Wagyu burgers? How the company behind Casa Loma is elevating the concession fair at Rogers Stadium

Concertgoers heading to the recently opened Rogers Stadium in Toronto’s Downsview Park might be surprised to find more than just standard arena food. Instead of your regular nachos and beer, the venue offers Wagyu beef burgers and sushi platters.

Behind the upgrade is Nick Di Donato, president and CEO of Liberty Entertainment Group, the company behind some of Toronto’s most celebrated restaurants and event spaces. He spoke to National Post about the Liberty Group’s new role in elevating the concert-going experience. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

How did you end up seeking the food concession at Rogers Stadium?

Liberty Entertainment Groups has a very diverse portfolio, from regular restaurants to Michelin restaurants, the only Canadian organization with two Michelin restaurants in its portfolio, from our high-end steak houses and our event spaces like Casa Loma and Liberty Grand.

The stadium identity is now changing in recent years, and one of the things that is very important to stadiums is premium hospitality. And you see that in their suites, and in the restaurants that are located in stadiums and even their food offerings. So we thought that would be a perfect fit for the Liberty Entertainment Group, to help deliver the premium quality hospitality in a stadium atmosphere.

At the Rogers Stadium, we have two lounges of 400 seats each, the Birkenstock lounge and American Express where we have a full menu. We also do the 24 suites, so premium suites in the stadium itself, and also we do some premium concession stands, so a diverse selection of casual food but done at a premium level.

What’s the concept? What are you doing to try to elevate or reinvent stadium food?

The stadium itself is a temporary stadium, so I can imagine most of the seats are on a scaffold and built for a three year period. But we built two full-size restaurants, the American Express restaurant, with a full menu which emulates some of the items that we have at our Blue Bovine Steakhouse, with sushi and casual approachable food for a stadium environment.

We’ve done that with the Birkenstock lounge, more with reflecting the brand itself, of German descent. It’s a full service restaurant in the middle of, basically, a field.

We’ve created our full-service kitchens, full bar component. Our bar menu and cocktail menu are designed by world champion Jacob Martin. Our menus are designed and supported by our Michelin chefs, so there’s a very high-level experience in what people would expect to feel.

Can you give an example or two of specific food items?

We have the beef tartar cristini, an American Express tower, which exemplifies a tasting of all our menus, and obviously in the same atmosphere we have the quality burgers, but our burgers are made with Wagyu beef. And we have a sushi program at the Blue Bovine, which is translated into the stadium atmosphere.

What’s your personal favourite at Rogers

To me it’s from Birkenstock, the Coconut shrimp. It’s jumbo shrimp done in coconut and batter, and very easy to share.

How do you ensure quality and consistency in that environment?

Every item on our menu is quality made, made on site.

We created full service kitchens within the space itself and we’ve done that in cargo containers so, although we are outside in a very difficult challenging space to build quality food, we’ve created the kitchen in containers. We have a hotline in a container side-by-side with a cold line in a refrigeration container.

It’s not pre-prepared food, which is just heated up in a hot box. We are preparing the food as it’s been ordered.

Is this a sign of a growing sophistication of the average palate?

People are expecting a little more, and hats off to the people at Maple Leaf Sports who have introduced some of the higher quality products in their concessions. So you look at where they’ve moved and we look at where the industry is moving, people are looking for higher deliverables in their stadiums.

So this was really why Liberty Entertainment Group moved into that because it is our niche market. Premium quality, we know how to deliver that, and now we’re delivering it in higher volume in larger stadiums.

What’s the throughline in what Liberty Group is trying to do?

Our focus has always been best in class, so whether it’s a casual restaurant, whether it’s a Michelin restaurant, whether it’s a steakhouse, we always aim to be best in class.

Understanding what your target audience is, where you wanna be with that and making sure you’re the best in terms of deliverables, and we do that even in our nightclub component.

What’s next, any more surprises?

We’re going to extend this across Canada, in terms of the stadium approach, in terms of bringing up the level of expertise in stadiums. We are expanding in Miami, so that’ll be coming up, probably in October. And we’re expanding our portfolio in the lounge and club business. We’re creating a place called powder room in Yorkville, which will be a high-level cocktail lounge, which is really needed in the Yorkville area.