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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

£26 for 20 nuggets though, the food has infact been lousy for years but imo it's taken a absolutely huge plummet in quality and pricing this season.

The food now is the worst, I didn't mind some of it before but now everything I did like is the worst quality food money can buy for extreme prices, so I used to eat on park most of the time just a year ago but now won't be spending a penny.
 
WillPS said:
Indeed, grocery inflation is at an all time high of 17.5%. Contrary to popular belief in general fast food operators don't operate on giant markups and KFC are on the lower side because of their reliance on fresh poultry.
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Yup, this is what I was mentioning the other day. You either go down the "shrinkflation" route and amend portion sizes or tweak the ingredients used to try and keep the prices sensible. Or, you sensibly increase the prices, but ensure the quality reflects that price. What we got instead was even less quality and even more sky high pricing.

Judging by the reactions before they took over, Aramark were no doubt coming in knowing they would get a bad time from the regulars who visit. You'd have therefore thought there would be some really high level oversight on what changes were made, be that on pricing or product - especially considering the quality of the offering at Towers was already on a downward spiral. Instead we got gold like this:

From: https://twitter.com/zachariahassler/status/1642861387054473218

or this:

From: https://twitter.com/Ben_There_/status/1647932681450078209

Then not to mention the inconsistent pricing where the exact same things have varying prices in different quick service restaurants, or where 2 lots of 3 onion rings are cheaper than 5 onion rings. A mocha from a machine for £4? Can you honestly say that's a sensible price when artisan coffee places in Central London like Prufrock are doing handmade mochas with real chocolate for just 50p more?
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I accept food price inflation is crazy at present, and I accept there will be somewhat of a premium on stuff at a theme park. But Aramark have not helped themselves in the slightest with the errors they've made. Just a vague amount of effort (fully reviewing pricing across their outlets to ensure consistency when they came in, a proper approval process for POS changes to prevent the kiosk farce) would've gone some way to prevent a lot of heat that they received.

Let's just jump back to the quote from Nick Varney on the press release for the Aramark deal:
“Building an innovative and high-quality food and beverage offering for our guests is part of our continued business strategy to deliver the very best guest days out and short breaks. Aramark’s accomplishments in driving world-class hospitality programmes at many of the most prestigious sporting events, iconic locations, and leading destinations in the world makes them a great partner to elevate our food offering as part of the magic and memorable experiences we offer our guests.”
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High quality offering? I wouldn't say so? Food offering elevated? Not from what I've seen so far. I'd certainly say it's been a "memorable experience" for some, but for all the wrong reasons!
 
I'm not sure if those questions were addressed to me but I totally agree with what you're saying; it's nuts. My point is that 'Aramark' is only part in the trifector of how those prices are quite so mental, the other two parts being 'the price they were before' (and had crept up in a 10 year period when inflation was generally low so there was less of an excuse) and 'high food inflation'.
 
WillPS said:
Indeed, grocery inflation is at an all time high of 17.5%. Contrary to popular belief in general fast food operators don't operate on giant markups and KFC are on the lower side because of their reliance on fresh poultry.
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I beg to differ. I am going back about 5yrs, but I know for fact then that the raw ingredients + cooking costs of a medium McDonalds value meal were under £1. At the time this would have retailed at about £4.19. Even if you add on an extra £1 for staffing costs, this is a good mark-up.

Move on to today with food price inflation + energy cost rises + minimum wage going up, even of the ingredient + cooking costs of that medium meal are £2 & staffing costs £2, it now sells for about £6.19. Still a decent mark-up.

So back to Aramark, who are clearly not using 100% beef or chicken (unlike McDonalds), their ingredient prices are going to be lower. They will be paying the minimum wage - or not much over it - and their selling prices are sky-high. I would suggest that Aramark is making a huge profit on anything they sell from Just Chicken / Burger Kitchen at the Merlin theme parks.
 
Kraken27 said:
I beg to differ. I am going back about 5yrs, but I know for fact then that the raw ingredients + cooking costs of a medium McDonalds value meal were under £1. At the time this would have retailed at about £4.19. Even if you add on an extra £1 for staffing costs, this is a good mark-up.

Move on to today with food price inflation + energy cost rises + minimum wage going up, even of the ingredient + cooking costs of that medium meal are £2 & staffing costs £2, it now sells for about £6.19. Still a decent mark-up.
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Accepting your unsubstantiated numbers, what you're describing is an average markup in food retail - not a giant one.

Kraken27 said:
So back to Aramark, who are clearly not using 100% beef or chicken (unlike McDonalds), their ingredient prices are going to be lower. They will be paying the minimum wage - or not much over it - and their selling prices are sky-high. I would suggest that Aramark is making a huge profit on anything they sell from Just Chicken / Burger Kitchen at the Merlin theme parks.
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I very much doubt Aramark can achieve anything like McDonalds' economies of scale; they'll be buying wholesale rather than specifying and managing their own supply chain. Whether or not that means McDonalds are able to both pay less and get a better product as a result of that scale I couldn't say with any certainty.

If you took from my posts that I think the prices charged now are fair/reasonable then I can confirm again that was not my intention. The fact is that the contract Aramark entered in to was based on retail options which existed 2-3 years ago, and were already shockingly expensive. We don't know the ins and outs of how restrictive that contract is but it's certainly fair to say the landscape has radically shifted in that time. Given how little the menus have changed (price/quality aside) one can reasonably conclude 'quite restrictive'.
 
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In a world where it is normal for a bottle of water to sell for more than a bottle of milk, the argument that the retail price should be influenced by what it costs to produce something feels dead.
 
AT86 said:
At Alton Towers? There were posts about it happening at Chessington yesterday (discussed in the Chessington thread) - has it spread to other parks?
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Ah, they didn't specify! I've just looked at their other tweets and it does appear they were at Chessington! My bad. Although at this rate it really wouldn't surprise me if we see it at Towers.

Absolutely shocking either way.
 
Does Aramark run the last call cafe on Thorpe? It serves costa but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Since we found it it’s my go to place - fairly quiet and only £2.60 for a large cup of tea which is cheaper than work (who also contract Aramark) thought I’d add a bit of positivity 😁
 
Alix said:
Does Aramark run the last call cafe on Thorpe? It serves costa but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Since we found it it’s my go to place - fairly quiet and only £2.60 for a large cup of tea which is cheaper than work (who also contract Aramark) thought I’d add a bit of positivity 😁
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Yup they do and prices are generally the same as they are at Towers.

Coffees are on the expensive side, although with pass discount they're about bearable. The main issue though is that those coffee prices are the same regardless of the quality of the machine it comes out of. The more expensive machines at Last Call at Thorpe or Corner Coffee at Alton are the same as the kiosks such as Towers Street Hot Dogs. The quality is completely different, and the price should reflect that.
 
Craig said:
Yup they do and prices are generally the same as they are at Towers.

Coffees are on the expensive side, although with pass discount they're about bearable. The main issue though is that those coffee prices are the same regardless of the quality of the machine it comes out of. The more expensive machines at Last Call at Thorpe or Corner Coffee at Alton are the same as the kiosks such as Towers Street Hot Dogs. The quality is completely different, and the price should reflect that.
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That’s the reason I don’t like coffee - so long as you have boiling water (and soy milk) you can’t go too far wrong with tea, coffee on the other hand seems much more open to barista’s competence, machines etc. We did also have the rollover hotdogs with waffle fries on our first visit this year - they were ok, a bit pricey but I didn’t feel too swindled as the portions were large. Normally we take packed though - and have something fat laden in the services on the way home. Reading services now charges about £10 for a Burger King meal which I thought was a bit steep.
 
Alix said:
Does Aramark run the last call cafe on Thorpe? It serves costa but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Since we found it it’s my go to place - fairly quiet and only £2.60 for a large cup of tea which is cheaper than work (who also contract Aramark) thought I’d add a bit of positivity 😁
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Good Grief, man. Where on earth do you work?

It's £2.25 for a tea on the high street a chain coffee bar (like Costa); the price at the Merlin parks is around a 20-25% uplift vs. high street chains.

The issue at the Merlin parks is that they don't have such good training.
 
AstroDan said:
Good Grief, man. Where on earth do you work?

It's £2.25 for a tea on the high street a chain coffee bar (like Costa); the price at the Merlin parks is around a 20-25% uplift vs. high street chains.

The issue at the Merlin parks is that they don't have such good training.
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*ahem* woman!! 😂
I work for a large government department - we have exactly the same problem with training - the ladies (always ladies) just aren’t trained in the same way as the high street. We’re obviously also being fleeced by Aramark, to the point where I found £2.60 not too bad!!
 
Alix said:
We’re not allowed anything free as it’s tax payers money - even tea and coffee at meetings we have to buy ourselves!
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As a tax payer I say you deserve your free cuppa, although I quit coffee long ago I always winced buying it at theme parks or on the high street, save a fortune taking your own flask to places.
 
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