Music to our ears: elevating the Salt Shed’s in-venue commerce

Located on four acres along the Chicago River, The Salt Shed is one of the city’s most ambitious adaptive reuse projects, transforming a historic Morton Salt packing facility into a modern, indoor-outdoor music destination. Since opening in 2023, the venue has quickly earned national recognition, including the Pollstar Award for Best New Venue Under 5,000 Capacity, and has become a cornerstone of Chicago’s live entertainment scene.

The Challenge: Speed, Scale, and Complexity

As a high-throughput concert venue, speed of service is critical. Lines need to move fast, systems must be intuitive for staff and guests, and inventory must be tracked in real time across indoor and outdoor environments.

At the same time, The Salt Shed required elevated, white-glove table service for premium spaces without introducing multiple POS systems or operational silos, as Drew Perfilio, Assistant General Manager at The Salt Shed, explains:

“Our concert venue concessions are all about churn rate: how many people you can get through a line in as short of an amount of time possible. The technology we use needs to help us achieve that."

The MyVenue Solution

The Salt Shed selected MyVenue after direct evaluation, prioritizing flexibility, speed, and long-term scalability. The deployment included:

• mvPOS: fixed and handheld POS enabling fast transactions and at-table service
• mvKiosk: six self-service kiosks for high-volume ordering
• mvKDS: kitchen display systems supporting food and cocktail routing
• mvManager: real-time inventory, reporting, and live dashboards

In total, 84 POS devices were deployed across bars, concessions, kiosks, and premium spaces, all supported by FreedomPay for secure, enterprise-grade payments.

“MyVenue bridged the gap between table service restaurant solutions and enterprise POS. We’re running bars, food concessions, kiosk ordering, and table service, plus we're tracking what stock’s where in real time. Very few platforms could do both. MyVenue does it brilliantly.”

Performance & Results

Despite a compressed timeline, the venue completed a full POS transition in just two weeks. Working closely with MyVenue’s on-site training and technical teams, Drew says that from Day One of using MyVenue, The Salt Shed has never looked back.

“My first test is whether the line employees feel good using it. Is it fast? Is the handoff to the guest working? And it did, right from the jump.”

The result is a system optimized for speed during peak concert moments, while still supporting sophisticated service models in premium areas. Software responsiveness, intuitive workflows, and unified operations have helped The Salt Shed avoid the complexity of running multiple POS platforms in one venue.

Partnership & Long-Term Value

While MyVenue was not the least expensive option upfront, Drew evaluated the investment through a long-term lens.

“At three years it balanced, and at five years it was clearly the way to go. More cost-effective and easier to manage. Ultimately, we didn’t want band-aids on top of band-aids. We wanted something we could grow with, which is why we chose MyVenue.”

As new concepts continue to come online, including rooftop hospitality experiences and future service models, the flexibility of MyVenue ensures the platform can adapt without rework or replacement.

Conclusion

For The Salt Shed, MyVenue delivers what matters most: fast lines, unified operations, flexible service models, and a trusted partnership behind the scenes.

“A simple, elegant solution that’s multifaceted,” Drew summarized. “It can do a lot of things, and learning it isn’t difficult.”