Tailgating has become one of the most fascinating celebrations surrounding American football games. These pregame gatherings bring fans, families, and groups of friends together in stadium parking lots to eat, drink, and enjoy the hours leading up to the weekend’s sporting events.
The name comes from the tailgate, the hinged rear door of a pickup truck, which gets lowered to serve as an improvised table. The result is groups of fans decked out in their teams’ jerseys and colors, seated in folding chairs around grilled food and coolers full of drinks, ready to have a good time.
The experience appeals even to fans who don’t have tickets to the game but still want to enjoy the pregame hours with company. According to a Talker Research survey, nearly 25% of tailgaters attend these gatherings without a ticket, and food is essential for 57% of respondents.
A storied tradition
The origins of this celebration around American sporting events aren’t well documented, but one of the most widely told stories places the first tailgate in 1869, at the first college football game ever played, between Rutgers and Princeton in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Spectators reportedly arrived near the field in horse-drawn carriages and grilled sausages and hamburgers.
It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that tailgating went from occasional get-togethers to a full-fledged festive movement around these events.
Why meat is essential to tailgating
At these pregame gatherings, food is a must. Among the most popular choices are hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken wings, and grilled meats. These options are easy to prepare, flavorful, and meant to be shared.
What’s more, outdoor cooking and barbecues encourage conversation and make the preparation part of the celebration. That’s why parking lots turn into veritable feasts, especially in the fall, the quintessential football season.
Meat at the tailgates of the future
This is a tradition passed down from generation to generation, which makes the availability of meat, one of the main ingredients of these celebrations, essential. In fact, the OECD-FAO projects meat consumption of nearly 412 million tons by 2035. With demand set to grow, the industry needs to add options.
Expanding the capacity of the meat industry is, in fact, one of BioTech Foods’ goals. We work to ensure that cultivated meat helps keep meat consumption possible in a context of higher demand. We offer innovative solutions that complement traditional production and help ensure meat remains on the tables of the future.
It’s precisely when fall arrives and football season kicks off that these leisure moments become routine and remind us to value what we enjoy most: spending time with fellow fans of our team, sharing meat at communal meals, and feeling the excitement of the hours before the game. It’s a tradition we can’t afford to lose.
