Stéphane Schwander has spent more than twenty years working at the intersection of international sport, technology, and large-scale events. From running digital operations at UEFA to leading digital and content transformation at the FEI, his career has been shaped by complex environments, global audiences, and event days where nothing can afford to fail.
Outside of work, Stéphane is an endurance athlete. He skis, trail runs, and takes on ultratrail races, where success has little to do with speed alone. Endurance sports teach a different lesson: read the terrain, manage your effort, and focus relentlessly on what actually matters when conditions become difficult.
After two decades across Champions League and Euros, international federations, and competitions watched by millions, Stéphane has seen the same operational problem repeat itself year after year: food and beverage queues. Long lines, frustrated fans, stressed staff, wasted stock. Despite all the innovation happening in sport, this part of the event experience has barely evolved.
“The queue problem has been obvious for years,” Stéphane explains. “It’s not a lack of technology. It’s a lack of priority.”
The sports industry has invested heavily in ticketing systems, security, broadcast innovation, and data platforms. Meanwhile, F&B operations, one of the few touchpoints that affect almost every attendee, are often treated as a secondary issue. Fans wait 15 or 20 minutes for a drink. Vendors' guess demand. Everything peaks at halftime, and the system breaks under pressure.
In his view, too much event technology focuses on impressive features instead of solving fundamental problems. “At live events, speed and reliability matter more than complexity. If your system doesn’t work at the busiest moment, it doesn’t matter how good the demo looked.”
Rather than trying to reinvent the event experience, PickEat focuses on a particular challenge: reducing queues and improving F&B flow in a way that works in real operational conditions. For Stéphane, that pragmatic approach matters. It’s not about chasing trends. It’s about addressing an issue that clearly impacts fan satisfaction, brand perception, and revenue. What resonated with Stéphane is not just the product, but the ambition to connect operations, data, and decision-making in an environment where execution matters more than theory.
What interests him most going forward is how data can support better decision-making. Predicting demand more accurately, helping vendors plan staffing and stock, and reducing waste are all solvable problems. When done right, they improve efficiency and profitability without adding pressure on teams.
Stéphane grew up between the mountains and a lake in Switzerland, where endurance is part of everyday life. That background shapes how he approaches technology, business, and sport. You don’t sprint through an ultratrail, and you don’t fix complex event problems with shortcuts.
Having worked inside organisations where change must navigate governance, partners, and global stakeholders, Stéphane brings a perspective shaped as much by constraints as by opportunity.
He joined PickEat’s Advisory Board for a simple reason: after years of watching the same issue be ignored, he saw a team focused on running the right race, not just looking good at the start line.
Welcome to PickEat Stéphane!