Aramark Sports & Entertainment Announces Partnership with KZ Provisioning to Expand Services to Athletes Nationwide

Led by award-winning chefs Andrew Zimmern and Gavin Kaysen, the joint venture will revolutionize professional and collegiate athletics through nutritious meals built for performance, endurance, wellness, and recovery

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In the first collaboration of its kind, the award-winning, professional chef team behind KZ Provisioning, Andrew Zimmern and Gavin Kaysen, are joining forces with Aramark Sports & Entertainment (Aramark), the award-winning food and beverage partner at premium stadiums, arenas, and entertainment destinations in North America, to expand KZ Provisioning’s unique culinary approach to fueling athletes, sports teams, and organizations across the country. KZ Provisioning, founded by Zimmern and Kaysen in 2017, focuses on delivering genuine hospitality, customized menus, and performance-driven meals to professional athletes, their coaches, and their families. The partnership combines KZ Provisioning’s proven culinary expertise with Aramark’s extensive experience in providing innovative foodservice and hospitality experiences.

KZ Provisioning has silently built its reputation for eight years by offering performance-focused meal programs that are tailored to meet the specific nutritional needs of elite athletes. Their philosophy for cooking is breaking the mold and transforming the way professional sports teams think about nutrition planning for their athletes, coaches, and team families. Now, with the support of Aramark, KZ Provisioning is poised to expand its reach, bringing its high-caliber culinary offerings to new professional and collegiate level athletes and teams across the country.

"At KZ Provisioning we offer best-in-class hospitality services to all our partner clients. We also believe in player happiness as a quantifiable metric that affects performance,” said Zimmern, Co-Founder of KZ Provisioning. “Our emphasis on the extraordinary impact our culinary offerings have on players across all our teams is our daily work. So when you combine all those areas of expertise with Aramark's leadership and their ability to amplify our work via this new partnership, we have an offering that teams across the nation will find invaluable.”

Since its inception, the Minnesota Lynx, Minnesota Timberwolves, and Minnesota Wild, have relied on KZ Provisioning to anticipate the needs of team athletes and deliver personalized meals designed to maximize energy, enhance recovery, and offer moments of comfort during rigorous training and competition schedules. With Aramark’s support, leveraging its extensive network and existing infrastructure, the partnership aims to expand its reach, providing bespoke culinary services across a wider range of leagues and sports, ensuring that more athletes benefit from KZ Provisioning's expertly-crafted, nutritionally-appropriate cuisine.

"Andrew and I started KZ Provisioning because we recognized that professional athletes weren’t being fully supported in terms of the foods that were being made available to them,” said Kaysen, Co-Founder of KZ Provisioning. “Athletes are expected to perform at the highest levels, which requires nutritional support and strategic attention to detail. Our mission is to provide athletes with the foods that will fuel their performance, support their health, and ultimately create a path to performance excellence.”

The partnership with Aramark accelerates KZ Provisioning’s ability to reach more athletes with their customized, restaurant-quality mealtime options. The team of chefs led by Kaysen and Zimmern are on-site from pre-season to the playoffs creating pre-game energy meals, post-training recovery dishes, and snacks, made with craveable ingredients and bioavailable nutrients that cater to athletes’ diverse nutritional requirements.

“The partnership with KZ Provisioning is a natural extension of our nationally renowned work with sports owners, operators, athletes and stadiums across the country,” said Alison Birdwell, President & CEO of Aramark Sports & Entertainment. “The opportunity for us to have such dedicated and reputable partners as Andrew and Gavin is special. KZ Provisioning uniquely combines the culinary excellence and high attention to detail of two world renowned chefs, with a thoughtfulness of the athlete experience that is unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

For more information about KZ Provisioning’s partnership with Aramark and their approach to revolutionizing athlete nutrition, visit KZProvisioning.com.

About KZ Provisioning

Launched in 2017 by James Beard award winning Chefs Gavin Kaysen and Andrew Zimmern, KZ Provisioning is a hospitality centered, performance-driven culinary company transforming the way professional sports teams think about nutrition planning for their athletes, coaches, and team families. Led by Kaysen and Zimmern, the KZ Provisioning team of chefs are on-site from pre-season to the playoffs creating delicious snacks and meals designed for wellness, endurance, recovery, and injury prevention. Working in collaboration with the athletes, nutritionists, and coaches, bespoke menu options are made with craveable ingredients and packed with bioavailable nutrients that fuel athletes from rest days to game days. Exceptional hospitality means the coaches and team families also have access to customized, restaurant-quality mealtime options.

Since its inception, KZ Provisioning continues to be the trusted culinary partner for the Minnesota Timberwolves, Minnesota Lynx, and Minnesota Wild. Now, in the first collaboration of its kind, the award-winning professional chef team behind KZ Provisioning is partnering up with global catering company Aramark to bring genuine hospitality, customized menus, and performance-driven meal plans to professional and collegiate sports teams across the U.S. For more information, visit KZProvisioning.com and connect on LinkedIn and Instagram.

About Aramark Sports & Entertainment

Aramark Sports + Entertainment serves more than 150 award-winning food and beverage, retail, and facility service programs in premier stadiums, arenas, convention centers, cultural attractions, performance venues, and unique entertainment destinations across North America. The company has received accolades for industry innovations including autonomous markets, dining concepts powered by artificial intelligence, and high-profile events like the MLB World Series, MLB at Rickwood Field, and NBA All-Star. Aramark has been recognized on FORTUNE’s list of “World’s Most Admired Companies,” The Civic 50 by Points of Light 2024, Fair360’s “Top 50 Companies for Diversity” and “Top Companies for Black Executives,” Newsweek’s list of “America’s Most Responsible Companies 2024,” the HRC’s “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality,” and earned a score of 100 on the Disability Equality Index. Learn more at www.aramark.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Instagram.