The idea for PickEat was born from personal frustration. As frequent attendees of concerts, football matches, and live events, we—Giacomo and Matteo—found ourselves constantly facing the same painful experience: standing in long queues for food and drinks, missing goals, songs, or key moments just to grab a snack or a beverage. It wasn’t just an occasional inconvenience; it was a recurring issue that clearly affecte the overall fan experience.

Intrigued and motivated by this, we decided to dig deeper. Over the course of nine months, we studied the food & beverage ecosystem at events, speaking with fans, venue managers, F&B vendors, and tech providers. The more we researched, the clearer it became: this problem wasn’t just about queues—it was a systemic issue rooted in logistics.

We identified two main causes:

First, vendors have no power to manage people flows. Orders come in waves, often all at once (e.g., during halftime or intermission), overwhelming the staff and creating bottlenecks. There is no system in place to distribute demand intelligently across available vendors or over time.

Second, the service experience is not homogeneous within the venue. Depending on where a person is seated, it may take them anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes just to walk to a vendor and back—excluding waiting and service time. This unpredictability makes the F&B experience more of a gamble than a service.

The consequences are massive. According to FanFood and Oracle Hospitality reports, 45% of fans at sports events say they don’t order food or drinks at all because they don’t want to wait in line. Studies estimate that the average waiting time ranges from 15 to 25 minutes, depending on the venue and event type. For a fan attending a 90-minute football match, that could mean missing a significant portion of the game.

From a business perspective, the losses are even more striking. In mid-sized stadiums and arenas, organizers and vendors are leaving between €20,000 and €70,000 on the table per event due to inefficient service, long queues, and underutilized vendor capacity. This isn’t just a user experience issue—it’s a revenue problem hiding in plain sight.

Yet, despite the emergence of digital ordering solutions over the past few years, the core problem persists. Many of today’s competitors—such as UberEats Stadium, GoPick, or NoQ—focus on building beautiful front-end apps that shift the queue from the cashier to the pickup point. But they don’t address the underlying logistics: the ability to optimize the vendor’s production capacity, manage people flows, and collaborate with event organizers to improve the overall system design.

This is why the problem still exists. Without a logistics-first approach and intelligent flow management, even the most elegant apps fall short. At PickEat, we’ve learned that solving this issue means partnering directly with venues, understanding real walking paths and timing, and equipping vendors with the tools to balance demand—bringing F&B to everyone in under 2 minutes, round trip from their seat.

We didn’t just see the problem. We lived it, studied it, and are now fixing it from the ground up.

Current Solutions

1. Manual Ordering and Point-of-Sale (POS) Systems:

   • Queuing: Attendees line up at concession stands to place their orders.
   • Order Taking: Staff manually take orders, often writing them down or entering them into a POS system.
   • Payment: Attendees pay for their orders using cash, credit/debit cards, or mobile payment options at the POS terminal.
   • Order Fulfillment: Staff prepare the orders and call out the attendees' names or order numbers when the food and beverages are ready for pickup.
   • Delivery: Attendees return to the counter to collect their orders, often resulting in crowding and confusion, especially during peak times.

   Issues:

   • Queues and Wait Times: Attendees must wait in long lines at concession stands to place their orders, pay, and then wait again to receive their food and beverages. This process is time-consuming and often leads to frustration and dissatisfaction.
   • Manual Order Taking: Orders are typically taken manually by staff, which can result in errors and delays, especially during peak times.
   • Payment Processing: Transactions are handled through traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems, which can be slow and cumbersome.

2. Basic Pre-Ordering Systems:

• Pre-Order Submission: Attendees use a mobile app or website to browse the menu and place their orders while at the event.
• Payment: Attendees pay for their orders through the app using credit/debit cards or mobile payment options.
• Order Notification: The system sends a notification to the vendor when a pre-order is placed.
• Order Processing: Vendors manually receive and process the pre-orders, which can lead to delays if the system is not well-integrated with their existing workflow.
• Pickup Line: People usually wait in line at the pick-up point after have made the order.

Issues:

• Limited Integration: Some venues offer basic pre-ordering options through phone apps, but these systems usually lack integration with the vendors' operations. This can lead to inefficiencies, such as miscommunication and delays in order fulfillment.