For those who frequent the golf links at Harbour Town every year for the RBC Heritage, you likely know your way around the track out there like the back of your hand. If you’ve been attending for decades, you probably know where to find the coldest beverages, cleanest rest rooms, and most underrated shade trees when Mother Nature is attempting to unleash summer on us. It happens.
But what you likely don’t know is how much work goes into the logistics that make it all work.
Ropes, tents, signage, walkways, tickets, merchandise, and the rest of it are a massive undertaking – and we aren’t going to dive into that. My department is the food, of course – from the curated to the grub and everything pretty much in between.
Last month, I spent a few minutes chatting with Matt Roher, who is not only an old friend, but also the food and beverage director at Sea Pines Resort. He shares a little about what we already know. Feeding the masses for a week is a year-round job – and, oh yeah, then there’s a multi-million-dollar corporate event dropped in the middle of it.
Jesse Blanco: As we have this chat, we could say 30 days ahead of Heritage, but the arrivals begin about the end of the Masters weekend. As guys start getting cut, they start showing up here the weekend before what is considered Heritage week, correct?
Jesse Blanco, host of Eat it and Like it!
Matt Roher: That’s 100% correct. We feel pretty fortunate that the PGA Tour players love us, because they have this pressure cooker up in Augusta, and a lot of times they’ll come out of that, they have to get on planes and go fly somewhere else. And you’re absolutely right, as the cuts start, they start arriving. So it happens, it’s real.
JB: The champion and maybe the last group are hanging around for TV and the whole thing up in Augusta, but everybody else has pretty much skipped town and they’re rolling onto Hilton Head.
MR: That’s exactly right.
JB: I’m sure it’s a year-round thing, but how far back can we look at the calendar and say, OK, what are we going to be offering food-wise for Heritage? When does that kick off?
MR: We start very early. We have about at least a dozen, if not more, of the hospitality engagements on the course. We have all the major sponsors – Boeing, RBC, and Coca-Cola and all these big dogs out there. And then we have a couple of concessions; we run all the bars. We feed upwards of 15,000 people a day, easily. For a lot of that, we partner with our suppliers – US Foods, beverage suppliers, beer, wine, liquor suppliers. Basically, at the turn of the calendar year, we’re prepping, we’re planning, and we’re getting the logistics under control. So right now, we feel like we’re on the doorstep of this thing,
JB: You say you handle all the corporate tenting and all that, for RBC and Coca-Cola and other corporate sponsors. Do they have input on what the food is going to be? Do you have to have meetings with them and their people? It sounds like a lot of work.
MR: Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot of back and forth. Most of them have their own internal event planners and hospitality leads. So, our people – my corporate chef lead, our catering sales director – work on the menus, and we try to have them in place months before we start the process of collaboration with other entities. As you can imagine, we’re trying to overlap and have redundancy as much as possible. The last thing you want to have is 200 unique items out there. In an ideal world, you have one shot, one kill, and one menu for everybody. That’s not ever been the case, but we’re getting better at it. Right now, I would say we probably have maybe 60 or 70 unique items that will go out over the course, just to the hospitality boxes. Of course, the restaurants here at Sea Pines are a whole ’nother animal.
JB: I would think the most requested thing is seafood, but does it drill down even more, and everybody wants shrimp?
MR: Yes, tons and tons of shrimp. And we are a domestic East Coast exclusive environment here – that’s something that we started years and years ago. This tournament has really been taxing on our local guys, so it’s tough for them to supply, but everything’s coming out of at least the region. But you’re absolutely right, in the traditional shrimp sense, like Forrest Gump, I could go on and on about the many ways we’re cooking it. But it’s also wings, like the casual, kind of “in the hand” food. Sliders are big. In certain locations, we’re doing our Defending Champion Burger, which is a cool concept that we came up with. People are looking for healthy stuff too, so we have to provide that as well, especially on the breakfast side. And the players – we handle all the players, the players’ families, all their support teams, and we have very specific, tour-mandated programming that has to go along with that.
JB: That’s … – I’m almost speechless! We’ve just scratched the surface of all the things that you guys have to juggle to feed everybody. We haven’t even talked about my “average Joe” experience – walking up and wanting to get some food. So, give us a number: How many pounds of shrimp would you say you do for that week?
MR: If we’re doing anything less than a thousand, I’d be shocked, honestly. But, really, I don’t want to overstate it.
JB: Let’s talk about the Defending Champion Burger.
MR: So, Justin Thomas won last year, right? So, he had the opportunity to design the burger. It’s a little bit of a California twist that he’s got on it – smashed avocado, fried egg, pepper jack cheese – which is pretty cool. It’s great.
JB: Very good. Anything new for the average consumer who’s going to be attending and looking for something different?
MR: One of our concessions that’s open to the public is the Fraser’s Tavern Pavilion. If you’re familiar with the clubhouse, it’s right in between 9 green and 10 tee, and it’s a really cool program. We’ve got the smoker down there, kind of a Southern barbecue experience, and that’s also where we serve the Defending Champion Burger.
JB: Anything else that stands out, that you guys just really crush – that someone should get their hands on?
MR: Well, so as far as the actual food concessions out there on the course, SERG Group, our local Hilton Head restaurant group, runs a lot of that. We run all of Harbour Town, so we have the Quarterdeck, we have Harborside – with all the steamed seafood and all that fun stuff.
JB: It’s obviously all hands on deck that week. Your management team is working how many hours that week?
MR: All of them.
JB: So, if you’re not sleeping, you’re working, right? Do you have any extra help that comes in?
MR: Our network has grown over the years, and we have a great relationship with the chef team up at Augusta National. The executive chef for Berckmans Place and Augusta National is Roberto Bustillo, an incredibly talented guy, legendary chef in the industry, and dear friend. He’s kind of the opening act for us. We have worked it out with him where a lot of his team and a lot of his talent that he brings in basically just kind of keeps on going. They come here and we put them up. It’s like getting the band back together every year now. It’s pretty neat.
JB: That’s pretty cool. Well, I’m looking forward to coming to hang out a little bit and eating some of the food. I think I’m going to be paying a visit to, what is it, the Calibogue Club up there at 16?
MR: Yes.
JB: I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be a good time. I won’t stop you if you’re running through because everybody’s hair on fire.
MR: We always make time for you, Jesse.
JB: I appreciate that. Anything else that I might be forgetting that people should know about food, and what you can get? There’s healthy options, I know, there’s a little bit of something for everybody, isn’t there?
MR: You mentioned Calibogue Club – very eclectic, and that’s a ticketed hospitality, with an elevated experience in there. Also, you have the Lighthouse Club, over on the 18th green. At the end of the day on Saturday and particularly Sunday, as the winners are coming down 18 there, it’s electric. That’s also an elevated ticket experience there, but it’s lots of incredible food all in and around that 18 area, especially 17 green, 18 tee, and then as it extends out, you’ve got a lot of different really cool concession options there.
