Vendors had fans eating it all up

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This article was published 16/06/2015 (4067 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

JUDGING by the lineups at food vendors at Investors Group Field on Women’s World Cup game days, it appeared soccer fans didn’t know there were other places in this city to get grub.

Obby Khan, owner of Shawarma Khan, which has four locations at the stadium, sold 225 kilograms of wraps on June 8 — which was everything his staff had taken to the stadium. They took twice as much food Friday and sold out again.

“It was slow before the first game on Monday and during the first half. It got busier at half time and after the game, we got slammed. There was an hour-long gap until the next game. It was just bonkers. Nobody could leave (the stadium).”

Division of labour was key in making sure hungry fans didn’t get frustrated with the long line and go somewhere else, he said.

“We have one guy whose job is just lettuce, another guy’s job is onions and tomatoes, one guy is just wrapping. The busier we get, the more people we put on the line. We pump it up as fast as we can,” he said.

Things were just as busy over at Clay Oven. T.J. Singh, supervisor at the Indian eatery, said its butter chicken and samosas were flying across the counter. “We were crazy busy on Friday. The lineups were long. It was three hours of crazy lineups,” he said.

FIFA forbids anything but generic “food and beverage” signage. That can create challenges because some customers come looking for a burger and fries. Singh is happy to direct them to the correct counter but not before suggesting something from his menu. Often, they’ll take him up on his offer.

“People love samosas. They’re vegetarian so everybody can enjoy them,” he said.

Sue LeClair, owner of the Pretzel Place, said customer traffic at last week’s matches was like nothing she had seen before.

“They made a Bombers (CFL) game look like a cakewalk. It was busy, it was fun and it was nice to see the rah-rah of the crowd,” she said.

On June 8, LeClair took in double what she would normally stock for a football game and promptly sold out. On Friday, she took in a bunch more and sold out of that, too.

“We ran out of dipping sauce an hour after the gates opened on Friday, before the game even started. We seriously underestimated how much (soccer fans) liked their dipping sauces,” she said.

LeClair wasn’t allowed any signage, of course, but she was able to show a little video on the front of her kiosks showing how their pretzels are made.

‘It was just bonkers. Nobody could leave (the stadium)’ — Obby Khan (above), owner of Shawarma Khan, at one of his four locations at IGF

“There was no branding on there, it’s just our hands. Rules are rules,” she said.

Because Shawarma Khan makes its food fresh, it involves more work than taking a frozen hotdog and throwing it on the grill.

“Our guys take two days of prep for every game,” Khan said.

“We worked until midnight last Friday, and I had a crew of 10 here the next morning at 9 a.m. and we worked all weekend.”

Khan dialed back his numbers a little bit for Monday because without the U.S. playing, he knew the crowd would be significantly less.

“We have 200 kilogram of food in the back if we need it,” he said.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca