

Successful international growth requires in-market publishing operations that understand how content spreads across local platforms. It requires relationships with regional creators and cultural figures who can translate sports narratives in ways that resonate locally.

It requires partnerships with brands operating inside those markets and an understanding of how sponsorship opportunities evolve across different economies.

It also requires navigating regulatory frameworks, distribution systems and digital platforms that vary dramatically from region to region.

Without this type of operational structure, international expansion often becomes fragmented. Different markets develop inconsistently, partnerships remain scattered and the overall strategy becomes difficult to scale.

This is why many organizations default to surface-level global engagement rather than building long-term international revenue engines.

Turning global fans into global business

Sports have already proven that global audiences exist.

The next phase of growth is converting those audiences into sustainable economic ecosystems.

Organizations that develop real operational capabilities across international markets will unlock entirely new layers of value. Regional sponsorship categories will emerge. Merchandise distribution will expand through local channels. Media partnerships will evolve to serve new audiences through localized platforms.

Athletes themselves will increasingly act as cultural bridges between markets, enabling brand partnerships that span continents.

Beyond sports, the same dynamics are unfolding across music, entertainment and the creator economy. Artists, influencers and digital personalities are all discovering that the most engaged audiences may exist far beyond their domestic markets.

In the coming decade, international operations will become one of the most important drivers of enterprise value across sports and entertainment.

The organizations that invest early in building the infrastructure to operate globally will not simply grow their fan bases.

They will build the next generation of global sports businesses.

Andrew Spalter is founder and CEO of East Goes Global, the international operating partner for more than 20% of NBA teams.

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• USA Volleyball named Bari Greenfield as its new COO, bringing in the former MLS and N.Y. Road Runners exec as it looks to build on the sport’s momentum ahead of the L.A. 2028 Olympics, reports SBJ’s Mary Gaughan.
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• US Squash signed Hightower as its official wealth management sponsor, giving the national governing body a multiyear deal ahead of the sport’s inclusion in LA2028, notes Axon.