🗓️ July 16, 2026
Performance staff have a major responsibility in professional sports. From dietitians to strength and conditioning coaches, each role performs an essential function in building elite athletes that often goes unnoticed. To fans, it may seem like their favorite players are simply eating well and working out. While that is partly true, several elements of nutrition and training are supported by multiple staff members within the performance development space. The function of a professional sports dietitian is to work one-on-one with athletes to develop individualized meal, hydration, and recovery plans that support player success. Strength and conditioning staff work hand-in-hand with the team dietitian to create effective, individualized workout plans, assist in injury rehabilitation, and aid recovery.
Across professional sports, teams can have between 15 and 55 active players. That does not include minor sports teams associated with each league, which can add between one and seven teams that fall under the responsibility of the performance staff. Theoretically, one staff member can be in charge of over 100 players and their individual performance. Taking into account all the player-specific aspects of the job, one of the many underappreciated tasks of performance staff is catering coordination. Players must be fed properly and on a strict schedule to remain at peak performance, and it is usually the dietitian or strength and conditioning staff who are left to research caterers, arrange menus, ensure that meals arrive on time and are up to standard, and adhere to tight budgets. Let’s take a deeper look into the steps of catering coordination and how each plays into specific aspects of player performance:
Catering research can take a lot of time, especially for professional sports teams. Timing is not only important for athlete performance, which we will cover in a later section, timing is everything to performance staff who only have so many hours in their day for one-on-one time with their players. The time it takes to look up caterers nearby (whether at home or away), connect with them, discuss team needs, cover nutritional standards and guidelines, and confirm that they have the capacity to feed a professional sports team can consume hours every week. Multiply that across a minimum of three meals a day, and suddenly one or two days of the week are dedicated solely to catering research.
If one staff member is in charge of 55+ athletes and their specific dietary needs, time is a precious commodity. Being required to dedicate so many hours to finding a decent caterer to feed those athletes can make it incredibly difficult for performance staff to manage one on one time with their players. Particularly on the road, finding three meals a day for a team in a new city every week can be a daunting task.
Creating menus is another time-consuming task that performance staff are often required to manage. It may seem simple enough, but after spending hours simply researching a food service provider that aligns with the needs of the team, food allergies and preferences must be taken into consideration. Fighting inflammation in the body is a huge part of performance success; while it could occur in athletes for any number of reasons, diet is its biggest combatant. For example, if a player has a dairy intolerance, consumption of dairy products can affect their game by causing GI issues, muscle inflammation, and hindered recovery. This is why paying close attention to menu creation is so important, and when one staff member is responsible for the dietary needs of every single athlete under their charge, it can become a task that is difficult to manage.
Beyond managing basic dietary restrictions, staff must also account for the nutritional requirements tied to specific training blocks or game-day intensity. A player preparing for a high-intensity training session requires a different macro-nutrient profile than one focused on recovery or maintenance. This necessitates a granular level of planning that extends far beyond just checking “gluten-free” or “dairy-free” boxes. Staff must constantly juggle these moving parts, often adjusting menus in real-time based on training feedback or shifts in the game schedule. This administrative load; tracking individual intake data, communicating specific prep instructions to vendors, and verifying that final meals align with the day’s strategic nutritional goals – transforms menu planning from a routine logistical duty into a complex operational puzzle that demands constant, high-level attention.
While food delivery delays are often common and merely annoying for the average person, they can become a major issue when feeding a team of professional athletes. Meal timing is carefully coordinated for athletes for several reasons, primarily for pre-workout fueling and post-workout recovery. If a post-game meal delivery is late or, in the worst-case scenario, not delivered at all, it affects the recovery of the players. This can mean that athletes either skip the meal completely or rely on outside sources for food. It is recommended that athletes eat a combination of carbohydrates and protein within a 30- to 60-minute window after a workout or game for optimal recovery. If a meal runs late, it not only potentially deters a player from sticking around for the meal but also cuts into that optimal recovery time. For performance staff, chasing down delivery drivers and panic-calling caterers is not in the job description, but the responsibility often falls on them. What they should be focused on pre- and post-game is each player’s individualized performance and recovery plan, not constantly checking for updates on food deliveries.
Staying within budget for food service may be the most difficult task when selecting a food provider for a professional or minor league sports team. Performance staff know what their players should be eating, without question, but can their team afford it? Standards are changing, slowly but surely, and some teams have put a real emphasis on food quality and made the investment; however, many teams still have a long way to go.
Imagine you are a dietitian in charge of food service for four minor league baseball teams. That could mean you are responsible for anywhere from 100 to 150 players. You have spent hours searching for a caterer that fits your team’s needs, spent even more time communicating with that caterer on dietary requirements, and double- and triple-checked the menus to ensure those requirements are met, and you only have $15 per person for breakfast, $18 for a pre-game meal, and $18.50 for post-game. This might be possible for an average person budgeting for groceries, but once you pay a caterer for food cost, labor, delivery, service equipment, and profit, those numbers become nearly impossible to adhere to. This is where the quality of the food becomes an issue. You want your players to eat the best quality food to enhance their performance, but your budget only allows for catering from chain restaurants that do not meet quality standards. What do you do? Your players have to eat.
This is the struggle of many performance staff members who are expected to take on catering coordination that most people are completely unaware of. Their job is to ensure that their players are eating well so their performance can improve, but they are stuck battling between food quality and staying within budget.
So much responsibility falls onto performance staff in professional sports, often in ways that are outside the scope of their positions. Sports fans don’t watch their favorite team play and think about the logistics of why their favorite player is playing a great game, or a bad one, but performance staff have to think about it every day. The truth is, performance staff should not have to be in charge of culinary operations outside of making sure their players are eating and exercising according to their tailor-made plans. Dietitians and strength coaches are not food service staff; they are highly trained professionals in their fields who deserve the ability to do their jobs without spending hours out of their days and weeks ensuring their players get fed.
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