Loons’ food services hard at work

by Jason Wolverton

The following is part two of a two-part series highlighting the Loons’ food services department. Click here to see part one.

Alyson Schafer enjoys the tranquility 5,000 fans bring with them to Dow Diamond 70 days a year. It’s during this time – game time – that she can steal a few quiet moments to head to her desk and crunch some numbers.

Schafer is the business manager of the Great Lakes Loons’ food service staff, and her job has more to do with budgets and payroll than beer and brats. She’s in charge of running reports, balancing credit cards, and doing pretty much anything else that settles in under the accounting blanket. While most of her co-workers are at their busiest during game time, she’s parked at a computer calculating the numbers behind the commotion.

“I’m more of the organizer,” she says, “It’s kind of like an organized chaos. We all know our place and know what to do, so we just do it.”

That phrase – organized chaos – has been used before. During a previous look at the food service staff, a few of the key players either uttered it
verbatim or implied as much. The fact an attempt at a brief feature on them turned into a two-part, 4,000 word opus serves as evidence they know exactly what they’re talking about when they use it.

“This is our home away from home,” Schafer says. “We’re here 16 hours a day on game days. All I do is sleep at my home. It’s a place to lay my head, shower, and come back.”

Schafer’s cyclical schedule is a recurring theme for all of them. Go to work, stock, cook, clean up, sleep. They repeat it time and again with perhaps “sleep” being the only one occasionally absent.

On this particular afternoon, the cycle is working overtime. It’s a few days before Dow Diamond plays host to the 2008 Midwest League All-Star Game and you get the sense that the staff looks at it like a great big hurricane bearing down on them: they know it’s going to hit, it’s just a matter of the damage.

Nick Barton has been preparing for that damage for a little while now. He is the concessions/warehouse supervisor and says that up until this point with the Loons, he hasn’t had to bring in any extra workers. For the All-Star game, though, he’s lined up some extra horses to help ease the added strain caused by the three-day all-star festivities.

“You think you’ve got a well-oiled machine until something this big comes along,” he says. “There’s always going to be bumps, but you’ve got to be prepared and ready to hit those bumps.”

This isn’t the first time Barton has worked an all-star game. He worked at the Dow Event Center in 2007 when the Saginaw Spirit played host to the OHL All-Star Classic. Director Nick Kavalauskas has experienced one, too, working with the Montgomery Biscuits when their stadium hosted the 2006 Southern League All-Star Game.

“It feels a lot like opening the stadium again, times two or three,” Kavalauskas says. “We’ve been talking about it for over a year now and there’s so much blood, sweat, and tears going in it. But I know I’ve got the people around me to get the job done.”

And that he does.

The full-time staff of five works as a cohesive unit, with each person having their own specific tasks and responsibilities. Still, what seems to make the team especially effective is everyone’s ability to step in and pick up any slack. It’s not uncommon to see Schafer helping out on the concourse or Kavalauskas throw on a pair of gloves and unload a truck. Most of the reason that happens is because it’s the necessary evil of getting the job done. But another reason they pitch in is that many of them have their sights set on moving up in the organization. Just like the players on the field, most have aspirations of taking the job of the person above them on the totem pole.

“They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want to grow the business,” Kavalauskas says. “That’s the overall goal is to train and prepare them to be able to run their own operation. I want them to do what I do.”

Kavalauskas says that mindset is another philosophy of Professional Sports Catering (PSC), the Chicago-based company that runs the Loons’ food and beverage operation. He has been with the company for a few years now and says if he is to move on to bigger and better things, it will be within the company that he has grown to appreciate so much.

“I think what’s neat is that I can pick up a phone and go right to my president and the owner of the company,” he says. “I can call his cell phone. He comes in and knows you. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice that. I have every intention of doing what I can and using what I learn to grow the company and secure other businesses if the situation is right.”

Not-for-profit

Another part of Schafer’s job involves coordinating one of the more unique opportunities the food service department offers. Many aren’t aware of the fact, but during each home game the concessions along the first and third base lines, as well as those in the pavilion, are operated by non-profit groups. Prior to the season, groups contact Schafer and schedule games as a way to raise money for their respective organizations. The groups earn around $30 per person and often can work up to 10 home games a season.

On June 13 the organization manning both the first base line and the pavilion was the Bay County Mothers of Twins Club. The club is made up of women who have given birth to multiple children in a single pregnancy and the organization provides support and education to those families facing the challenges of raising multiple birth children. The Mothers of Twins Club had around 40 people working at Dow Diamond that evening to raise money for Special Days Camp, an organization that puts on camps for children with cancer. It was the first time the organization had ever worked a Loons’ game.

“We hope to have a lot of fun, but right now it’s a little bit nerve racking,” said club secretary Bobbi Gellise. “We’ve all done a lot of fundraisers for a lot of things, but not like this.”

Sue Markillie has done this plenty of times, though. She is a regular employee of PSC and operates the barbeque portable just a few feet from where the Mothers of Twins are working. Since last season she’s been serving beef brisket and pulled pork sandwiches to the Dow Diamond masses and says she absolutely loves what she does.

“This is just a great place to work,” she says. “The management is positive, and the customers always come here in a great mood.”

Perhaps one of the reasons those customers are so happy is because Markillie admits she raises the bar when it comes to the amount of meat she puts on her sandwich; it’s mandatory that her customers get a little utensil assistance when they walk away from her station.

“They have to get a fork,” she says, “they can’t just eat it like a regular hamburger.”

She also says that you don’t have to be a fan of America’s favorite pastime or pulled pork to make it out to the ballpark.

“Even if you don’t love baseball,” she says, “You will love the atmosphere.”

Photos by Cory Butzin & Jason Wolverton