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Food & Beverage 2019

From what I know of decent restaurants the aim is a 75 percent markup on ingredients that nets about 25 percent profit per meal but I'm guessing for those abysmal meals at RCR they are pushing for 90-95 percent mark up on the meal
 
Has anybody ever risked a croissant at breakfast?



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Danny said:
Yes. Soggier than a pair of swimming trunks fresh out of Splash Landings.
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Croissants are expensive for Towers / Merlin to offer. Cheapest ones at Brakes Foodservice work out at 28p each - that's getting way too pricey if they're on a buffet and a guest could take more than one! (Although if they are as good as described above I suspect one is enough for anyone).

NB: I should point out I have no idea which food supplier(s) Towers / Merlin use. I merely used Brakes website for prices as they are a large well established national supplier to the catering industry.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
You assume Merlin would stretch as far as a known supplier? I always figured they just raided the bins behind Sainsbury's.
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Sainsburys! Way too high quality for Merlin - they'd go for the Kwik Save bins if they were still trading.

Given the same menus & generally identical food offering / poor quality across the parks & hotels, they definitely use one supplier to drive economies of scale / purchase price discount & standardise SOP's (standard operating procedures) across the Merlin estate, which also saves money. They certainly don't choose the costlier options from whichever supplier they use either.

A company I used to work for ran multiple food outlets across the UK. They used the same suppliers for the lot for the exact same reason - economies of scale. The only things they used local suppliers for was stuff like maintenance work, flowers & ad-hoc jobs. A bit like Towers obsession with Leek Signs!
 
Brakes are the absolute worst in the hospitality and food industry, hence why a lot of the bigger players like Zizzi and PizzaExpress use Bidvest and Reynolds and the quality is far better. I used to work for a fairly-popular chain restaurant who used Brakes and the quality was nothing short of horrendous (although they do supply fairly average food to Slug & Lettuce which isn’t all that bad).

It doesn’t cost much to provide great quality food either. A standard Margherita at PizzaExpress cost 24p to make. Just shows that quality can still be provided with high profit margins and Merlin have zero excuse. It’s just corporate greed but on an entirely new level.

I would not even serve that photo of the burger from RCR; I’m not sure most people would. It just shows the team have zero pride in their work and no motivation which probably drips down from higher management and their lack of pride for the food, the restaurant and the experience.
 
My work would use Brakes for much of the basic food items but local suppliers for some specific things like strawberries, meat, eggs.

If you ever see "Chocholate Fudge Cake" then it's probably one of these: https://www.brake.co.uk/products/de...ake/pre-cut/f4156-brakes-chocolate-fudge-cake

We'd sell a slice of this plus ice cream for £3.95

I don't really see the value in eating on park... better to stick to donuts and have tea on the way home
 
Towers use Bidvest as their food supplier, no idea what they supply across the resort, but I’ve often seen the delivery vans going towards the hotels or parked up near the coach park.

Thing is you can get good quality stuff from all these suppliers, and make great meals, but it’s clear to see merlin just buy cheap and sell it expensive now.

Gone are the days when the chefs would have any creative input in the menus, etc. You can see now Merlin just give them a generic menu to work off and that’s how it’s done. It’s a shame as some of the options in the hotels were decent. Now they are generic and not great.

Also for those wondering, apparently RCR is ran by the hotels F&B team and not the theme parks team. Which says a lot really on how bad the resorts F&B has become during the past few years.
 
Oh wow; I never knew Towers used the same food supplier as our school canteen!
 
Matt N said:
Oh wow; I never knew Towers used the same food supplier as our school canteen!
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Lots of restaurants and canteens use Bidvest. Some of their bigger clients are Ask, Zizzi, KFC, PizzaExpress, TGI Friday’s, etc.

They’re one of the bigger suppliers of frozen food and drink stock etc.

Strange Bidvest don’t actively promote being one of Towers’/Merlin’s main suppliers though, like they do with other major clients.
 
kydog1299 said:
Lots of restaurants and canteens use Bidvest. Some of their bigger clients are Ask, Zizzi, KFC, PizzaExpress, TGI Friday’s, etc.

They’re one of the bigger suppliers of frozen food and drink stock etc.

Strange Bidvest don’t actively promote being one of Towers’/Merlin’s main suppliers though, like they do with other major clients.
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Because the food Towers serves is nothing to be proud of :p
 
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The fact i got a cold burger, hard chips and no one gave a damn. Just about sums it up

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For balance, I had a delicious chicken burger at Woodcutters on Saturday. Glad to see that they are finally using burger buns that do not fall apart when you pick them up! The bread was lovely a soft.
 
Rob said:
For balance, I had a delicious chicken burger at Woodcutters on Saturday. Glad to see that they are finally using burger buns that do not fall apart when you pick them up! The bread was lovely a soft.
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It should not be difficult to achieve consistent standards with the standard menu offerings across the Merlin parks. The problem seems to be that consistently bad is the standard that seems to prevail most of the time. If Merlin invested in automated equipment that times the cooking of food items to the second (much like in a McD's kitchen) the food standards should be much more consistent. The equipment is not cheap though!
 
GaryH said:
I remember when ATH first opened, and the food in the Secret Garden was amazing. Really thick Aberdeen Angus beefburgers, yum yum yum
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When ATH first opened the park & hotel were run by Tussauds. Enough said.

I would actually be intrigued to know what Nick Varney's truthful view (the one he'll only ever say in private) is of the state of Alton Towers at present. Nick worked at Towers back in the Tussauds days, so knows what the standards were like back then & should know what they are like now.
 
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