Yeah, maybe we should be looking at things like this and questioning the logic behind a couple of frozen burgers on a factory made bun and a couple of fountain drinks for $55 after paying for the entrance fee in the ticket and not handwaving it away as "these are big league prices."
I know Canada Life Center's prices aren't quite as extreme as Rogers Place but breaking it down
Sysco's
* prices for that 2 burger combo:
0.20/slice American cheese = $0.40
1.04 6oz 80/20 Fresh beef patty = $2.08 (Might be double 4oz patties (0.84/patty), hard to tell from the image)
0.94 Artisanal Ciabatta bun = $1.88 (Probably being generous using this and not the $0.40 hamburger roll)
0.08 Burger spread = $0.16 (10ml Heinz ketchup = 0.03, 10ml Hellmans Mayo = 0.05)
0.09 Lettuce = $0.18
Wholesale price of lettuce is $2/kg, McDonalds puts 28g of lettuce on a Big Mac according to google so using that as a price + amount gives 35 portions per $2 or 0.057/serving, assuming 30% waste would put it around $0.09/serving.
The chips are about $0.30/bag wholesale in 104*28g portions
Soda comes in 5 gallon bag-in-box systems to be portioned 1:5, syrup to water. I think the menu says 20oz so ~600ml or 100ml syrup/portion. Each box is around $90-100 CAD for an average plebeian to buy. It's about 19L per bag so 190 portions per $100 at plebeian non-wholesale price for Coke/Pepsi. So $0.19/portion for the soda and 1000 Solo brand wax coated, biodegradable cups is about $250 Canadian or about $0.25/cup.
$1.50 for the drinks + chips
$4.70 for the burgers
$6.30 total food cost, or nearly 90% gross revenue at $55
(Not profit to be clear)
*Prices are from an American Sysco list so I converted the price from USD to CAD. For the cheese I basically just doubled the price from 0.09 USD/slice because price controls/standards are higher for cheese in Canada.
You could probably get away with tacking on a $2 increase to every ticket and just cutting the margin on food to be more in line with what you'd pay around the arena, or even lower because being honest the arena's food is not great. The customer would probably be happier at the end of the game not getting gouged on food and you'd probably have more people actually eating.
More butts in seats with a higher percentage eating at games could bring in similar revenue