ATLANTA — Mercedes-Benz Stadium officials are doubling down on their 2017 plan of reasonable concession prices throughout the arena – covering all events on the remaining 2019 calendar.
On Monday, the AMB Group, founded by Atlanta Falcons/Atlanta United owner Arthur M. Blank, announced it would be cutting stadium food prices for a second time in three years.
Among the notable reductions:
Hot dogs: $1.50 ... previous price: $2
Chips and salsa: $2.50 ... previous price: $3
Ice cream waffle cones: $4.50 ... previous price: $5
Pretzel bites: $4.50 ... previous price: $5
ATL Bud Burger: $7.50 ... previous price: $8
"Arthur Blank repeatedly challenges us to find innovative ways to further improve operations across our businesses," said Steve Cannon, AMB Group CEO in a press release. "As we've always said, it is incumbent on us to listen and respond to our fans and we’ve heard that value, quality and speed of service are incredibly important; therefore, we’ve again made operational adjustments that address each of these areas.
"Our fans are our most important influencers, and we want to ensure they have the level of service they've come to expect from Mercedes-Benz Stadium."
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The innovations don't stop at lower food prices, however.
For United's home opener next Sunday, Mercedes-Benz Stadium will become the first Major League Soccer venue to implement a stadium-wide cashless transaction model for consumers, requiring debit/credit card or mobile payment for all transactions.
This movement covers all concessions and retail vendors within the stadium.
MB Stadium will house 10 "card-to-card kiosks" at certain points along the perimeter, so consumers – who don't want to use their own credit/debit cards for transactions – can seamlessly convert cash into temporary cards, in relatively short order.
Guests will deposit cash into the machines and subsequently receive a pre-paid debit card of the same amount (no transaction fee), similar to how the MARTA train system operates throughout metro Atlanta.
For last month's Super Bowl in Atlanta, Mercedes-Benz Stadium set the single-event record for "all sports venues run by the stadium's payment and transactions processing partner, NCR, for the number of credit card transactions processed on food and beverage" – a staggering tally of 76,446 processed transactions.
