World

The South African chef feeding 40,000 baseball fans a night

Shaun Jacobs • 17 May 2026

South Africa-born chef Jaco Dreyer is the man responsible for feeding 40,000 baseball fans four times a week for seven months of the year.

As executive chef at the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park in the United States, Dreyer and his team produce over one million hot dogs every year and a similar number of hamburgers.

Baseball in America is as known for home runs and strikeouts as it is for the food eaten in the stands, with a ballpark hot dog considered a central part of popular culture.

The food eaten at baseball stadiums was born out of necessity, providing the basis for the fast-food revolution in the second half of the 20th century.

This is because food at a baseball game had to be served so spectators could eat with one hand, as the other was traditionally occupied by a scorecard.

Fans also need to be able to carry food from the concourse to their seats alongside a drink, while hot-dog vendors need something simple to put together while walking around the stands.

This necessity resulted in the birth of the hot dog, with German immigrants supposedly introducing “daschund sausages”, now known as wieners, to America in the 19th century.

It did not take long for concessionaires to slip the sausages into soft rolls to make them easier to distribute and eat among large crowds.

Putting the sausage in a roll negated the need for cutlery and packaging, as it was effectively housed in the bread.

Burgers soon joined hot dogs as a baseball park staple, as they are easy to make, package, and eat while on the move.

More recently, the food available at baseball games has changed, with food and beverage becoming increasingly critical to the franchise’s financial health.

Hot dogs sold at Major League Baseball games are estimated to generate over $100 million in revenue per season, making them a critical source of revenue for teams and owners.

Nowadays, the menus at baseball stadiums go beyond the traditional hot dog and hamburger, with them now including tacos and increasingly high-end ‘clubs’ or ‘members-only areas’.

This makes them more lucrative but also increasingly complex to source ingredients and prepare for a baseball game.

For the Atlanta Braves, playing out of Truist Park, the responsibility falls to South African-born Dreyer, who manages four separate kitchens at the stadium.

Feeding 40,000 Americans

Speaking to Food & Wine, Dreyer explained how he manages Truist Park’s food scene, with the sheer scale of the operation eye-watering.

On the day of a home game, Dreyer oversees the unloading of 2,500 litres of ice cream, 3,500 kilograms of popcorn, 8,000 kilograms of cheese, and 33,000 kilograms of French fries.

However, this is not when the work starts, with Dreyer planning the menu for the season nearly six months before the first pitch is thrown.

“Concession sales are fast-paced. When I design a menu for concessions, it is all about speed and simplicity,” Dreyer explained.

“There are 40,000 fans that need to be fed in around four hours. We have to have what they want when they want it. It is all about being faster and boiling it down to the minimum.”

A key consideration is the ability for fans to take their food from the concession stands to their seats, ideally in one hand.

“It doesn’t seem complex. They are just hamburgers or hot dogs, but if I ask you to make 24 different types of hot dogs, I am sure it will be difficult,” Dreyer said.

Coupled with the high-end Delta and Truist clubs, the menu available for a home game quickly stretches to nearly 100 items.

Dreyer manages this through a highly centralised system, with the unloaded food distributed to four main kitchens where prep occurs.

For some of the proteins on offer, preparations begin weeks in advance, as the briskets, pork belly, and other cuts need to be smoked in-house several days before the next home game.

From these kitchens, the food is distributed to over 90 concession stands where they are served to fans, with limited equipment required at the end point.

Remarkably, the food, while prepped in advance, is still cooked to order as much as possible, with the finishing touches occurring in front of the fans.

Each concession stand will receive an average of 1,000 orders on a gameday, with burgers, hot dogs, and fries cooked just before they are served.

“If I can take something as simple as food and make you smile. That, for me, is a job well done. That’s why I got into cooking,” Dreyer said.