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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

AT86

AT86

TS Member
So Merlin have outsourced all F&B provision for their UK parks and hotels including Alton Towers, staff will now all work for the outsourced company from March 2022.

Thoughts?



EDIT - Aramark coming in late 2022/early 2023 to ATR.
 
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If it improves quality and variety then I’m all for it. I think if the past couple of years have taught us anything, it’s that Merlin are not interested in running quality f&b operations. Quality, themes and fun is mentioned a lot in that release so it sounds positive!
 
Well, it couldn't get much worse... It seems a lot of their experience is at National Parks and government-backed institutions and colleges in the US, whereas a UK theme park is a different ball game. Cautiously optimistic about this, though.

I wonder if Alton Towers will still be able to bulk up Mardi Gras, Halloween and Oktoberfest with external vendors?
 
So Alton, Thorpe, Chessington, Legoland and Warwick Castle. That's 4 pizza pastas, 3 just chickens and 5? Burger kitchens. Also would this include the BK and KFC franchises at Thorpe?
 
The main issue I could see with this is Aramark and the parks competing with each other to recruit. Particularly at Alton Towers there is a limited pool of people within travelling distance to the park who are willing to work for minimum wage. If Aramark decide to pay significantly more than Alton Towers to enable them to offer a better quality product then more people want to work for Aramark and fewer for AT.
 
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Does this extend to the hotels?

I wouldn't hold hope for Aramark doing much to improve offerings but then in the hotels at least it doesn't sound like it could get worse.
 
JAperson said:
I wonder if pass holder discount will still apply now they've been outsourced?
Personally, I don't have strong feelings either way, I doubt it will make that much difference.
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I expect they are outsourcing rather than full franchsing, so Alton Towers will tell them to run Burger Kitchen and offer the annual pass discount etc.
There might be more freedom on the full service menus at the hotels for the chefs to decide on dishes, but the core theme and style of each restaurant will probably remain the same.
 
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This can only be a good thing. Merlin were trying to juggle too many balls and turned out not being great at anything.

This allows Merlin to shift focus more so on the parks. Likewise, it allows a company who is solely focused on catering, run the catering.

Even if the food was not improved, I am sure it cannot get worse. But even so, resources inside Merlin are now less stretched, as people and time shift focus away from F&B into other aspects of the business.
 
I’m unsure what to make of it really. I can’t see it getting any worse. The food options have got worse and worse recently, and the excuse of covid has meant menus have got more and more basic (friend chicken doesn’t even sell chicken on the bone anymore, the one at LEGOLAND basically sells chicken wraps now).
The hotel options have also got more expensive and not really improved.

hopefully the food and drink options will improve and we might get a few different options across the park.

However could we see cuts come to the parks? The new company might decide they don’t need all the outlets they have, etc. but I guess it also depends on the contract they have, which might tell them what outlets remain, what they can and can not do etc.

I do wonder if pass discount will disappear, but hopefully it won’t!
 
djtruefitt said:
However could we see cuts come to the parks? The new company might decide they don’t need all the outlets they have, etc. but I guess it also depends on the contract they have, which might tell them what outlets remain, what they can and can not do etc.
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The thing is I think there is also the chance they’ll want to do the opposite and open more particularly at Towers we’re there just isn’t enough outlets.
 
I'm unsure if this is a good thing or not.

Outsourcing means that some of the money that Merlin could have paid to the staff or spent on the product now has to pay for the profits of Aramark instead. It means the quality has to drop to maintain the same price, or the price has to go up to maintain the same quality.

However if Aramark has enough buying power to get quality ingredients at a better price than Merlin then maybe it could work. Company culture could also have an impact in terms of service and brand standards.
 
It's categorically not a good move.

Aramark are one of those companies that you would outsource your prison or hospital food operations to. There is very little chance that they would be in a position to provide any significant quality bump, it's a cost saving operation, pure and simple (with none of those cost savings passed on to customers).

For anyone who has recently complained about the quality of hotel breakfasts - it is basically that, but across the board and likely with even cheaper products involved. That said, I believe Aramark are one of the better version of that type of company.... there are certainly worse options out there.
 
This sounds quite drastic. To be fair, quite a few of the restaurants at Disney are outsourced to 'operating participants', but it's hard to see this being in the interests of staff or customers.

One of the problems with the HB Leisure games and arcades, and the Pic Solve photo booths, is that if anyone complains about them, the official response is to shrug and say, "That's not really anything to do with us because it's an external company'. Food can be quite a common issue, or at least form part of a bigger complaint. If people go to Guest Services and just get a shrug and a 'that's nothing to do with us' response, they're obviously not going to be very happy. At least that's how it used to be. I haven't been to a Merlin park for a few years.

I'm out of the loop with how the Merlin parks are managed behind the scenes, but it used to be that the concessions (HB Leisure and Pic Solve) didn't get the Magic Pass (free tickets) or invited to the main staff parties. They also weren't included in any incentive schemes. I'm not sure if that's still the case. The general view was that working for a concession was worse, rather than better. Although there might be some perks if the concession are more generous about giving the staff free food on their shifts. It did also sometimes pan out that staff would get fired from Merlin over some kind of misdemeanour, but could then get a job with HB Leisure of Pic Solve. If the staff do get a worse deal, it might make it easier for Merlin to fill their positions, but it isn't good for the resort as a whole if F&B's short staffed, or if morale's lower.

I think staff not getting the free tickets (if that’s the case. It might not be) is a shame partly because it’s a good perk for the staff, but also I think staff can give better service when they visit and know the product.
 
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