By the numbers alone, the Calgary Stampede is a massive undertaking.

By the end of the 10 days at the park, more than a million visitors will have passed through the gates of the Stampede—and keeping them watered, fed, and entertained takes an army of staff and a largely hidden operation that if all goes right, no visitor will likely ever see.

Some 250 Calgary Stampede logistics staff, along with the dozens of staff from partners like Gordon Food Service (GFS) and Coca-Cola, handle all of the supply and logistics for the Stampede.

That includes supplying some 30,000 cans of beer a day (300,000 by the end of the festival), hundreds of bottles of wine and liquor, 5,000 cases of Coca-Cola products a day, cooking up hot meals and cold at 18 on-park kitchens, issuing the hundreds of uniforms that park staff wear, and delivering the dozens of artists playing on the Coca-Cola and Big Four stages—and filling those sometimes demanding artist riders.

“My team will purchase over $5 million in purchases and invoices just for food and beverage,” said John Wattman, Logistics Manager for the BMO Centre and Calgary Stampede.

“There’s three distribution warehouses on park, three separate warehouse teams, and then logistics, the uniforms and merchandising component of it is also my department as well. So we deploy all of the merchandising, as well as the food, as well as the beverage, and as well as the assets like tables and chairs.

“I know this year we’ve distributed over 5,000 cowboy hats to the different committees.”

Wattman himself was recruited to the Calgary Stampede pre-pandemic to run the Stampede’s food and beverage logistics, after overseeing operations at big corporations like Best Buy and Ikea, and food and beverage experience in both Canada and the United States.

When the pandemic hit, he said it allowed the Stampede to revamp the way the organization looked at logistics, transforming it from a food- and beverage focus to an overall holistic approach to logistics.

That pivot to more efficient operations in the face of a real crisis was not the first for the organization. The 2013 floods, which devastated the telecommunications and broadcasting capabilities of the Stampede were also overhauled to become among the best in the world.

The Grandstand Show shuts down, and then the real action starts up

Just mere hours after the Stampede closes its doors to the public, the hidden side of the Stampede begins to ramp up again in preparation for another day.

Wattman said that on the park’s value entry days like Kids’ Day, Family Day, or Community Day, which all feature earlier entry times, the work begins far earlier for logistics staff.

“For the early morning breakfasts, the team starts at two or three o’clock in the morning,” he said.

A more leisurely day, like day seven where the opening time was 10 a.m. as opposed to 8 a.m., gave the team more time to prepare.

Part of the challenge is the massive amount of food, beverage, and goods that have to be put into place to make the visitor experience seamless.

Work begins early preparing meals at two of the park’s kitchens located at the BMO Centre just steps away from Bay 10.

An upper kitchen provides meals – hot and cold – to all of the various events and venues at the BMO Centre itself—from Brand Room soirées to the Wine Cellar Experience located in the Champions Ballroom.

The lower, he said, supplies the rest of the park, including venues like corporate hosting at the Big Four Roadhouse. Cold food like salads and desserts are transported to coolers at those venues, but hot food is prepared throughout the day and delivered within minutes to waiting visitors.

“We have many committees and volunteers, hundreds of offices, hundreds of different meeting rooms and staff rooms, and every day they request water, chips, pop, charcuterie. Whatever that looks like, that all comes out of this main kitchen,” Wattman said.

“When it comes to the premium seating, obviously Ranahan’s, Clubhouse, 30X, infield suites: they all have their own kitchens that produce for those venues.”

Serving the clientele at those locations can be a logistics challenge in itself. Smaller orders of higher-value products mean it takes a lot more work to predict and prepare for those demands—and like every other aspect of delivery at the Calgary Stampede, the clock is always ticking down.

“It’s a little different up there because we’re expected to have the same guest experience on day one as day 10, basically because they are upscale clientele,” said Joey Quigley, premium seating purchaser for liquor and logistics supervisor for the Calgary Stampede.

Tequila, Whiskey, Beer

Quigley, speaking to LiveWire Calgary outside of one of the large GMC stadium chill rooms, said that the experience of serving products in a venue like Ranahan is logistically different than supplying one of the stadium bars that have a handful of stock-keeping units (SKUs) versus more than 500 for the premium venues.

“It’s hard honestly, because you never know what they’re going to drink that day. We go on different runs every single day of different products. Yesterday, we went through 50 bottles of $400 tequila at one table, and then the next day, nobody will drink that. They flip over to expensive wine, so it’s kind of a balancing act on that just trying to maintain,” Quigley said.

Serving two sets of 17,000 guests that will visit the rodeo and chuckwagon racing in the afternoon and then again in the evening is its own set of challenges.

“The first couple of days are pretty challenging because we’re bringing it in. We don’t have stock for the most part, it’s always new for us. Then as we get going and people get into a rhythm, things get better,” said Tyler Mercer, Food and Beverage Operations Manager at Calgary Stampede.

Bryn Davis, a warehouse manager for the Calgary Stampede said that during the past few days of heat, a lot of the focus has been on providing what visitors demand: Water.

“We’re making sure that we’re keeping up with our water supply, and then it’s also more coolers. People are drinking more of the sweeter stuff, and just making sure that everything’s staying cold and that we’re flipping things in the warehouse so that everything is going out cold,” Davis said.

Space is always at a premium. The Stampede has several chiller rooms and dozens of refrigerated trucks scattered strategically across the park to store all of the beverages that customers will demand.

Hot doesn’t always mean better

The ideal temperature for the Stampede in terms of the balance of products sold, said Wattman, was about 22 degrees Celsius.

“That’s when people seem to eat more, drink more. When it gets too hot, it becomes more water, and too cold, coffee,” he said.

When the weather gets hot there is a shifting interest in the types of alcohol that visitors want to purchase.

“When it comes to liquor and red wine and white wine, that’s really dependent on weather. So, if it’s a hot Stampede, we know we’re going to go through more rosé and white wine, and less red wine, and probably more coolers,” Wattman said.

Although it has meant less red wine sales, the hot weather has been good for some of the partners of the Calgary Stampede.

Patrick Roy, Sales Execution Lead for Coca-Cola Canada, said that the brand has done major sales at the park so far this year.

“We’ve done over 35,000 cases down to the park since Stampede started. We still got three days to go. I’m pretty pumped,” Roy said.

“We’ve been really fortunate this year with the excellent weather. Everyone wants to stay hydrated, and it’s always great working with the Stampede. It’s good for them. It’s good for us. It’s good for everybody.”

He said that Coca-Cola creates a miniature logistics centre at the park each year, which is a mirror-in-small of their main distribution centre in Calgary.

“We deliver products here daily, get it organized and coordinated, and then out to all of our vendors as needed,” Roy said.

“The best thing and the worst thing about the Stampede is there’s lots of people, so it’s hard to get product out in the afternoon. We want to try and get as much done in the morning while we got some quiet time and cooler temperatures for the staff to work in.”

Wattman said that for another one of the Stampede’s partners, Calgary brewer Banded Peak, the hot weather has led to exceptional sales of their beer.

“We actually exceeded our Banded Peak right on target by day three, so we’re out of Banded Peak right now. That’s how the heat affected the projections,” he said.

Safety first on park, and not always in ways obvious to the visitor experience

While keeping people cool with beverages is an obvious way that the Stampede keeps people safe from the heat, the other aspect of the safety comes from the uniform component of Stampede logistics.

“Because of the heat, Natalie, who’s in charge of our uniforms department, went ahead and ordered like 3,000 bandanas just to give to all the staff around the park, just to keep them safe,” said Wattman.

The other side of safety is how the team operates throughout the day.

An hour before opening, the Stampede logistics team can use vehicles to deliver anything that needs to be delivered directly.

Past that time, when the Midway fills up with workers and eventually visitors, it’s less safe. The team has two options as a result, and neither of them is efficient.

“We have only until 10 o’clock to get everything onto the park. After that, that’s where the tricky part comes. So we actually have an eight-kilometer route where we physically leave the park. We leave all the way around, and come in on the other side by 25 Avenue,” Wattman said.

“That’s why it’s key to get up to snuff early in the morning. S,o if you ever see any [Stampede] vehicles driving through Ramsey, or out there, that’s because they’re bringing some food or beverage.”

Hidden behind the Nutrien Centre and the agricultural barns is a roadway that bisects the north end of the park into and around GMC Stadium. It’s there that those deliveries that don’t make the morning cutoff will travel to, and where GFS staff will do what Wattman calls “last minute hot shot” deliveries.

That’s people-powered, hand-cart deliveries direct to vendors and venues, often for things that need replenishing throughout the day, like ice.

The majority of those hot shots are young Calgarians working their first job and are generally the kids of GFS staff members or the children of vendors that GFS serves.

Between 50,000 to 60,000 cases of deliveries will go through GFS throughout the 10 days of the Stampede, as the compound receives deliveries on the hour. Comparatively, GFS will deliver about 25,000 cases to the Stampede throughout the rest of the year.

Hidden in plain sight by design

While the hot shots are likely the most visible of the largely invisible legion of logistics employees—wearing high-vis vests and pushing hand cards throughout the park—much of the operations that make the visitor experience happen seamlessly are hidden away.

A philosophy that’s appropriate for the Stampede, which has been hosting a Disney event concurrently with the 10-day festival, the shared goal is to ensure that guests don’t see the inner workings of how they are served.

A few feet behind Nashville North is the recycling compound for all of the cans, bottles, and paper that are produced at GMC Stadium, Nutrien Centre, and at Nashville North

Wattman said that they process at least 50,000 cans per day from those locations and many more bottles of water.

Being efficient, and environmentally friendly was among the reasons for the amalgamation of the Stampede’s logistics departments, he said.

“Instead of having logistics for food and beverage, then you have it mobilized into one. So what you’ll very rarely see empty is trucks going anywhere. They get loaded to their capacity, right down to at least the top three inches, so we reduce our emissions that way,” Wattman said.

“With the new BMO Centre coming online, all of the equipment we bought has been electric.”

Above the recycling centre, inside of an ATCO trailer, is one of the auxiliary locations where the logistics team processes invoices and orders.

“So much happens in this area. I mean, just the volume that this building does. The dollar value is the biggest on park,” Wattman said.

People, not just products need delivery at the Calgary Stampede

Take a few steps back into Nashville North, or just to the west, the Coca-Cola Stage and the Big Four Stage, the Stampede logistics team will be dealing with a very different type of delivery.

Getting musicians, performers, and VIPs to and from the venues is another hidden aspect of the Stampede operation.

The pathway that leads to back-of-house at the Coca-Cola Stage and extends to the Big Four, said Wattman, is called affectionately by the Stampede as entertainment alley.

He said that delivering the artists is a combination of both the in-house Events Team, and third-party transportation.

“I’m saying like how many kitchens and how many bars, but nobody really understands the complexity of the riders for the entertainment.”

Riders are part of the contractual obligations that venues have to fulfill for an artist to perform, and the Calgary Stampede has an entire department dedicated to ensuring those riders are fulfilled correctly.

“The riders could change daily depending upon the entertainer. One person may want a $700 bottle of tequila that we have to somehow find, but they put in all the dressing rooms prior to their arrival,” Wattman said.

Wattman referenced the urban legend about M&Ms and Van Halen, about the common perception of that band being demanding. But in reality, the riders are a way to indicate to artists that the venue they’re performing at has attention to detail, and more importantly safe to perform at, he said.

Unlike the grand finales for those concerts, the real finale for the logistics teams takes place on the Monday after the 10 days of the Stampede are over—a mirror of the final handful of days of preparation that led up to sneak-a-peek.

“This load in started 10 days before Stampede, but the food and beverage component of it actually started a month and a half before Stampede,” said Wattman.

Inside the new BMO Centre, all of the 250-plus vendors were aligned to a grid system drawn right into the concrete itself.

Another hidden feature that makes the experience seamless for guests, and unless people knew what they were looking for, would have likely missed.

“We were toying with the idea of laser mapping the floors for set it up, and we’re still working on that for large trade shows year round where we just project lasers and say, ‘OK that’s where this booth goes. That’s where that goes.’ This looks relatively simple, but it’s a really intense process to get these people in and out, and then during the 10 days getting replenished,” Wattman said.

Some of the vendors in the BMO Centre would be replenished up to five times per day, he said. It’s all handled by a software control system and work performed in 25 out of 29 loading docks at the convention centre—four being dedicated for sole Calgary Stampede use during the 10 days.

While at the start of the Monday after North American Midway would be packing up the rides and the food booths to travel to their next show, for the Stampede the work to prepare for the next year’s Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth begins again, said Wattman.

“We always work way in advance. I already know next year’s stuff, it’s going to be challenging because we have Rotary next year. That’s expected to be about a 30,000 to 35,000 person convention, and they do not load out until just under a week [ahead of Stampede 2025].”