Famous catering company prepping 600K pounds of food for F1
The Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix is expected to have 100,000 daily attendees, and one company is bringing over 600,000 pounds of food to the city for the event.
Wolfgang Puck Catering is partnering with Formula One and Food Fleet to provide food to grandstand and general admission ticket holders for the F1 race. Wolfgang Puck Catering won’t provide food to every attendee as some venues hosting fans will provide food for their own culinary experience.
The company is preparing to serve 60,000 people each day and 180,000 people during the race weekend, which is nearly three times the 65,000-person maximum capacity of Allegiant Stadium.
“Cooking for 180,000 people is not going to happen overnight,” said Eric Klein, senior vice president of culinary for Wolfgang Puck Catering. “There’s a lot of planning, a lot of organization, fulfilling all the needs and the volume based on a couple of days of execution, basically 60,000 people a day from Thursday, Friday, Saturday.”
The company is flying in a significant amount of its resources to Las Vegas to feed the tens of thousands of racing fans. The company plans to bring in over 600,000 pounds of food, as well as flying in 114 employees who include chefs and contractors and hiring over 900 temporary employees to staff the food stands, according to a Wolfgang Puck Catering spokesperson.
And planning for the massive event didn’t start overnight.
Plans to cook and serve all of the food have been in the works for the past year, Klein said. The existing Wolfgang Puck affiliated restaurants in Las Vegas — Spago, CUT and the Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill — will help store and prep some of the food for the catering operations.
This isn’t the first high-profile event for Wolfgang Puck Catering as it has catered the Oscars before, but the Grand Prix is the largest event the company has ever taken on, Klein said. He said the Oscars usually has 10,000 people to feed.
The food offered by Wolfgang Puck Catering won’t be as complex as the items served at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants in Las Vegas. Rather the items will be “food for everyone” that will still have high-quality ingredients but can be served in the hectic environment of a Formula One Grand Prix, Klein said
“We don’t want to dilute the brand we’re going to do food that represents ourselves,” he said.
There are 10 total items that are being offered by Wolfgang Puck Catering including shake ramen, chinois chicken salad, short rib grilled cheese and fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Klein said all the items will be served the “Wolfgang Puck” way.
“We’re going to have to do the quantities, but we don’t try to jeopardize quality and quality is the most important thing,” Klein said.
Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.