Two Star Chefs Are Secretly Feeding Your Favorite NBA and WNBA Players

(Bloomberg) — For eight years a pair of star chefs have been quietly feeding the best known pro teams in Minnesota, including the NBA Timberwolves, the WNBA Lynx and the NHL Wild. Chefs Gavin Kaysen, whose Minneapolis-based empire includes the James Beard-winning Spoon and Stable, and Andrew Zimmern, famed for outsize TV shows such as Bizarre Foods and Wild Game Kitchen, and their company KZ Provisioning are teaming up with the behemoth food service operation Aramark.
They’ll be extending their range of services beyond Minnesota to teams, both professional and collegiate nationwide, feeding players and their extended friends and families, which is sometimes as many as 120 people. The service is, the chefs say, a big value add for teams; even more important, it can maximize players’ performances. “A lot of people started paying attention with Tom Brady and his personal chef. [Brady] credits him and the longevity of his career and his success with what he puts into his body,” Zimmern says. 
“These athletes are in tune to what they want to do to their body, with recovery through food,” Kaysen says. “There’s so many shows now—on Amazon, on Apple, following players and teams, Quarterback on Netflix—shows that make everyone more aware of how much athletes take care of themselves now.”
Kaysen and Zimmern work with dietitians, coaches and physicians on special menus, such as gluten-free or carb-heavy fare. “Sometimes we just hand out cups of bone broth to players when they’re getting off the plane,” Kaysen says. Along with breakfast, lunch and dinner, KZ Provisioning provides myriad snacks and beverages, such as smoothies and granola bars. Among the dishes on the roster are king salmon cakes with Calabrian chili aioli,  porcini and chicken meatballs and turmeric ginger shrimp with olive oil.
But they’ll also cook a favorite dish—say, Sloppy Joes—for players coming back from a long road trip, and they’ll have a healthy snack mix on hand for someone running to an interview. Their good-quality food is even being touted as a way to attract talent by P.J. Fleck, head coach of the University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers, who’s using KZ to cater breakfasts during the recruiting process. “We want to show these prospects how seriously we take it when choosing the nutrition for our team,” he says.
The partnership is “a natural extension of our work with sports owners, operators, athletes and stadiums across the country,” said Alison Birdwell, president and chief executive officer of Aramark Sports & Entertainment, in a statement. “The high attention to detail of two world-renowned chefs, with a thoughtfulness of the athlete experience, is unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
“We’re now the sales and marketing arm of KZ Provisioning,” says Jerry O’Connor, Aramark’s chief growth officer. While KZ’s responsibility is feeding teams and enhancing their performance and Aramark’s core is providing hospitality for fans, the partnership offers both companies an opportunity to expand. “Through this collaboration, we can offer more of a one-stop-shop holistic approach for organizations where they see broader efficiencies,” O’Connor says.
The chefs won’t say what teams they’re in active conversations with, citing nondisclosure agreements. But they say Aramark’s reach gives them access to ones they’re interested in, like the NBA Denver Nuggets in Ball Arena, as well as the teams at 60-plus other stadiums, arenas and sports facilities where Aramark has contracts as well as places where the company’s reputation facilitates meetings. 
The chefs and Aramark’s O’Conner also decline to state the terms of their contract because of NDAs. But in an interview with Bloomberg TV, Zimmern said the cost of their meals, compared to standard catered ones, is higher but also has notably higher deliverables. “What we have found with our current teams is we are about 7% to 9% more expensive, but our level of deliverables is 25% greater,” he says in relation to the meals and snacks they serve that extends beyond the playing season. 
KZ Provisioning got its start in 2017 when Kaysen went to visit a couple friends, Jared Spurgen and Jason Zucker, who were playing hockey for the Wild, and saw the state of the catering services. “I thought, ‘How much is this costing?’” Kaysen says. He began to think about serving better food to improve the athletes’ health and saw an opportunity.
Now, “we cook for Anthony Edwards, every day,” says Zimmern about his team feeding the famed Timberwolves shooting guard. “Literally. If players are in the arena in the offseason we are there.”
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