ANAHEIM The fate of about 500 food-and-beverage-service employees remains unclear as Legends Hospitality this week assumed concession operations at Angel Stadium.
The Angels dropped their 13-year-old concession contract with Aramark and signed on with Legends, which is owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Checketts Partners Investor Fund.
The company already manages stadium concessions for the Yankees, the Cowboys, the Washington Redskins, the Jacksonville Jaguars and at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Legends also will operate concessions at the Angels’ spring-training facility in Tempe, Ariz., beginning next year.
Legends is interviewing prospective employees, but expected many of the existing concession workers to return at the start of the 2014 baseball season, said company spokesman Eric Gelfand.
Officials with Legends and the employee union, Unite Here Local 11, said negotiations are ongoing but declined to comment further.
Gelfand said the company plans to “identify new opportunities for service enhancement” at Angel Stadium.
Three months ago, Honda Center dropped Aramark and took concession operations in-house for its events, including concerts and Ducks hockey games. Honda Center hired 756 part-time concession workers – a 34 percent increase in positions, arena officials said. Of that, 75 former Aramark employees were hired back
An Aramark spokeswoman did not return two phone calls seeking comment on Thursday.
In the meantime, Unite Here Local 11 officials said they dropped a lawsuit aimed at barring Honda Center’s management from hiring any new concession employees. However, union officials said they plan to move ahead with a separate class-action lawsuit filed in August, alleging that Honda Center’s management company violated state law when it did not retain most of Aramark’s employees after terminating the concession contract.
Contact the writer: 714-704-3769 or amarroquin@ocregister.com
