Stephen Barr joked there are two things he and every other travel youth sports parent does each weekend:
Make sure the kids have everything they need to play and figure out where you are going to eat after.
Barr hopes to make the latter easier. He recently launched Team to Table, a portal for crowd-sourced context and information on local, non-fast-food restaurants near youth sports venues nationwide.
Barr said some parents have built shareable spreadsheets by hand over the years, but the end result still tends to be more trips to a burger chain or the gas station for unhealthy meals.
“I think this is a global team sport issue, and I’m just trying to make it a better place,” he told Buying Sandlot. “A lot of times you’ll look in the area, find a restaurant you think is good, you give them a call and tell them you have 18 people and they say, ‘No, we can’t do that, sorry.’ And then you’re scrambling.”
TTT’s search areas are much more geographically compact than Google Maps’ gatling gun of listings, focusing on eateries close to facilities and info relevant to youth sports families.
Is the restaurant good for a family meal?
Can it handle small groups? Large ones?
Easy parking?
Quick service?
Flexible menu options?
Split checks?
Capable of repeat business?
Users can also vet and correct older listings if they discover information is outdated, like a restaurant closing or changing formats.
TTT’s website is live and an app is expected to launch next month. The site is free to use; Barr views it as “more of a public service,” but he is considering potential monetization options like limited advertising to help cover infrastructure and server costs.
“It’s not Yelp, it’s not Google Reviews,” Barr said. “It’s, ‘Did this work for me?’”
I have covered the NCAA Wrestling Championships several times. Almost every city was wildly unprepared for people to leave the arena between 8-10 p.m. local time and want to eat and drink.
Restaurants were closed. Hotel bars were understaffed. The only places still live on Uber Eats were Domino’s and a dive bar a half-hour from downtown that was charging $18 for a microwaved quesadilla.
If these towns — all have major professional sports teams, one even hosted a Super Bowl — could not meet the demand, you can only imagine some of the struggles youth sports families will encounter in much smaller locales at odd hours after a long day of games.
Barr said TTT can also impact local economies. He envisions a scenario where the platform can help inform restaurants about upcoming youth sports events in their area so they can plan accordingly to accommodate an influx of visitors.
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Good game.