When most people plan on having a few friends over to visit, the first problem is deciding what and how much food to serve.
Apparently when planning for a few thousands visitors, things don't change too much. Local food wholesalers are strategically planning how to keep the refrigerators stocked throughout the two-week Olympic party for the huge influx of athletes and visitors.
Sysco Intermountain Food Services is the preferred food wholesaler of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and between the Athletes Village, the food vendors at the venues and their regular restaurant clients, Sysco will have its plate full and its warehouse packed.
"We are taking a proactive approach in bumping up our inventory 50 percent on our items that will have large movement," said Sysco Olympic project executive Brian Nuttall. "We also have plans for quicker resupplies when needed."
Just to get an idea of how much food is involved here, Nuttall shared a few numbers of the amounts of food that will be going through their warehouse.
"To name a few, we're planning on approximately 100,000 4-ounce muffins, 500,000 pieces of fruit, 200,000 units of yogurt, 500,000 frankfurters, 312,000 packets of hot instant cereal, 75,000 pounds of cheese, 200,000 packets of cream cheese and over 1,000,000 plastic utensils," Nuttall said.
All of this and much more will go through Sysco's new state-of-the-art, 386,000-square-foot center in West Jordan.
While the visitors to the Winter Games will have to walk through metal detectors to get into the venues, the food going to the venues will go through no less rigorous a process.
At the Sysco warehouse, all pallets of food will be X-rayed, and the trucks will be sealed when leaving. If the seals have been tampered with before the truck gets to the venue, the food won't be allowed in.
To top it all off, the Sysco employees have had to be accredited, complete with background checks, and the Secret Service will be on hand to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Beyond the Olympic venues and Athletes Village, Sysco and the other food wholesalers are preparing for the increased demands of the restaurants they supply.
Bryan Simnitt, the director of marketing of Nicholas and Co. Foodservice Distributor, said the company is planning on a variety of things to keep restaurants running on all cylinders.
"We will be doing constant deliveries whenever needed, even in middle of the night deliveries," Simnitt said. "We can be the warehouses for these customers because many will not have the space to keep all of the food they will need."
Exactly what kinds of food visitors will be clamoring for and what kinds of food can be most efficiently used is another thing all the restaurants are trying to figure out.
"We're trying to help the restaurants to anticipate the tastes of the visitors," said Sysco director of marketing Roger Parsell. "For instance, cheese and wine for dessert is really popular in other spots, so maybe they need to consider that."
Other foods they are planning on stocking up on include distinctly Western tastes like buffalo, duck and trout, and high-end seafood and cuts of beef. Also, quick and easy to prepare appetizers and desserts are becoming very popular with the restaurants, Parsell said.
Beyond just the tastes of the visitors, determining how much food each restaurant will need is going to be tricky, Parsell said.
"With the SLOC food, we know how much of what they need way in advance," Parsell said. "Certainly it's anybody's guess as to how much more business the restaurants will have.
"At previous Olympic Games, the ones near a venue made big bucks. Outside of that area, it's just a 10 percent increase. Of course just how far away from the venue is too far is a lot of gray area."
E-mail: pthunell@desnews.com