“Sweet, savory, or experiential?”
When asked to choose the most critical F&B trend for attractions, all three operators on the IAAPA Honors Brass Ring panel answered, hands down: experiential.
IAAPA Honors is IAAPA‘s annual recognition event, where the year’s Brass Ring Excellence Award winners are celebrated. The 2026 edition ran May 12 – 14 at Hotel Xcaret Mexico, on the Riviera Maya south of Cancun. Ken Whiting, President of Whiting’s Food Concessions, moderated the Food and Beverage Excellence Award Panel on Wednesday morning, which reinforced the ‘food as narrative’ trend I’ve been watching creep into the industry over the past few years.
“We not only want our guests to eat the food, we want them to play with it and to experience it all at the same time,” said Sandy Le, Director of Marketing and Sales at Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park (winner of Best New Special Event or Festival).
“Immersive dining, experimental, that’s what the guests want right now,” said Anthony Pratt, Director of Business Operations at Vancouver Aquarium (2026 finalist and a multi-year previous Brass Ring winner).
“Treating F & B not as a secondary amenity, but a core element of the narrative for our entire site,” said Tommy Schatz-Thompson, PMP, Creative Director of Prime Materia and Director of Exhibition and Facilities at Meow Wolf Grapevine; Prime Materia won Best New Food and Beverage Build.
NOTE: A version of this article originally ran in Interpark Magazine; view more information here.
Vancouver Aquarium: Begin with the Story
The Vancouver Aquarium begins with an interdepartmental understanding of the stories they want to tell, and builds the menu from there .”It’s really about knowing your audience and the story your facility wants to tell,” Anthony told the panel. “Some of the best ideas for food and beverage might not come from food and beverage.”
Built around the aquarium’s Monsters of the Abyss exhibit, which featured an eleven-foot-wide megalodon skull, the Megalodon Burger was conceived as an eight-month limited-time offer to run alongside the exhibit. It generated press, social media buzz, and a stream of guests who came to the aquarium specifically for the food. “We had to figure out how to get them into the park to go and eat at the restaurant instead of paying the full admission price,” Anthony said.
The eight-month run extended into a recurring product line. The Megalodon Burger spawned themed variants tied to subsequent exhibits. A Piranha Burger followed, then a Sloth Burger built around the Survival of the Slowest exhibit, then a Big Fin Burger anchored to the aquarium’s thresher sharks. Each item carries a price in the mid-thirties and a built-in story. “It’s a very high volume, high quality, high price item,” Anthony said. “We keep it there because that’s what our guests want.”
Prime Materia: Scaling Narrative
Tommy’s Prime Materia opened inside The Real Unreal at Meow Wolf Grapevine in summer 2025 as the company’s first in-exhibition bar. Tucked into Lamp Shop Alley, the bar is staffed by a cast of in-character bartenders called Gizmo_Mancers, “a band of alchemical technologists who have mastered the art of brewing concoctions from digital code.” Their fictional practice, source_hacking, blends alchemy and technology to compile drinks from essence code. The bar itself is a technological marvel; The capacitive-touch bartop lights up when guests place their hands on it, and ingredient bins on the back wall trigger themed show effects when bartenders select them.
The experience offers a scaling narrative: guests can engage more deeply or simply get a themed drink.
“A guest with no kind of deep understanding of the lore can still enjoy the experience,” Tommy said in the post-panel interview. “Someone can just walk up to the bar, order a drink, look at the cool visuals, and say, ‘I enjoy this delectable drink,’ and walk away. Or, they can go and deep dive further to learn more about the characters and more about the lore.”
At peak times, bartenders push drinks fast and let the capacitive bartop handle the engagement on its own. During slower periods, they self-trigger the ingredient bins to draw out the conversation, ask a guest what flavor profile they want, and walk them through the source_hacking process at length.
Staff are not given scripts. Tommy gives bartenders character archetypes (energetic, solemn, tech-leaning, alchemy-leaning) and lets them bring their own makeup and personality to the role. The approach upholds “the idea that Meow Wolf is a collective of artists,” Tommy said, and keeps the performance fresh shift to shift.
An Experience For Everyone (with Upsells)
Every signature drink at Prime Materia is built first as a mocktail to support the family-friendly clientele. Guests can choose to add alcohol if they wish; however, younger consumers are drinking less, and the structure keeps them served without sacrificing full-bar revenue from guests who do drink.
And, of course, there’s a social proof upsell. The Cryocore Cup is Prime Materia’s highest-ROI upsell: a souvenir cup loaded with powdered dry ice that creates a bubbling, frothing visual. “As guests walk around with these bubbling drinks, other people see it and they go, I want one of those too,” Tommy said.
The Integrated Experience
I expect to see more attractions weaving food into the narrative and vice versa, for the simple reason that it works (and well). Guests are purchasing experiences from us, and food must be part of those experiences, not run counter to them.
Vancouver Aquarium is converting four limited-time hero items into a permanent rotation, and Prime Materia is layering custom cocktails into Meow Wolf Grapevine’s seasonal event overlays.
