TOWER OF POWER: The Tower Marketplace at Thunder Ridge Nature Arena looks to bring modern convenience to a rustic setting. (Courtesy Vendor)
Best New Space In Food and Drink
Tower Marketplace at Thunder Ridge Nature Arena
Bass Pro Shops founder and CEO Johnny Morris spared no expense building the new, state-of-the-art Thunder Ridge Nature Arena in Ridgedale, Missouri, and it comes as no surprise the venue’s Tower Marketplace offers an equally elevated food and beverage program.
The 18,000-capacity amphitheater is the only such venue in the world dedicated to conservation, and the marketplace is the perfect fit for its setting.
Along with its stunning architecture, the marketplace’s F&B concepts incorporate individual elements of technology, food service, cooking capacity and beverage service but the uniqueness of the Tower Marketplace at Thunder Ridge is that it incorporates all of these into one space.
“I have to give a lot of credit to Johnny Morris and his creative team for, first, building such a robust, and frankly, world-class facility,” says Shaun Beard, ASM Global senior vice president of food and beverage. ASM Global’s Savor division handles the venue’s food service. “His vision of creating something that never existed before got us most excited, and then choosing us to be the food and beverage expert to support that vision put it on my radar screen. Working with Johnny Morris and his team was like nothing else I’ve experienced, in a very positive way because of the creativity and the vision and the real focus on the customer.”
From the 5,000-square-foot shopping and guest shopping environment to premium service, every aspect of food and beverage program has been thought out and executed down to the finest detail.
Guest-facing glass doors featuring Coke products, beer, seltzers and ready-to-drink products, while merchandise is displayed through gravity-fed shelving to optimize the visibility and accessibility of the products. Behind each door is a mini-cold storage warehouse to facilitate efficiency in the back of the house operations and to eliminate stock shortages, which improves customer service.
In keeping with the mission of Thunder Ridge, conservation-focused Verterra packaging is used for all hot food, prepared in the hidden Ghost Kitchen, with the cooking capacity to support not only the Tower but also locations throughout the venue, allowing for rotational menus and expanded food choices.
“When you look at the premium spaces, which have been carefully curated to have multiple premium experiences, those are phenomenal from the suites to the boxes to the party barn to the decks that oversee the amphitheater,” Beard says.
Thunder Ridge Nature Arena strives to see guests spend more time enjoying the concert experience and less time standing in line by utilizing AI-powered self-checkouts that cut down on lines and friction.
Data-supported results show that the average checkout at Thunder Ridge is 50% faster than industry averages for grab-and-go items; during peak times, guests checked out at the Tower Marketplace every 4.28 seconds, whereas median transaction times are 13.2 seconds.
“You see a venue that is second to none from that customer satisfaction standpoint because you have a first-class facility, number one,” Beard says of the venue, which recently hosted the Rolling Stones’s final stop on its 2024 “Hackney Diamonds” tour. “But even that whole experience went right into the concession location, right into where you’re picking your products.”
Thunder Ridge Nature Valley Arena opened with three consecutive nights of Garth Brooks Sept. 30-Oct. 2, an epic shakedown maiden voyage that provided no margin for error.
“We opened up with an 18,000-person concert on day one and all of that design, all that focus, all that planning, worked,” Beard says. “We had per-caps that were beating other major facilities around the country by 30%. And it worked as planned. So we’re pretty happy with that.”
