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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

Bert2theSpark said:
Artisan pizza is becoming quite trendy on street markets nowadays, something stone baked with high-value toppings such as honey. It would be different enough from oven-cooked pizzas and is still relatively low cost to produce.

Maybe have even a couple of different locations across the park with different toppings based around different rides. I really like the concept of a sterotypical Italian pizza outlet with a Smiler theme to it, with a pizza slice forming part of an optical illusion!
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I like it but might skip Forbidden Valley's Toxic Slices.
 
An American pizza slice place would be good, also a place that specifically caters for vegetarians/vegans only. Although I’m not one myself I’m surprised they haven’t leaned more into that market specifically, if they did it well it could be popular.

But that’s probably the problem, they wouldn’t do it justice.
 
Blackrock said:
An American pizza slice place would be good, also a place that specifically caters for vegetarians/vegans only. Although I’m not one myself I’m surprised they haven’t leaned more into that market specifically, if they did it well it could be popular.

But that’s probably the problem, they wouldn’t do it justice.
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They had a pizza truck in those x sector food trucks last year. This sold pizza by the slice. Didn’t see if it opened on Saturday,
 
Bert2theSpark said:
Artisan pizza is becoming quite trendy on street markets nowadays, something stone baked with high-value toppings such as honey. It would be different enough from oven-cooked pizzas and is still relatively low cost to produce.

Maybe have even a couple of different locations across the park with different toppings based around different rides. I really like the concept of a sterotypical Italian pizza outlet with a Smiler theme to it, with a pizza slice forming part of an optical illusion!
Click to expand...
The thing is it's not even "becoming trendy" it has been for a really long time, Merlin are just incredibly slow to notice trends, like how they're always late with their midway gimmicks and how they only started doing "streetfood" at all like a year or two ago
 
The inability to get pass discount at the touchscreens is extremely annoying and means pass holders currently have to wait much longer to get food. If they've done it deliberately with a hope of driving people into forgoing the discount then they severely underestimate my stubbornness. The touchscreens on the tables at Not Woodcutters are just rubbish

Sticking with Not Woodcutters, the removal of GF options seems a glaring oversight. There are far too few alternatives and leaves people in a position where they either have to go hungry or walk half way across the park to find something they can physically eat.
 
I tried ordering a simple burger from not Woodcutters on Saturday and didn't even bother as it is confusing at best and a down right shambles at worst. I don't want to eat that weird doughnut burger you'd find at a hipster place in Shoreditch and just have something normal people eat. Why is it so hard just to have a simple online order where you can pick and choose what you do and don't want in a burger?
 
I ate at Woodcutters on Sunday and it was horrific. Worst meal ever at Alton.

I typically eat there during my visits to Towers, food is never terrible and never amazing. Pricey yes but reasonably acceptable.

After yesterdays atrociousness I will never step foot in there again unless things change dramatically.

The menu is severely lacking. Fair enough have crazy food combinations on the menu but they should be in addition to a regular menu, rather than being THE menu.

The food quality was horrible aside from the fries and the pint of Magners.

The ordering process on the tablets is useless. We were in a group of 7 with one tablet. Six of us couldn't even browse the menu whilst one was ordering.

I loved the order by phone as you could all order at the same time and all browse at the same time. I like the idea of having a tablet system ASWELL as the phone ordering for those or wish to use it, but it shouldn't be one or the other.

My meal (veg skewer) came with this dip that was just terrible. Super super viscous and tasted like ground up MDF board mixed with water and glue. Most disgusting thing ever. My friend in our group is an executive chef and even he couldn't identify what was in it!

Not returning unless big changes happen.

EDIT: Also to add that I ahve emailed all of this to Alton. Awaiting to hear back in "10-14 days". I'll keep you updated although i'm not hopeful.
 
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Yeah, it may be a nightmare for guests and staff, but it might allow them to employ like one whole person less, so who's to say if it's bad or not
 
Alphe86 said:
Self service generally is better though. In almost every way. Except this wasn’t thought through. One tablet per person… who thought that through in a park with 10+k people
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Totally disagree - you had much better service in the past where there was person to person interaction. That’s my opinion anyway. Would much rather deal with a human than a machine any day.
 
Allow both, it's not beyond the wit of man to allow people to order in person and also via an app, plenty of other eateries manage it. There's also no excuse for not allowing AP discount to be entered on the app, even if it is due to Aramark not having access to the Merlin card database, there should be some way of checking (eg an API to look up simply "is this card valid, what tier is it" would get around any potential GDPR issues although I don't believe there would be any since Aramark is under contract with Merlin so they can simply be a data processor on their behalf)
 
It does seem Aramark have gone backwards this is season with their ordering. It’s clearly some kind of cost cutting in most outlets. Self service has replaced tills in corner coffee, coffee lounge and the chicken place in the Valley. Cutting down on staff.

Due to that they’re removed all the fridges, cakes and other bits, and all they have done is cheaply board over the counters in the two coffee lounges. And it actually looks awful, doesn’t fit the themes of the outlets.

I went for a look on Sunday and spotted 20+ people all stood around the collecting counter waiting.

When you had a till you could drip feed the customers to the counter, and even then queues used to form writing for the drinks. Now they’re added 3 order points which means when it’s busy the orders go through much quicker and actually means people will be waiting for longer for their collections.

As for the new woodcutters system, that has gone backwards. You now sit there for ages while each people in your group browses the menu on the tablet, orders, goes inside to get discount, pays. Repeat.

But as the head of F&B for Aramark at towers said to is “it’s the future and it won’t be going away” with his attitude it’s no wonder Aramark is such a state on park. His answer for a large group was to just ask for more tablets next time we want to order.

As for the food, I didn’t think it was bad, it’s certainly over priced but it tasted fine. However it’s all well and good having wacky food, but there’s no basic food anymore, all burgers are donut burgers, gone is simple gammon and chips, curry, burgers, steak, etc. worse thing is there are no way of even seeing the menu before you go in so until you get the tablet you can’t even see what they sell.
 
Alphe86 said:
Self service generally is better though. In almost every way. Except this wasn’t thought through. One tablet per person… who thought that through in a park with 10+k people
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Personally, I prefer to be served every last time.
That is service.
To have a bar, but zero bar service?
Why even have a bar, whip it out and chuck a few more tables in!
 
Ar
djtruefitt said:
It’s clearly some kind of cost cutting in most outlets.
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Handling cash is expensive. You have to have the necessary insurance, you need to arrange for secure deposits throughout the day.

Self service machines also remove a little bit of liability. You are responsible for telling the kitchen about your allergens, or order customisations.

It's becoming increasingly transparent that, for whatever reason, Aramark don't trust their staff at Alton Towers.
 
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