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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

Credit where credit is due, the Koftas skewer at Not Woodies is pretty nice. I was very surprised.

Absolute faff getting discount though.
 
Ate at Rollercoaster Restaurant today. Very strange as whilst didn't feel that busy we ended up waiting over 30 minutes for our food. The first box that arrived at our table wasn't ordered by anyone. And the Nemesis burger arrived as per photo.

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Inside wasn't cremated but the outside seemed so. Is this toasted to an inch of its life because they can't be arsed to buy pre-blackened buns? Probably. Was fine to eat though.

The faff to require a staff member for MAP discount is daft. Especially as its doable at Burger Kitchen self service.
 
We just got back from a couple of days at the park, staying at the hotel. Staff in the Secret Garden restaurant were doing their best and the service was excellent but the quality and quantity of the food was absolutely appalling, especially for the price, to the point where it felt insulting. For example, husband had the chicken wings starter for something like £7 - what arrived was four (!) wings, just the end bits with barely anything on them, and a smear of sauce. By way of contrast, when we got back home to SW London yesterday, we popped out to a local independent wine bar / pub-type place for dinner as a post-holiday treat, and had better quality food, a third cheaper, with substantially larger portions, in an affluent part of London, where the place is already paying high rents. The scalping / exploitation of customers and obscene profit margins at Merlin establishments are a disgrace imo and the sooner AT and other UK parks can extricate themselves from these money-grabbing private equity "shareholders first" firms, the better (I am not holding my breath).
 
I think it's poor management, not shareholder greed. You agree a contract with Aramark (or whomever). Their focus is on profit, where Merlin's focus should be on long-term revenue/profit - ie repeat business. It's nothing new - this mis-match has existed for decades.

Charging 25% more for being a captive market is acceptable business practice and tolerated by customers. Then delivering poor quality is not. That's what you get for accepting the cheapest contract where they have to make profit however..... Great companies - GREAT companies - put their customers first, and reap long-term benefits. A new coaster is a 20 year investment - not a quick buck. Treat your customers the same.
 
Smiley said:
I think it's poor management, not shareholder greed. You agree a contract with Aramark (or whomever). Their focus is on profit, where Merlin's focus should be on long-term revenue/profit - ie repeat business. It's nothing new - this mis-match has existed for decades.

Charging 25% more for being a captive market is acceptable business practice and tolerated by customers. Then delivering poor quality is not. That's what you get for accepting the cheapest contract where they have to make profit however..... Great companies - GREAT companies - put their customers first, and reap long-term benefits. A new coaster is a 20 year investment - not a quick buck. Treat your customers the same.
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The thing that annoys me most about the captive market is prices for drinks and a bag of sweets etc when everyone _knows_ what the normal retail prices are. £3.50 or whatever it is now for a bottle of Sprite is more shameless than even a motorway services WH Smith.
 
Smiley said:
I think it's poor management, not shareholder greed. You agree a contract with Aramark (or whomever). Their focus is on profit, where Merlin's focus should be on long-term revenue/profit - ie repeat business. It's nothing new - this mis-match has existed for decades.

Charging 25% more for being a captive market is acceptable business practice and tolerated by customers. Then delivering poor quality is not. That's what you get for accepting the cheapest contract where they have to make profit however..... Great companies - GREAT companies - put their customers first, and reap long-term benefits. A new coaster is a 20 year investment - not a quick buck. Treat your customers the same.
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Broadly speaking I agree, and I think we are generally on the same page, but shareholder greed drives management decisions to procure services from solely profit-driven enterprises like Aramark. I am fully prepared to pay a premium price for a product if it *feels* like a premium product, including the atmosphere and location mark-up, but right now some of the food is worse than a burger van, and that's not an exaggeration.
 
Through the years we all have paid in excess for food and drink at theme parks because we have expected to do so given the nature of the business. Just like going to an airport shop like WH Smith. However there comes a limit where the price is too absurd or the quality too poor to justify paying it, such as the £2.75 in Bournemouth airport for a pack of extra strong mints. I didn’t buy them.

Alton has reached this point with its food and drink. Not only is the quality below par but the prices are absurd to the point people just won’t pay them - or, they will pay it once and vow never to do so again in the future.

Once this sticks the park is going to find it very difficult in the future to change this trend. They need to act now to either low the prices (who in their right mind will pay £9.25 for a hot dog), or ditch Aramark and get better quality suppliers before it’s too late.
 
I gave up on "price vs quality" logic around twenty years ago though.
Express parking and a quality picnic, often eaten in the shade by the big chestnut tree in express, with a decent chilled beer in a real glass for less than a couple of quid.
I think it is age related, everyone puts up with it for a decade or so as a teenager, then realises over time that there are better alternatives.
 
I do think more and more people aren’t buying food now. I remember back in the day you would see a queue outside Pizza pasta, or a queue to the door in burger kitchen etc. but it doesn’t seem to be the case now.

I certainly spend very little now on park, in the past I would always eat on park, but now the choice has got very limited, the quality worse and the prices really are awful.

It’s cheaper to go to Greggs or Tesco on the way and buy a meal deal, then go to the pub on the way home. All of that is cheaper than a burger kitchen meal.
 
djtruefitt said:
I do think more and more people aren’t buying food now. I remember back in the day you would see a queue outside Pizza pasta, or a queue to the door in burger kitchen etc. but it doesn’t seem to be the case now.

I certainly spend very little now on park, in the past I would always eat on park, but now the choice has got very limited, the quality worse and the prices really are awful.

It’s cheaper to go to Greggs or Tesco on the way and buy a meal deal, then go to the pub on the way home. All of that is cheaper than a burger kitchen meal.
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I’m documented on here to have turned my nose up to packing sandwiches for a trip to the park - I’m one that always wanted a sit down lunch to be part of my theme park experience. But enough is enough now, we’ve taken packed lunches with us for a year or two now. It’s not so much the prices, I do expect to pay more at a theme park, it’s more the lack of traditional service and declining quality.

I don’t mind paying £18 for a sit down burger and chips if it’s half decent quality and is ordered from a waiter who interacts with you. What I do mind though is paying £18 for a burger of worse quality than one purchased from a grotty M6 service station that I’ve ordered off a sticky tablet.
 
s_g_k said:
I’m documented on here to have turned my nose up to packing sandwiches for a trip to the park - I’m one that always wanted a sit down lunch to be part of my theme park experience. But enough is enough now, we’ve taken packed lunches with us for a year or two now. It’s not so much the prices, I do expect to pay more at a theme park, it’s more the lack of traditional service and declining quality.

I don’t mind paying £18 for a sit down burger and chips if it’s half decent quality and is ordered from a waiter who interacts with you. What I do mind though is paying £18 for a burger of worse quality than one purchased from a grotty M6 service station that I’ve ordered off a sticky tablet.
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Couldn’t agree more. We’ve always stopped in at Woodcutters previously, for a truffle chicken burger and a pint or two. Again - it’s just part of the experience for us, and sitting in the cold on a bench fending off wasps just isn’t my idea of fun.

However. If we visit this year, we’ll be taking our own snacks. As you say - enough is enough.
 
something when we went to theme parks we always did was bring pack lunch, often someone had a bag with all of the food, for a few reasons:
1. we don't often fancy the hot foods for lunch, and especially not fast food type places which most of the places are
2. dietary requirements are hard to find
3. theme park food is extortionate
4. allows storage of snacks for the queues
5. whilst we weren't going from ride to ride to ride, it was more relaxed it was nice to spread lunch out over a longer time and have small breaks (e.g sit down for sandwich, go to queue open bag of crisps etc) meaning we would end up wasting less time.

we would normally buy small things (such as doughnuts) throughout the day

and if it is a long day (e.g disney) we would normally sit in for a hot meal in one of the resturants
 
Mattie boy said:
I'm sorry yet all different folk touching these screens to order food is quite rank ! Can't imagine they are cleaned very often at all...
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Let's not forget that it wasn't long ago that we were using cash - god knows where all those coins and notes were kept! There is an argument the tablets in comparison are cleaner because it's only your fingertips touching them and not your whole hand (and if you really don't want to touch the screens, carry one of those tablet pen things with the spongy tip). End of the day, regardless of how you order and what you touch leading up to handling your own food, basic hygiene is to wash your hands before eating anyway.
 
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