A conversation with Ryan Collings, Hospitality and Special Events Director, Portfolio Group
The Travelers Championship is one of the PGA TOUR’s most storied stops. For fans walking the course in Cromwell, Connecticut, the experience is seamless: fresh food made on-site, ice-cold drinks cart-side, and world-class hospitality from the first tee to the final green. But behind that ease is a year-round operation that most guests never see.
Ryan Collings understands that world firsthand. He started his career as an executive chef, moved through front-of-house operations, spent years in regional brand marketing, and most recently served as VP of Marketing for Aramark’s Workplace Experience Group before taking on his current role as Hospitality and Special Events Director for the Travelers Championship. We sat down with Ryan to understand what it takes to deliver food and beverage at a PGA TOUR event and what that level of execution says about the people and capabilities behind it.
On Scope and Scale
What does the food and beverage operation at the Travelers Championship actually cover?
It's extensive. We oversee all food and beverage across the entire course including full-service concession stands around the course, full bars with signature cocktails, beer and wine partners, and beverage partnerships with Coke and Red Bull. We also operate dedicated concept locations featuring brands like BBQ District, Lobster Shack, Zoca, and our Aramark's proprietary brand Tenders Love and Chicken. In addition, we bring in six local food trucks and position bars at key points around the course.
From a VIP hospitality standpoint, we run multiple venues with all-day service: full lunch through dinner, dessert pop-ups, and culinary theater activations, both from local vendors and our own team.
And that is just what the fans see. Beyond that, we feed all of the volunteers, breakfast and lunch, every day. We have a Patriots Outpost where veterans can get meals and refreshments on course. We feed all media, all tournament staff, and all of our own employees on-site daily. We have 10 mobile beverage carts working the course continuously, repositioned throughout the day using crowd and tournament data. We have a full distribution center managing over 60 vendors, receiving orders, moving product, and coordinating across all remote locations. And behind all of that, there is a commissary operation at the University of Hartford and on-site preparation at each venue.
We are not using a hot-box model where food is made a mile away and driven over. Each hospitality venue has its own kitchen, its own coolers, and its own production. That was a meaningful shift after COVID, and it is a big part of why Travelers won the fan-favorite designation among PGA TOUR events last year. The food and beverage program was specifically cited.
Each venue has its own kitchen, its own coolers, and its own production. Guests are getting food cooked fresh on-site, and that was specifically cited when Travelers won the PGA TOUR fan-favorite designation last year.
On What Makes This Event Different
What makes running Travelers different from other events in the portfolio?
It is genuinely different from anything else we do - bringing 200-plus managers in from across the country to staff the operation - we pull from every line of business, get people coverage for their accounts for the week, and then put them on course doing things they do not normally do. Long days, outside, no stepping away for calls. Before they even arrive, they must complete safety training and golf cart certification.
That is one thing people do not think about: the golf cart operation alone is a serious logistical undertaking. We run a fleet of about 35 carts. We have a dedicated golf cart manager. We have mapped routes. We bring in local college students as runners and train them on how to load, how to navigate crowds, how to pause when a shot is in play, how to move through spaces where fans are not exactly watching for carts.
If Hole 8 needs burger buns, that request triggers a chain of communication, a specific cart, a specific route from the distribution center, timed around where the crowds are and where golfers are on course. There is a command center with police, fire, and our own people monitoring cameras and live feeds to help manage where crowds are congregating so we can position carts and staff accordingly.
When I was involved in previous years in a different capacity, I had no idea how many moving parts existed behind the scenes. You see a well-run concession stand and assume the supply chain is simple. It is the opposite.
On What The Role Actually Requires
Your path is unusual: executive chef, front-of-house operations, regional brand marketing, district management, VP of Marketing, and now this. How does that background show up in how you run the tournament?
More than I expected going in. The culinary background shows up constantly. We are in menu conversations early, costing out programs, scaling across concessions, special events, catering, and hospitality simultaneously, making sure we are buying right and executing within budget. I am not sitting in those conversations as a spectator. I can lead on the culinary side and be a real sounding board for the chefs we bring in, not just a relay point.
The marketing background matters too, maybe more than I anticipated. We work with print vendors, setup vendors, and signage teams. We are thinking about venue flow: how fans move through spaces, where staffing bottlenecks form, how a concourse fills and empties. That front-of-house experience over the years means I can look at a venue setup and see where it is going to break down before it does.
But the biggest thing, honestly, is what it means for the client relationship. I become a single point of contact across food, operations, logistics, and planning. When the client has a question, they do not get routed around. They come to me and get an answer. That has allowed us to move faster, have fewer meetings, and get more done. In the past year, we have moved from a relationship focused on execution confidence to one where we are genuinely talking about what next year looks like. Technology integration. Waste reduction. Sustainability improvements. We are having those conversations because we have built enough trust that the client is not worried about whether the hot dogs are going to be out on time. They know they will be.
The client is not asking whether the hot dogs will be out on time. They know they will be. That trust is what allows us to think about what the tournament looks like in three years.
On What Travelers Actually Wants
What is Travelers trying to achieve with this event?
The ultimate fan experience. And when I say fan, I mean everyone: the general admission ticket holder who bought a day pass, the corporate suite, the major sponsor bringing a thousand people for the week. Travelers treats those groups as equally important. You will never have a food conversation that excludes any of them. You will never see us overstaff VIP areas at the expense of the fan zone.
Golf has changed. Attendance at PGA TOUR events is growing faster than almost any other sport in the US right now. Travelers wants to be the best tournament on tour, and the fan experience is a direct driver of that. Better fan experience brings higher-tier players. Higher-tier players drive viewership. You cannot run a golf tournament without food and beverage, and the quality of that program has a real effect on how the event is perceived.
On Execution and Contingency
With that much on the line, how does the team make sure it is delivering?
Communication, from the start. The goal throughout setup week is that when we get on-site, there are no surprises on either side. We review menus together. We walk venues together daily. We align on every setup detail, every staffing model, every process for how food gets from production to the guest. The client and I connect at the end of every day to close out anything that needs to change before the next morning.
And then there is contingency planning, which is a year-round conversation. Weather is the most obvious one. An outdoor event in Connecticut in June can go from ideal conditions to thunderstorms and flooding. We have plans for heat mitigation, for shelter, for operational pivots when play is paused. But it is not just weather. Medical emergencies, injuries, supply chain disruptions, anything that could happen on a course with tens of thousands of people present. We work through those scenarios constantly because the job is to minimize risk, not just to execute when everything goes right.
The year of planning that goes into a five-day event is what makes the five-day event look easy.
On Community Impact
What does the tournament mean for the surrounding community?
The Travelers Championship is run by a nonprofit organization, which means all tournament net proceeds go to charity. There are also fundraising events throughout the year leading up to the tournament, including a 5K and other activations.
Beyond the charitable mission, the tournament is a meaningful economic presence in the region. We hire and train approximately 200 local staff members each year to support the operation. These are people from the surrounding community who go through real training, earn real wages for the week, and get exposure to large-scale hospitality and event management. For some of them, it is their first look at what a career in this industry could look like.
Our team also donates food to support the Patriots Outpost on course, which provides meals and refreshments for U.S. service members and veterans attending the event. Taken together, the charitable mission, the local hiring, and the military support reflect something consistent about how the Travelers Championship approaches this tournament. The community is part of the program, not an afterthought.
On What The Week Means For The People Who Come
What do team members take away from the experience?
It is a career accelerant for a lot of people. You are meeting hundreds of colleagues from every line of business, every region, every level of the organization up to the C-suite, in a context where you are actually working alongside each other, not just in a conference room. You see parts of the business that you would never encounter in your own account. You understand what large-scale event execution looks like when a company like ours brings its full capability to bear. And then there is the honest part: it is hard work, but Connecticut in June is beautiful, and doing something genuinely different for a week has real value. You come back to your account with a wider frame of reference. Sometimes you need to step outside your own four walls to understand what you are actually part of.
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About Ryan Collings
Ryan Collings is Hospitality and Special Events Director for the Travelers Championship at Aramark Workplace Experience Group (WXG), Portfolio Group. He has been with Aramark for 20 years, holding roles spanning executive chef, front-of-house operations, regional brand management, district management, and VP of Marketing for WXG. He began his career as an executive chef aboard a cruise line following culinary school.
Portfolio Group
Aramark Portfolio Group is part of the Workplace Experience Group division of Aramark, partnering with clients to deliver tailored, end-to-end hospitality solutions across diverse workplace environments. Through a unified service approach led by a single point of leadership and a dedicated team, Portfolio Group ensures seamless execution, elevated experiences, and strategic alignment with each client’s goals.
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