The Chicago Bears announced a multi-year partnership with Levy to transform the food and beverage experience at Soldier Field, replacing Aramark. The deal runs ten years — matching, exactly, the years remaining on the Bears’ lease, which expires after the 2033 season.
That last detail is the one to pay attention to. Hospitality contracts are usually written to a standard term. This one was written to the building’s expiry date.
Levy locks down Chicago
With this deal, Levy operates every major Chicago stadium. The company already provided food and beverage at Wrigley Field, the United Center, and Guaranteed Rate Field. Nationwide, Levy serves 112 professional sports teams.
“Chicago is where Levy was born, and it’s the city we still call home after all these years,” said Levy CEO Andy Lansing.
The company was founded in the city in 1978, so the symbolism is real. The practical effect is a near-monopoly on major-venue hospitality labor in one of the largest sports markets in the country.
For workers that cuts two ways. On the upside, one employer relationship can now produce shifts across four buildings and four seasons — baseball from spring, basketball and hockey through winter, football in autumn, concerts throughout. Very few U.S. cities offer a route to close to year-round venue hours under a single employer. On the downside, there is no longer a competing operator across town bidding for experienced staff, and competition between employers is what moves wages in a hospitality market.
Contract details
The business model included two options: a hybrid agreement with Levy receiving a management fee tied to 1.5 percent of total sales plus 5 percent of net profits, or a commission structure with percentages of sales varying by revenue.
Levy committed a $12 million capital investment to purchase a new point-of-sale system and renovate concession stands and premium dining destinations.
The technology, and what it does to the job
The fan-facing improvements were straightforward: 50 percent more points of sale in the 400 level, updated stands and portables throughout, and new self-checkout lanes using AI-driven cameras that identify products without scanning.
The last of those is the one that gets raised in every stadium break room, so it is worth being direct about it.
Frictionless checkout does reduce the number of cashiers needed at a given stand. It does not, on the evidence across the industry so far, reduce total event-day headcount — because the binding constraint at a stadium is not labor cost, it is throughput during a twenty-minute half-time when several thousand people want to buy something at once. Removing the transaction bottleneck lets a stand serve more people, which means it needs restocking more often.
What actually happens is that the job mix shifts:
- Fewer pure cashier positions, particularly at high-volume in-bowl stands.
- More stocking and runner work, because faster service empties shelves faster.
- New attendant roles managing the lanes, helping guests who cannot make the technology work, and handling exceptions.
- More loss-prevention support, which is a real operational cost of frictionless retail.
If you work concessions and your venue is installing this technology, the defensive move is to be certified and cross-trained beyond the register — alcohol service, stand lead, premium service. Those are the roles the technology does not touch.
Who employs you at Soldier Field
- Concessions, clubs, suites, bars, kitchens — Levy, via the Compass Group careers portal.
- Guest services, ushers, ticket takers — the Bears and the stadium operation.
- Security, cleaning, parking — contracted vendors, each with a separate application.
Soldier Field is owned by the Chicago Park District, not by the team, which is why some facilities and grounds roles sit outside both the team’s and the operator’s hiring.
Chicago’s minimum wage is among the highest in any U.S. stadium market and sets a meaningful floor under these roles. Chicago’s hospitality workforce also has a long organized history through UNITE HERE Local 1; whether a given classification at the stadium is covered depends on the employer agreement, so ask during hiring.
The lease question
Return to the ten-year term. The Bears have spent years pursuing a new stadium, including a land purchase in Arlington Heights, and the future of the franchise’s home has been an open question for most of the past decade. A hospitality deal written to run exactly as long as the lease is a contract that expires the moment the uncertainty resolves.
If you are planning a career around Soldier Field rather than picking up occasional shifts, that is worth holding in view. The building would not close if the Bears left — it is a Park District asset with a concert and event calendar of its own, and it hosted major events long before the current arrangement. But an NFL tenant’s departure would materially reduce the number of large event days, and ten NFL Sundays is the backbone of the current staffing model.
Nothing about that is imminent. It is simply the risk that the contract’s own term acknowledges.
Update — August 2026
Two full seasons into the Levy operation:
- The point-of-sale replacement and stand renovations funded by the $12 million investment are in place.
- Levy continues to hold all four major Chicago venues, so cross-venue availability remains the most useful thing a Chicago applicant can offer.
- The Bears’ long-term stadium position remains unresolved as of this review. We have not verified any change to the Soldier Field lease term and will update this article if that changes.
For current venue-level hiring detail, see the Soldier Field guide or the live concessions cashier posting.
Sources
This article draws on the Chicago Bears’ and Levy Restaurants’ announcements of the partnership, contemporaneous trade reporting on the contract structure in Sports Business Journal, and Levy’s published venue portfolio. Corrections are welcome via the contact page.