The start of Major League Soccer’s 2024 season is also the time for unveiling new additions to stadium technology, and on the checkout-free concession stand front Inter Miami CF is in the early lead with the announcement of four new Zippin-powered stores now open at Chase Stadium.
The 21,550-seat stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the U.S. home for soccer superstar Lionel Messi’s skills, can also claim to be the host of the newest style of Zippin store, a layout the company is calling “Zippin Walk-up Outdoors.” For this type of stand, the Zippin checkout-free technology of gates, cameras and other systems is integrated into existing or portable outdoors stands — either by building it into existing outdoor structures, or by deploying it inside a tent.
According to Zippin, the new type of store is possible thanks to some new versions of Zippin technology that is “resistant to outdoor conditions such as sunlight, humidity, and temperature fluctuations.” At Inter Miami’s Chase Stadium the concession area includes a lot of container-housed stands as well as tents. According to Zippin, its new format could bring the checkout-free revolution to an entirely new venue market, one that could include spaces like golf courses, ski areas and music festivals.
“We are excited to bring the magic of checkout-free retail to Chase Stadium with our unique, outdoor-friendly format,” said Krishna Motukuri, CEO and co-founder of Zippin, in a prepared statement.
The four stores puts Inter Miami ahead of MLS cohort St. Louis City SC, which opened three Zippin stores at its new home, CityPark, last year. The CityPark Zippin stores, however, are larger stores with hot food kitchens at the back of each one. But the Inter Miami stores may be part of the next wave of checkout-free, where the technology is pared down for more flexible and less-expensive deployments.
“We’ve been working tirelessly during our short offseason to introduce technology to decrease wait times and expand the variety of our exceptional food offerings with the goal of elevating and providing a memorable matchday experience to our fans at Chase Stadium,” said Laurence McMillon, Inter Miami’s director of food & beverage, in a prepared statement that also talked about some new menu offerings at the venue.
For Zippin, the four new stores add to its market lead in the stadium-specific checkout-free concession stand space. Now with 82 stores worldwide (six of which are publicly unannounced but Stadium Tech Report was able to independently confirm their existence), Zippin is ahead of competitors Amazon (55 stores) and AiFi (20 stores) though we expect these numbers to change fairly soon as we get confirmations on some rumored new stores.
We probably won’t update our industry market charts until after the start of the U.S. major league baseball season, so you can peruse our market totals and the locations of all the stadium stores we knew about last fall until then.
