6 October 2023
Ryan Perlberg has seen Oriole Park at Camden Yards through the ups and the downs.
His gourmet hot dog business, Stuggy’s, has been a staple at the ballpark for 11 years, slinging franks topped with jumbo lump crabmeat, macaroni and cheese, chili, jerk chicken and more from a stall in Section 71 on the stadium’s lower level.
For some of those years — when the Orioles had a losing record and sparse attendance — business could be slow. This season has been a different story.
“We’ve been there when it was a lot harder times,” Perlberg said last week, as the team clinched the division and geared up for its first postseason appearance since 2016. “To be along for the journey through all the bad years and the good years makes the good years taste sweeter.”
With the Orioles scheduled to host Game 1 of the American League Division Series at 1:03 p.m. Saturday, Camden Yards’ concessions vendors have been doing some prep work of their own. Sellout crowds mean soaring demand for hot dogs, hamburgers, nachos and other ballpark snacks.
At Stuggy’s, Perlberg is stocking up on “thousands of dogs” and “hundreds and hundreds of pounds of crabmeat.” He’s also doubling the size of his staff to help keep the lines moving.
The Orioles and Levy, the stadium’s concessions operator, send vendors a projection of tickets sold before each game to help them decide how much food to have on hand.
“If there’s 15,000 to 20,000 tickets, obviously you prepare accordingly,” Perlberg said.
But sellout crowds usually translate to sold-out vendors.
“When you have a sellout, there’s never enough,” he said. “We order as much as we can physically stuff in the coolers.”
Managing the hungry hordes isn’t always a home run. As attendance swelled this season, some baseball fans took to social media to complain about long lines for concessions and sold-out staples. Others have criticized the quality of the food.
Maybe it was the taste of success, but baseball fans chowing down on hot dogs, nachos and pit beef sandwiches during a recent Orioles-Washington Nationals homestand didn’t have many complaints.
Ben and Johanna Ricker of Annapolis said a summer visit to another Major League Baseball stadium — which they declined to name — made them nostalgic for the hot dogs in Baltimore.
“The food there kind of sucked,” Johanna Ricker said. “It made us miss Camden Yards.”
Representatives from Levy said they anticipate serving as many as 120,000 fans at Camden Yards during the postseason. The ballparks will be staffed by 1,100 concessions employees during the ALDS. The hospitality operator expects to sell 9,000 hot dogs, 3,300 pretzels, 1,500 gallons of soda and 11,000 bottles of water per day.
Levy is rolling out new items for the series, as well, including some autumn-themed offerings.
The new menu, which can be found in the Camden Commons in Section 72 of the lower concourse, includes “fall classic fries,” topped with turkey, gravy and pickled carrots; a “double play burger,” topped with pit beef, jack cheese, caramelized onions, fried onions and horseradish; and a “pumpkin spiced pork sandwich,” with hickory-smoked pulled pork, pumpkin butter barbecue sauce and kale chips.
The Orioles picked Levy to be the stadium’s concessions operator earlier this year, ending a 13-year contract with former concessions manager Delaware North.
The Chicago-based hospitality business — which handles concessions at nearly 200 venues across the country, including ballparks like Nationals Park in Washington, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida — brought new technology to the stadium as well as menu updates. Where there were once cashiers, some vendor stalls now have self-checkout kiosks where customers can ring up their own orders. Several shops inside the ballpark also feature “checkout-free” technology that uses video cameras to take stock of the food and drinks people decide to buy.
The idea, Levy’s vice of president of hospitality and strategy Greg Costa said at the start of the season, is to create a “seamless process” to speed up checkout.
But at some small stalls like Factoria Maria, vendors still handle payment the old-fashioned way. At the stall, located on the stadium’s lower level, one employee took payment with a credit card machine while another cooked up hearty pupusas, corn tortillas filled with pork, cheese and beans.
Factoria Maria is a recent addition to the ballpark. The business got its start at RFK Stadium in Washington and was invited to run a pop-up at Camden Yards after another vendor fell through, said Joselyne Polio, who runs the stall with her mother, father and sister Maria. The pop-up did so well that stadium officials decided to make it a permanent fixture.
“The smell brings people in,” Polio said. So does the variety: for baseball fans tired of hot dogs and nachos, pupusas are something new to try. She added quesadillas to the menu, too, to appeal to a broader audience. Polio said she plans to “bulk up on food” ahead of the playoffs.
“I’m ready, I’m excited,” she said. “I was made for this.”
Perlberg, the Stuggy’s owner, recently opened a second location of his hot dog stall on the stadium’s upper level as Camden Yards gets ready for the playoffs. Stuggy’s Express, located in Section 386, is part of the plan “to accommodate for the masses of customers that are going to be coming,” he said.
Boog’s BBQ will also have an upper-level satellite stall.
But for the right meal, some baseball fans don’t mind a wait.
Jack Vaccarino spent 15 minutes in line to buy his favorite ballpark snack, a Boog’s pit beef sandwich. Vaccarino, of Eldersburg, said he’s been to more than a dozen O’s games this season and that he usually goes for the pit beef.
He expects to do the same when the team starts its ALDS run. And he’s ready to brave the crowds.
“I can’t wait,” Vaccarino said. “I’ll wait in line if I have to.”
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