Centerplate CEO Janet Steinmayer is forging restaurant partnerships; one is Denver’s Limelight Supper Club and Lounge (below) with Kevin Taylor.

On successive days in March of this year, Centerplate announced initiatives aimed at enhancing current and prospective clients’ perceptions. First came the hiring of Master Chef Alfonso Contrisciani to fill the new position of vice president for culinary development.

The following day, the company announced a joint venture with well-known restaurateurs Michael Kaufman and Michael Sternberg under which Centerplate gained a controlling interest in the Harry’s Tap Room restaurant brand. The venture will operate the Harry’s restaurant in Arlington, Va., and open a second Arlington location; license two locations in Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport; and seek opportunities to further expand the brand.

Achieving culinary excellence and a more-diversified client base have been the goals of Janet Steinmayer since she became Centerplate CEO in 2005. Similar strategies have been followed by Centerplate’s competitors, especially Charlotte, N.C.-based Compass Group, The Americas Division, which has absorbed Levy Restaurants and acquired a stake in Wolfgang Puck Catering and Events. Centerplate hasn’t cracked the top tier of foodservice-management companies; its $740 million in revenues (and a $1.9 million net loss) for fiscal 2007 was 8.7% ahead of the total from the previous year but still was dwarfed by revenues for the Big Four (see chart).

That doesn’t dissuade Steinmayer—a lawyer by training who joined Volume Services in 1993 as general counsel—from staying her course. She sees Centerplate competing by improving food and service at existing sports-and-entertainment sites it serves and by expanding Centerplate’s presence in the full-service-restaurant arena (both inside clients’ spaces and in stand-alone operations).

Centerplate—as well as other management companies—continually needs to “rethink the foods people are looking for when they go to a sports venue,” Steinmayer says. When Centerplate was awarded the foodservice contract for Nationals Park, the new home to Major League Baseball’s Washington (D.C.) Nationals, a group of fans wrote to the company to lobby for better dining options in the new stadium. “We asked them to be part of an advisory board and give us their thoughts,” says Steinmayer. “And that led us to ask, 'What are other people’s visions for what a Washington-based experience should be?’“

Centerplate’s Culinary Leadership Network allows its chefs to exchange ideas.

“The interesting thing is to think creatively and to bring a creative approach into a building so that people are surprised sometimes and say, 'I wouldn’t have thought of that,’ but at the same time not lose sight of the fact that this is about creating an experience around a baseball game or whatever,” Steinmayer says. “What they want is something that’s fun and enhances the experience of being there. [The food] needs to be fresh and interesting and culinarily exciting, but it needs to enhance the experience, not become the experience.”

In addition to Nationals Park, Centerplate handles foodservice for six other Major League Baseball teams (although it took a hit earlier this year when the New York Yankees announced that Centerplate won’t move with them to their new ballpark in 2009), 30 minor-league baseball teams and major-league spring-training facilities, and 11 National Football League teams. It also services 11 major (300,000 square feet or more) convention centers.

Might Harry’s Tap Room fit with some of those venues? Steinmayer doesn’t rule it out. “One of the things we’re trying to do is to bring local character and that local feel into our venues,” she says. “We’re reaching out into communities and picking these partners who we think are emblematic of the community and that we think have play in our venues.

“Another part is that as venue operators look at the use of their buildings, they’re coming to us and asking, 'How else can we generate revenue here?’—and restaurants can in some cases be an answer to that. …We’re looking for opportunities that fit with us both internally and externally. We understand that our core competency is servicing high-volume arenas. We would look at opportunities that give us that fit,” she says.

Steinmayer adds: “They may not all be in our traditional space, but we understand that that’s what we do well. And likewise, we’re happy to have Michael and Michael as partners and have them add value to what we’re thinking about on the restaurant side.”

Centerplate already has dabbled in restaurant partnerships. In 2005, Centerplate joined with Denver restaurateur Kevin Taylor to open the Kevin Taylor’s at the Opera House restaurant at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Last September, the two joined forces a second time to open Limelight Supper Club and Lounge, a freestanding restaurant at the complex.

At the Opera House restaurant, Executive Chef Jason Cummings’ menu ranges from Dry-Aged Black Angus Steak Tartare with Bloody Mary Ketchup, fried shallots and house-made pickles ($11) to Opera House Signature Roasted Muscovy Duck with heart-of-palm ragoût, enoki-mushroom salad and lavender honey ($28). Across an atrium at Limelight, entrées include Pan-Seared Scallops with Cauliflower and Caper Raisin Sauce ($23) and Colorado Lamb Rack with Spicy Spinach and Chevre Mash ($29).

The partnerships with Kevin Taylor and the controlling interest in Harry’s Tap Room bring Centerplate additional culinary expertise, but Steinmayer has actively promoted raising internal food-quality standards and aspirations since taking over as CEO. Creating a new senior executive post overseeing culinary development and hiring a Master Chef to fill it reflect her commitment.

“He has the office right next to mine,” Steinmayer says in indicating Contrisciani’s importance to the company. “He comes with a lot of restaurant experience and experience working with high-volume operations at a very high level, which is actually true of a lot of our chefs,” she says. “But to marry those things and look broadly is what he’s trying to do.”

He also will work with Centerplate’s Culinary Leadership Network, through which the company’s top chefs share ideas. “If you think about the Culinary Leadership Network as a group of people who are [mandated] to make sure that we deliver and do so every day, Alfonso’s job is to look out over the landscape, working with the chefs, and make sure that we’re thinking about what’s next, what’s cutting-edge and how we can implement that across a very broad spectrum of culinary offerings.”

Talent attracts talent, Steinmayer knows, and Centerplate’s ability to bring in culinary veterans such as Contrisciani impresses chefs and prospective restaurant partners as well as prospective managed-services clients.

“I think there’s an excitement to what we do that is beginning to capture the notice of really talented chefs,” she says. “And that excitement is contagious. It’s about the network and being able to share ideas and be involved in these centers of fun where we work that’s getting people to look at the [management] category in a different way.

“I think it’s fun to [chefs] that we’re saying, 'Help us push the culinary envelope.’ That’s a different thing than saying you’re going to prepare 4,000 meals a day and they’re all going to look the same. That’s not where we are.”