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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

Cash is king brother, one big profitable company simply assisting another.
The joys of the extreme end of capitalism...profit from prisoners starving, maximising profits by reducing costs, feed them literal garbage, put the plate scrapings into a big pie for the next days meals.
Award winning dedication to the pursuit of profit.
 
The cases on wiki were in america and well documented through the courts, though I didn't follow up the sources.
And come on Rick...government documented standards and reality are often many miles apart, from my experience in the care industry over the years.
Guidance is often just that, advice and information, nothing more.
 
So what is left on site which won’t use Aramark for its food provision?

Eastern Express?
Costa in Corner Coffee?
 
GaryH said:
So what is left on site which won’t use Aramark for its food provision?

Eastern Express?
Costa in Corner Coffee?
Click to expand...
Corner Coffee was run by AT so I assume Aramark have taken over.

Eastern Express took over the Dark Forest outlets a few years ago though.


Overall though I doubt much will change, it already was a lot worse than five years ago. Maybe staffing levels will improve but I expect they will buy the same ingredients from the same wholesalers.
 
rob666 said:
The cases on wiki were in america and well documented through the courts, though I didn't follow up the sources.
And come on Rick...government documented standards and reality are often many miles apart, from my experience in the care industry over the years.
Guidance is often just that, advice and information, nothing more.
Click to expand...
I think that's true where government provides services on behalf of itself, particularly in local government.

Typically, government contracts with outsourced vendors are written around PSI documents like that in terms of the minimum standard that must be provided for the contract to persist. Government is better at holding outsources to account than it is its own staff.

As the theory goes ... It's the same advantage for Merlin, they hold one corporation responsible for their F&B standards with the threat of a lack of payment or removal of contract. Rather than trying to do it via a bunch of seasonal junior managers who are operating in attractions all over the place.

I am not necessarily in favour of outsourcing, but not opposed to it either.

But what do I know ... :rolleyes:
 
Just seen a post on a merlin pass Facebook group about someone getting served mouldy cheese on their jacket potato at Legoland and Legoland being reluctant to refund. I work in catering and serving mouldy food, even if it is generally harmless, is a huge no no. In fact there should be procedures in place to avoid this ever happening. If they can’t even manage to keep track of their cheese, what kind of state is the rest of the kitchen in? (I’d share a screenshot of the post, but not sure if it’s allowed)

God help us all of this is what we’ve got to look forward to at Towers.
 
Without going too off topic. I've worked in HMP Dovegate, Stoke Heath and Oakwood.

Eating like kings would not be far off the mark. Average quality but lots of it and usually plenty to go up for seconds or thirds.

Dovegate and Oakwood especially were even more plentiful in food, being ran by Serco and G4S. Stokeheath, government run, not so much, but still realltively decent.

You certainly will not go hungry that's for sure.
 
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DistortAMG said:
I've worked in HMP Dovegate, Stoke Heath and Oakwood...
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"Worked in..." 🤔🤔

BigShadowtinytree said:
Just seen a post on a merlin pass Facebook group about someone getting served mouldy cheese on their jacket potato at Legoland and Legoland being reluctant to refund.
Click to expand...

Hmm. As atrocious as my food at Chessington was it didn't get as as bad as actually mouldy and even then the park to their credit were very apologetic and throwing free food vouchers and fastrack at me. I can imagine a crap response from anyone under the control of Aramark, which is what I recieved as well, but would be surprised if that would come from the park itself. Not that that should matter to the visitor.
 
I mean Aramark was the source of an outbreak of food-borne illness with big maggot infestations in their preparation areas and also tried to feed prisoners worm infested dog food and have been literal hunger strikes over their food being on campuses.

There's no way Merlin haven't read into this but they said 'meh they'll do anyway' so mouldy cheese is just the start of things to come.
 
I think you can identify individual incidents in large organisations that aren't reflective of the overall quality of their delivery - we don't judge the quality of Merlin operations on the back of The Smiler incident.

You can make the argument that quality is less subject to scrutiny in a prison system than it would be at a visitor attraction, what proportion of their business is prisons ? I.e. what percentage of their $18bn turnover is attributed to people who aren't incarcerated and choosing to part with their cash ?

The suggestion that Aramark are being let into the Merlin attractions and let loose is slightly ludicrous. Merlin will have set minimum standards that they need to hold Aramark to.
 
Rick said:
I think you can identify individual incidents in large organisations that aren't reflective of the overall quality of their delivery - we don't judge the quality of Merlin operations on the back of The Smiler incident.

You can make the argument that quality is less subject to scrutiny in a prison system than it would be at a visitor attraction, what proportion of their business is prisons ? I.e. what percentage of their $18bn turnover is attributed to people who aren't incarcerated and choosing to part with their cash ?

The suggestion that Aramark are being let into the Merlin attractions and let loose is slightly ludicrous. Merlin will have set minimum standards that they need to hold Aramark to.
Click to expand...

I think the point however is that for two companies to make money in this scenario the only option is to raise prices and reduce costs. Based on the south parks quality has dropped (and it wasn’t that high to begin with), and prices have gone up 10%.
 
Dave said:
I think the point however is that for two companies to make money in this scenario the only option is to raise prices and reduce costs. Based on the south parks quality has dropped (and it wasn’t that high to begin with), and prices have gone up 10%.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's a given that prices will rise - not least because the price rise you state is essentially inflation ?

I'm not saying that they won't go up, because the current financial climate would indicate that they will be going up irrespective of who runs it.

I think cost savings achieved by outsourcing are often overstated, but there are a number of opportunities.
 
Rick said:
I don't think it's a given that prices will rise - not least because the price rise you state is essentially inflation ?

I'm not saying that they won't go up, because the current financial climate would indicate that they will be going up irrespective of who runs it.

I think cost savings achieved by outsourcing are often overstated, but there are a number of opportunities.
Click to expand...

Towers had already increased prices to deal with inflation, it’s not like there was a 10% cost increase overnight.

Aramark took over and prices jumped up 10% immediately. I think it’s unlikely that increase was a response to inflation.
 
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