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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins
- Thread starter AT86
- Start date
Matt.GC
TS Member
Ah yes, 'Royal Visits' are classics, and on the second page of retail 101 in my industry. Pull a long shift, run around like mad putting on a fake show and illusion of everything being awesome, watch your P's and Q's, smile at the big cheeses, and lie about everything being wonderful. Keep your job for another 6 months. A sigh of relief after they've gone, cut the payroll back for the weekend to pay for the overspend incurred whilst packing the place with staff just for the visit, go back to reality the next week.
Regarding food, I suppose you can hide a lot and put on a spectacle. But you can't change the quality of ingredients. It's why it baffles me so much when people speak of how their experiences vary from stay to stay, and park to park. What they're actually talking about is, was it crap or really crap? How low our expectations now are. We were talking about how replacing freshly baked croissants with cheap and rubbery packaged versions was crap a couple of years ago. Now everything has become so degraded, were discussing the minor intricacies of the scraps.
Notice how the breakfast sausages are awful no matter where or when you visit? It's because they're crap sausages. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig (or ketchup on cheap bacon maybe in this case?).
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Alsty
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Fury 325
Yes it's mainly about the ingredients, but it's also how it's cooked and prepared. You can have a crap burger, or you can have a crap burger that they've burnt and left under a hot lamp for 10 minutes.
jon81uk
TS Member
The fake discounting is pretty much already there with the annual pass, it does seem that the price Aramark want to sell for is 20% less than the menu price, so those who aren't passholders are paying more.
Had a thought about what could improve the current F&B offering at the resort and it ultimately involves binning Aramark when the time comes.
The park have had big brands in the past, so maybe it’s time to look at bringing some back. Here’s what I’d do:
ATH - Harvester
SLH - Wetherspoons
Toby Carvery in the former Towers Street Bar snd Grill
Replace all Burger Kitchens with Five Guys
Replace RCR with a Miller and Carter for an on-resort premium dining experience
Replace Just Chicken with a Nando’s
Remaining coffee places and small kiosks - replace with a mix of Costa and Greggs.
I know it’ll never happen but it would give guests a huge choice in food options, ranging from quick healthy bites up to a good quality steak, and pretty much everything in between.
The park have had big brands in the past, so maybe it’s time to look at bringing some back. Here’s what I’d do:
ATH - Harvester
SLH - Wetherspoons
Toby Carvery in the former Towers Street Bar snd Grill
Replace all Burger Kitchens with Five Guys
Replace RCR with a Miller and Carter for an on-resort premium dining experience
Replace Just Chicken with a Nando’s
Remaining coffee places and small kiosks - replace with a mix of Costa and Greggs.
I know it’ll never happen but it would give guests a huge choice in food options, ranging from quick healthy bites up to a good quality steak, and pretty much everything in between.
GooseOnTheLoose
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Ug Bugs
None of the suggestions you've put forward would qualify, even tenuously, as healthy.
If this is the level and calibre of what the casual visitor really wants, or us as enthusiasts can imagine and conceive of, Goose help us all.
Bringing in third party operators and brands, like these, will further compound the issues. The park / Merlin will want their pound of flesh, from the F&B operating within the park. The brand operators will need to meet their respected profit margins. You'll have the same situation as we currently have, with possibly only a smidge of increase in quality.
We talk about the hotels lacking atmosphere and ambience currently, has anyone actually paid attention when visiting a JD Wetherspoon? There's no music, because they refuse to pay for licensing. Everyone is packed in like sardines, a prison canteen or a school dinner hall, with rows of identical tables, chairs and stools. They are unpleasant drinking halls, which are famously not family friendly, with the sole intention of pushing cheap booze on you as much as possible. How is this an appropriate suggestion to even entertain, for what's supposed to be a world renowned high end tourist destination, in what's arguably supposed to be a luxury family resort?
If people want Alton Towers to be at the level of Disney, or Universal, or Europa Park; if people want Alton Towers to be a world class theme park and thrilling destination; if people want Alton Towers to truly be a place where the magic never ends, then we need to aim higher than a bloody Welcome Break for food and beverage suggestions.
Islander
TS Member
Sorry to be negative, but I hate this idea so so much lol.
Theme parks are about escapism - we really shouldn't be bringing half the high street into them.
Plastic Person
TS Member
Personally, I don't mind nipping into Wetherspoons occasionally (politics aside...), and I'd argue that some of the more recently refurbished venues are much more pleasant and diverse than @GooseOnTheLoose gives them credit for. However, I definitely do not want to visit one at Alton Towers, nor anything else I can find in a retail park or on an ailing high street.
Good food is absolutely plentiful and accessible in the UK these days, compared to even a decade ago. The lack of it at Alton Towers is one of several things that have turned me away from the park in the same timeframe. It's somehow now actively worse than the mid-nineties.
Good food is absolutely plentiful and accessible in the UK these days, compared to even a decade ago. The lack of it at Alton Towers is one of several things that have turned me away from the park in the same timeframe. It's somehow now actively worse than the mid-nineties.
Alix
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Balder BEEP BEEP
if you only visit a park infrequently then burger and chips is fine, but if you’re there more often, like a lot of us are, it really does become dull when that’s all you can get.
Even Thorpe falls down a bit here - the doughnuts are lovely, but for mains it is just variations of meat (real or fake) in bread with fried potatoes most of the time.
Even Thorpe falls down a bit here - the doughnuts are lovely, but for mains it is just variations of meat (real or fake) in bread with fried potatoes most of the time.
Look at captain pennybags here with his five guys and Miller and Carter
Five Guys would never work though, they don’t do quick service and hot hold. Really burger kitchen would be fine if they just increased the burger quality and allowed even a modicum of customisation.
Very much against franchise food outlets. Aramark can do high quality and themed offerings as anyone who’s eaten at the Warner Brothers Studio Tour can testify to so I think slapping a McDonalds/Nando’s/Greggs into every area of the park would be a step back even from what is currently there.
They need to up the quality, sort the pricing issue, and theme it a little better, but the answer (in my opinion) isn’t to as somebody else eloquently put ‘put half the high street in’.
They need to up the quality, sort the pricing issue, and theme it a little better, but the answer (in my opinion) isn’t to as somebody else eloquently put ‘put half the high street in’.
Grilled chicken and veggies is pretty healthy as far as eating out goes.
Leigh
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- EGF
Food at towers was so much more palatable when the franchises were on park though (even pre-Aramark), mainly because the franchise owners have actual consistent standards they have to keep to.
No issue with McDonald’s, BK, KFC etc returning. It worked before, no reason it couldn’t again.
No issue with McDonald’s, BK, KFC etc returning. It worked before, no reason it couldn’t again.
Bert2theSpark
TS Member
It’s entirely possible that Towers could introduce high street brands and have them themed to how they like them. Working with a brand would mean that Aramark has to follow that brands suppliers and also conform to whatever operating times that they set, which I presume would be the pinch point.
But I presume the theory around why Merlin sold their food operations to Aramark were the economies of scale, the lump sums of cash and that Merlin could focus on operating the business elsewhere when most F&B decisions are taken away from Senior Management and Directors. So I’m not sure why any high street brands would appeal to the theme parks.
But I presume the theory around why Merlin sold their food operations to Aramark were the economies of scale, the lump sums of cash and that Merlin could focus on operating the business elsewhere when most F&B decisions are taken away from Senior Management and Directors. So I’m not sure why any high street brands would appeal to the theme parks.
Matt.GC
TS Member
I'd eat every single day in a Miller and Carter if I could. But I wouldn't want to see one at Alton Towers. A depressing Wetherspoons doesn't scream 'family fun' either. They're better off doing something unique themselves for the sit down dining options.
That said, when it comes to fast food, I'd certainly welcome the franchises back over what we have now. Any sky high aspirations for Towers as a resort in general are long dead, so there's no point in aspiring for some interesting and immersive fast food offering when standards reach this low. We're talking about '100% Beef' stickers being peeled off of windows here! Even far better parks than Towers offer knocked together junk in a bun with chips, just getting somewhere near that will do at this stage.
At least with a KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, or even stooping to the depths of McDonald's, you know what you're getting. Fast food just needs to tick a box first and foremost. When I go to Thorpe, I know there's some standardised KFC or Burger King to fall back on. I know what it will taste like, and that the chicken will actually be made of chicken.
That said, when it comes to fast food, I'd certainly welcome the franchises back over what we have now. Any sky high aspirations for Towers as a resort in general are long dead, so there's no point in aspiring for some interesting and immersive fast food offering when standards reach this low. We're talking about '100% Beef' stickers being peeled off of windows here! Even far better parks than Towers offer knocked together junk in a bun with chips, just getting somewhere near that will do at this stage.
At least with a KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, or even stooping to the depths of McDonald's, you know what you're getting. Fast food just needs to tick a box first and foremost. When I go to Thorpe, I know there's some standardised KFC or Burger King to fall back on. I know what it will taste like, and that the chicken will actually be made of chicken.
Ok maybe a Spoons is pushing it in hindsight, but the atmosphere of an on-park Spoons would be very different from a Spoons in a deteriorating market town at midday.
My other options could work though and definitely include healthy alternatives. I didn’t realise about the five guys nut allergy thing, so maybe that’s not the best option.
Franchises worked fine on park when they were there, and didn’t detract from the theming and immersion, arguably because the themed areas were so much stronger in the late 90s and early 2000s.
My other options could work though and definitely include healthy alternatives. I didn’t realise about the five guys nut allergy thing, so maybe that’s not the best option.
Franchises worked fine on park when they were there, and didn’t detract from the theming and immersion, arguably because the themed areas were so much stronger in the late 90s and early 2000s.