President & CEO, Levy
The most successful companies have great leaders at the helm. At Levy, Andy Lansing is guiding the Chicago, IL based firm’s fortunes. As President and Chief Executive Officer, Lansing has been with Levy for the past 30 years, learning the ins and outs of every department. With a background in law, Lansing stumbled upon his initial position as General Counsel with Levy and has been able to evolve into the strategic and successful leader he is now. Under Lansing’s leadership, Levy has grown to more than 50,000 team members delivering hospitality to guests at more than 200 various locations in both North America and across the globe.
With Levy preparing to take centerstage preparing and serving all food and beverage at this month’s annual US Open tennis fortnight in Queens, Total Food Service was able to catch up with Andy Lansing to get some insight on his background and success!
Can you please share your background with our readers?
I grew up in Highland Park, IL outside of Chicago and then attended the University of Michigan. Then I went to law school at Loyola University in Chicago and really wanted to be a lawyer. People often wonder how I got into the hospitality industry. In my case, it was truly by accident. You know, I’m a big believer in that line from the John Lennon song –“life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” I was in private law practice and a young lawyer practicing commercial real estate and corporate law. I had also developed a specialty where I was representing a bunch of NFL football players as their agent, which was really exciting. I got a call one day from a friend of mine who was head of marketing at Levy at the time and she asked if I wanted to be considered for their general counsel position since theirs was leaving, or if I knew someone who would be a good fit. I asked what the job entailed and she wasn’t sure so she asked me to have lunch with Larry Levy so he could explain the job to me. I knew he was an interesting guy, so I went to lunch with him and listened to what he had to say. By the end of lunch, he asked me if I wanted the job.
At first I said no because I loved what I was doing, but he asked me to have lunch with him again. At the lunch, he put a hard sell on me and how it was a big opportunity. I asked him to give me the weekend to consider it. So as I’m leaving the restaurant – I’ll never forget this – I went through a revolving door that got stuck. I remember it made me stop and think if I should consider it. After the weekend, I called him on Monday and told him I’d do it. I joined the company at 27 years old as Vice President and General Counsel in a job I honestly had no business doing and really was feeling a sense of imposter syndrome. I thought people would realize I was a fraud. This was before the Internet, so I really had to work hard to understand everything. Over time, I just really started to learn all aspects of the business. Because of my curiosity to learn about everything, they took me aside and asked if I wanted to work more on the business side of things.
Can you talk about how you evolved in your roles with the company?
Coming from a legal background, I didn’t grow up in this industry, so I approach things very differently. I had the ability to just look at things and ask to have them explained to me why we do it that way. It turns out that 50% of the time the answer was just because we always did it that way. So being naïve about the industry turned out to be a real strength for me because I didn’t have any preconceived notions about anything or how we did things. I oversaw every department from HR, purchasing, marketing, finance and all the different departments that really provided a wealth of resources for our operations. It was really fun for me to instill the concept that it’s not about the home office, but about the field, which is what’s paying the salaries. They’re the ones interacting with our guests. The people in the office are the least important in the company and we’re here for support and resource. Over time, that mentality helped us succeed since we got out of the ivory tower mentality that sometimes exists between the corporate office and the field. Over time, Larry said he liked what I was doing and promoted me to President and Chief Operating Officer in 1995. In 2006, he promoted me to CEO.
What led to Levy’s expansion into the concession business?
When I joined, we were primarily a restaurant company. We had several Chicago based restaurants, and we had just been selected by Disney to be the first restaurant company to operate restaurants at Walt Disney World. It was a very proud moment for us. We actually got into the stadium and arena business totally by accident. The White Sox were building the first skyboxes in the old ballpark, and they approached us to be their hospitality partners, and we actually said no a few times. We finally said yes for all the wrong reasons. We thought we’d get good tickets to the game since we love baseball. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we could be really good at this, and that’s when things started to take off.
So as you inherited all these things, what was your vision for it all? Did you create a vision or did things just come to you?
I think a lot of the success of Levy is repeated accidents followed by great strategy. So in other words, it was an accident we got involved in a few things. You know, the restaurant is the hardest business in the world. People come in with expectations way up there and you try like heck to hit or exceed them every time and it’s really hard. There’s a thousand moving parts. You’re relying on so many different people, so it’s really hard. When we got to the stadium and arena business, it’s really simple. We just noticed that people came into the stadiums with low expectations, so it wasn’t hard. All they wanted was cold beer and a warm hot dog.
So how did you get other people to finally take notice of how you were changing people’s expectations for stadium food?
Well, we started that with the White Sox and then the Cubs called us, telling us they liked what we were doing across town. Then the first out-of-town property was the Kansas City Chiefs, which was big for us since it allowed us to go national. The thing with skyboxes and stadium clubs is that they are often pre-sold, which means guaranteed income to the team. A part of that is selling the food and hospitality, too. That has to be a big amenity to be able to successfully sell skyboxes and stadium clubs. It just caught on like wildfire from there.
As that business started to take off, did you have to compartmentalize and keep the stadium and regular restaurants separate from each other?
We never viewed the businesses as separate. And I think, in all honesty, that’s what made us good at what we did. I didn’t want to have a restaurant group and a separate sports and entertainment group. And so we would have chefs from the restaurants go work in the stadiums and vice versa. We knew our future was in both restaurants and sports and entertainment.
You basically charge whatever you want to charge like the old movie theatre model and people will still buy it. It’s a silly question but why do you insist on value?
No, it’s not a silly question because our DNA is not to treat people like captives. The first thing I want to do when walking into one of our locations – whether it’s a restaurant or a stadium – is to taste the food and see it. I want to smell it, see the portions and see the value and creativity. The default for most folks is to go right to pricing value and we’re not all about pricing. Value means so much. It’s also presentation, taste, portion sizes, the way it is served to you by gracious people, every single aspect of the hospitality experience.
You’ve got some fairly over leveraged partners in some of these stadiums and ballparks around the country. I’m assuming that you sign these contracts with these teams and there has to be a sort of shared vision toward an opportunity for both of you to win. How have these relationships evolved to get your customer to the ballpark?
At the end of the day, the teams that we’re working with get 51% of the vote on pricing. I mean, they’re the ones who are determining the pricing strategy. Our analytics subsidiary, E15, will give them the most sophisticated pricing elasticity model showing them what they’re selling and what the sales will look like at various prices. In recent years, there’s been a real trend to what’s called “Street Pricing,” and it was started in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons. Arthur Blank had this vision that the industry’s model is broken and it’s crazy that people pay insane prices for water and things that they can pay less for outside of the stadium. Together we developed the street pricing model that has really revolutionized the industry and others have taken notice.
Can you talk about what you’re doing to attract the next generation in the industry?
Well, I think we have a neat thing going for us. You know, we like to say that working at Levy is truly the coolest job in food and sports. Wouldn’t you want to work for a company that does fun events like the Grammys, the Kentucky Derby and the U.S. Open? We need team members for our stadium and arena events so that attracts really cool people. When we get people to join our company, we usually keep them. We have folks that once they start with us; they feel like they’re home. We have partnerships everywhere, so it’s nice to be able to move and still have a job in your new city.
We’re about to embark on a world of sports gambling. We haven’t seen in a very long time. Do you see yourself in the gambling business and are you concerned with how this will change how people buy your product?
We’re actually really intrigued by gaming because in many cases, we think it’ll enhance the experience hand-in-hand and the opportunities for us. We have opportunities during games, and potentially on non-gamedays, to feed these people, and to have them experience our hospitality. It’s going to be a major opportunity for our partners.
If you had a crystal ball, what’s the next 20 years have in store for the company?
Regardless if it’s six months or 20 years from now, I’m always about doing the right thing and treating guests like they are guests in your home. If you follow this, I promise you that the profits and growth will come. We’re at a time where we as a company are experiencing an insane amount of growth right now, which is really exciting; it’s a testament to what our operators are doing. It’s a growth spurt like we’ve never seen before! For the next year and a half, we are focusing on opening all of these new locations brilliantly and continuing to grow, while at the same time just having the same hospitality that our partners and guests expect from us.
To learn more about Levy and Andy Lansing, visit their website.
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