As I learned more about age verification and facial recognition for self-serve models, I wondered how much money I’d spend (especially on merch) if I ran into more of these quick-shop options. My wife thinks I have enough hats, but I could always use more. — Ethan Joyce
When Jamie Slotterback describes her view of the self-serve model in the F&B space, she explains a quick explosion, followed by an equally quick implosion.
Slotterback is the VP/marketing on Aramark Sports + Entertainment’s design and development team. In her seven years with the company, she saw a near-immediate implementation of speed lines that led to a traditional point of sale. During that time, she noticed a blanket approach that focused on pace while food and experience quality suffered. And when the industry realized this, she said, that blanket was yanked away.
“When we entered into this market, it was kind of being removed, and our team was just now coming together, building ourselves up,” Slotterback told SBJ. “And what we realized very quickly was it shouldn’t be removed. It shouldn’t be targeted.”
That resulted in numerous pilots during the last few years by the design and development team, trying to find the correct ratios of customers to equipment for self-serving spaces, then implementing those successes at scale. But one problem kept rearing its head: age verification for self-service alcohol purchasing. Forcing a hospitality worker to stand at the door and check every person’s ID created a bottleneck, along with the increased wait time tacked on before fans had even started their purchases.
Answering that question led to a three-year journey that turned into the pilot taking place at the Broncos’ Empower Field at Mile High Stadium. Aramark has produced nine Zippin stores with a new partnership integration from IDmission.
The company, which got its start in the financial sector, has introduced a product called “Identity as a Service.” With the scan of a QR code, customers can quickly provide their phone number, take a selfie and photos of their government ID and credit card through a web-based portal. From there, a face scan enables users to enter the Zippin store, grab their items and walk out. “This IDmission pilot at Broncos has been our most ideal use case,” Slotterback said.
Here’s a deeper look at IDmission, as well as the lessons from the first couple of Broncos games that have made the scale-up a success.
IDmission’s facial recognition platform, called “Identity as a Service,” is a web-based solution where users take a selfie, as well as photos of a government ID and credit card Aramark
Ashim Banerjee chuckled when asked about IDmission’s initial interest in the sports venue space. That’s because there was none, the IDmission CEO said. “We had no idea that the space even needed us,” Banerjee told SBJ.
That was until Aramark reached out in the last couple of years to help with the age/ID verification problem. IDmission started in 2011, originating out of the idea to establish identity securely through smartphones, an industry that was starting to attract more consumers.
Slotterback said that Aramark learned of IDmission through another partnership. And that initial outreach began with the simple question of “can you do this?” As previously mentioned, Aramark had looked at and experimented with other self-service options — Slotterback pointed out that earlier this summer, Aramark worked with Amazon One contactless pay for self-authentication and payment at Coors Field as an example. That effort, though, still required an interaction with a person. Slotterback pointed out that IDmission and Zippin were both willing to spend a ton of development time toward integration and making the tech work for the guest. “We landed on IDmission because of their ability to be flexible and nimble with us,” Slotterback said.
IDmission has integrated with Cecilia.ai and Drink Command in the self-service space (and previously with TendedBar). It also worked with Wicket on the Browns’ express beer-authentication program.
Katie Beattie, the director of marketing for Aramark’s design and development team, added that the initial phase of a pilot process features many “nitty gritty” conversations, especially when working on a project that’s made from scratch. Once the time came for beta testing, Beattie said the team reviewed numerous demos and screenshots, going through the signup process as well to get a firsthand look at user experience. “Essentially, for lack of better words, we tried to break it,” Beattie said. “Can we break this? The answer was no.”
What helped set IDmission apart even more was the security of the profile and transaction. This works due to IDmission’s passive liveness detection. The system can determine the difference between a human face and an attempt to deceive (like a photo of a person, an image of someone’s face on a screen or a person wearing a mask). Banerjee said this function took IDmission a year-and-a-half to create with the help of AI and machine learning. He said IDmission used roughly 1.5 million images — half of them of live people and the other half featuring deception attempts — as part of the training. IDmission even took the tech to Madame Tussauds in Las Vegas to test on the lifelike wax figures, which the AI could differentiate from flesh and blood.
Banerjee said IDmission has to retrain a new model every two weeks to enhance the AI’s capability, a process that’s created at least 60 new models. “It’s a very tedious, long, drawn-out affair,” Banerjee said. “But once you do it, it works.”
With a quick face scan, users can enter a Zippin store, where they can shop and leave quickly, without having to take out their wallet or phoneAramark
Aramark rolled out the Zippin stores featuring IDmission by introducing three of the nine for the first Broncos home game against the Raiders on Sept. 10. This increased to six for the second game (Sept. 17 vs. the Commanders) and all nine for the third game on (Oct. 8 vs. the Jets).
That initial release on the first game day yielded some positive results and, even more important, feedback that could be acted on right away. Before the third game, Beattie mentioned that know-before-you-go emails were sent out to season-ticket holders. Aramark placed flyers in some seating sections that featured the QR code to sign up for an IDmission profile. Staffers also handed business card-sized takeaways as another way to get signup information to the fans looking to potentially use the self-service option.
Feedback from user surveys resulted in some additional interactional language on the screen during the facial scan. “Game One, you scan your face and it’s processing, it’s doing all the things, the gates open, but it’s not communicating with the customer,” Beattie said. “So we have some steps within that interface flow that says, processing, you may enter, enjoy — super-simple things on the screen that really make a difference and make people realize, ‘OK, great, this is working for me.’”
Slotterback said another useful piece of the process came when IDmission staffers visited two preseason games, an away game against the 49ers on Aug. 19 and a home game with the Rams on Aug. 26, to see F&B sales in real time. That was an eye-opening experience, Slotterback felt, to understand the need for the ID-check point of friction to be removed. Beattie added that the experience made the IDmission staff “even more hungry.”
Early returns have looked strong for the Zippin-IDmission stores. Banerjee said earlier this month that 10,000-plus people had signed up. A positive sign early on was that 36% of consumers using the Zippin-IDmission stores returned two or more times.
Slotterback did not share any of the financial details of the partnership between Aramark and IDmission, but she indicated that it is a partnership based on learning that seems to have a lot of promise. She also sees a vision where this work with IDmission could grow throughout Aramark’s offerings, which exist in nine other NFL venues: Acrisure Stadium, Cleveland Browns Stadium, Arrowhead Stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, M&T Bank Stadium, NRG Stadium, Paycor Stadium, Soldier Field and U.S. Bank Stadium.
“It will expand,” Slotterback said of this Mile High experiment. “It’s really about getting the scale within one venue to make sure that we have it perfected. We’re very close to being very happy with where we’re landing.”
Aramark has partnered with IDmission to integrate the company’s facial recognition software into nine Zippin stores around Mile High Stadium for a completely self-serve experience — with age verificationAramark
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