UNM student creates stadium food delivery app

It’s the bottom of the seventh inning, the game is tied, and you’re missing an important play because you’re in line at the concessions for a slice of pizza.

University of New Mexico student Younes Slaoui knew all too well the feeling of missing sporting moments like this. His solution? An app, Peanut, he designed and created to mitigate that problem and allow fans to order food from their phones and have it delivered — all while sitting in the stands enjoying the game.

Roughly 58% of fans order less or don’t order at all due to long wait times, according to a study from technology company Oracle.

“A lot of people spend their time waiting in lines at stadiums and for the stadium or the concessions company that’s lost revenue... for the fans, that’s just missed memories where they could have been watching the game,” Slaoui said.

With Slaoui’s app, concessions are brought from the booth to a fan’s seat with little more than a QR code. While the app is not downloadable on mobile devices, it is a web app that uses the same combination of technologies used to build and run software applications.

Slaoui maps out each stadium, assigning seat numbers to designated sections. Runners, customers and concession stand owners have access to an interface that allows them to track, place or confirm an order.

Users scan a QR code that takes them to a website. After the order is placed, a food runner delivers the food directly to a customer’s seat.

Since creating the app, Slaoui has tested it at Los Alamos High School four times. Roughly 100 customers per game purchased from Peanut, Slaoui said.

Doug Weiss, assistant athletic director for Los Alamos Public Schools, said the app accounted for 13% of overall concession sales between the four games.

“It was an interesting concept to us, and we were curious to see if it would be something that could be done in a venue such as ours, given the business model that we run off of,” Weiss said.

Concession sales at the school run solely as a fundraiser for the teams working the stand. Slaoui implemented a service fee to make a profit.

Weiss said that he does not think the app works best in a venue like Los Alamos High School, where crowd and concession stand staffing is limited, but believes Slaoui’s app would serve larger venues well.

“I think it’s a great concept that absolutely has a place,” Weiss said. “There’s a market for it in certain venues, and I believe that there are venues out there that would benefit from it very much.”

In the future, Slaoui plans to find an investor for Peanut so he can expand it to larger venues, including other high school and college stadiums.