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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

NuttySquirrel said:
But that's like closing all the accessible toilets because someone fell in one. It neither addresses the issue that caused the incident not continues to provide accessible services to those that require them.

Whether or not a food allergy constitutes a disability or protected characteristic is a bit of a grey area, but I'd argue that failing to provide for those that have specific requirements due to a medical issue is discrimination according to the Equality Act. It's a bit different if you go to a local deli in a city centre and they don't provide for (say) coeliacs than if you are stuck for an entire day or longer in a closed site that refuses to provide for your basic needs. How do the parks expect to cater for those staying on resort that are there for 2-3 days and have no options to make their own lunches?

I'm confused about this alleged incident as well as Towers have never said that any food is certified gluten-free. You can order "non-gluten containing" meals and take the chance, but there are (disappointingly) clauses in place that protect them from lawsuits should you get ill.

I hope this is a temporary policy while they reassess and put better measures in place. Otherwise I guess I'll be making a lot of sandwiches next season!
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My view to be clear is that the equality act requires reasonable accomodation. If someone is allergic to all 14 allergens is it reasonable to expect catering to cover that? I'd say no, but just one (such as gluten) it's reasonable to expect that to be catered for (subject to no guarantees re contamination).

I'd strongly expect this to be temporary and if not yes I can't see how it's compatible with the equalities act.

Re the toilet analogy, I'm unsure as it's all about relative harm, but definitely see your point. But with my engineer/ sap hat on if I was the one going to jail if someone else got hurt I'd definitely be temporarily taking the safe option (but taking very active and documented steps to get it going again)
 
The point about not being legally required to provide alternative food offerings is an interesting one. Take McDonald’s for example, apart from a salad you can’t get anything else gluten free in there and they don’t offer it either.

However, towers is different in that it’s a resort. Your in the park for the entire day, if staying over you are in the hotels (and t&c say you can’t bring in your own food), same for the waterpark, so in that respect they should have some duty to provide alternative food offerings.

Let’s be honest, a simple salad bar with a good selection of offerings would fix many of these issues!
 
That Guy said:
My view to be clear is that the equality act requires reasonable accomodation.
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It requires reasonable adjustment, not accommodation, and there is important distinction between the two words. You can be completely unaccomodating if the adjustment would be unreasonable. And that aspect relates to disabilities which I don't think would encompass allergies in any case so wouldn't be afforded any such protection.

I'm quite sure that legally they simply have to comply with food hygiene and labeling requirements. Beyond that market forces (and maybe a sense of conscience) dictate what is and isn't worth offering.
 
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NuttySquirrel said:
but I'd argue that failing to provide for those that have specific requirements due to a medical issue is discrimination according to the Equality Act.
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I must admit that this issue has caught my attention somewhat, blame being ill and nothing to do during Betwixmas.

The Equality Act does classify some allergies as disabilities, especially those which cause anaphylaxis. The Equality Act also states that reasonable adjustments should be made, where appropriate, to ensure equal access to services. It even gives the following example of a catering scenario: - "
It might be a reasonable adjustment for a rail service provider to arrange an alternative catering service for disabled people who cannot get to the buffet or dining car, or to provide assistance from staff where passengers have a sensory or physical impairment." - The act makes no reference, however, to reasonable adjustment for allergens.

The Food Standards Agency has a lot of incredibly useful guidance and best practice online, for the catering industry to follow (https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/allergen-guidance-for-food-businesses), to ensure that they're abiding by all relevant legislation. They state that: "In the UK, food businesses must inform you under food law if they use any of the 14 allergens as ingredients in the food and drink they provide. This list has been identified by food law as the most potent and prevalent allergens.". No mention is given to actually having to cater to those with allergens, however.

It gets a little tricker when you're catering for your employees, however. As an employer you do have a duty, when organising a food & drink at work event (for example), to ensure that your employees are equally catered for when it comes to food allergies. In this instance removing the allergens, which you know your employees are sensitive to, is considered a reasonable adjustment. Catering to an individual's beliefs in this circumstance, such as being vegan, would also be considered reasonable if it isn't prohibitive in cost or delivery. The scale is small.

Hospitals and prisons, where diet is controlled and outside food might not be allowed, are an interesting case of their own. In these scenarios, provision for vegetarians, vegans, allergens and religious beliefs, are very much covered by the Equality Act. This could be because there is no other reasonable alternative, however.

NuttySquirrel said:
Otherwise I guess I'll be making a lot of sandwiches next season!
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Unfortunately I think that this is the very reason why the Equality Act wouldn't cover a lack of offering for those with allergens at F&B outlets. The laws we have govern access and awareness. Your access to the establishment is not hindered, you're made aware of what the allergens are, you can bring and make your own provisions.

A business cannot refuse to serve you because you are vegan, that would be discriminatory and illegal. They can, however, refuse to offer vegan food on their menu. They cannot refuse to serve you because you have an allergy, as that would be discriminatory and illegal. They must, however, label all of their food with allergens and there's nothing stopping them from only having allergens on the menu.

All that being said, it's certainly not good business practice, or ethical, to not cater for the wants and needs of your customers.
 
I just don’t get why Aramark, or any external company have been contracted in - Merlin have a huge number of attractions, with massive numbers of guests and the opportunity to charge (and get) well above the market rate for food and beverage products. Why haven’t they hired the expertise, invested in some infrastructure and set up their own catering business - which one day could even compete with Aramark!
 
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Dannyski said:
I just don’t get why Aramark, or any external company have been contracted in - Merlin have a huge number of attractions, with massive numbers of guests and the opportunity to charge (and get) well above the market rate for food and beverage products. Why haven’t they hired the expertise, invested in some infrastructure and set up their own catering business - which one day could even compete with Aramark!
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In the world of the 'free market', the more specialised the business, the better it will be at that specialised task, more specialised, better decision making therefore more profit. In theory, that is.

It's quite clear that Merlin got a lot of cash upfront, and a consistent cash flow from Aramark by outsourcing F&B. Merlin leadership doesn't need to spend as much time on F&B decision-making and can focus on growing revenue elsewhere and focus the increased capital on new attractions. I suspect why they've extended the leases for the theme park properties also.

It's likely Merlin went to Blackstone/KIRKBI after the pandemic and asked for a wave of increased investment and some condition was that some of the cash was raised from within Merlin. As a private company, we'll likely never know what the specifics of what happened but I definitely don't regard the introduction of Aramark and the wave of investment in the company as two totally unrelated events. It's clearly a pivot in a different direction.
 
SuperMuscleMan said:
Alton food should be compared to cat and dog food at best. Possibly burger king, I mean after all they knowingly sold horse meat
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I’ll have you know the meat content in my cats food is 95%, granted that’s probably mostly the bits us humans don’t like to eat, but i’d Imagine it’s still higher than what is in an Aramark burger patty. It’s also gluten free so it beats Aramark/Towers on both counts🤣
 
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Can’t help but wonder what the situation at Towers was to trigger such a gung-ho reaction. Could have been something further down the supply chain, like chips from their supplier being labelled as gluten free when they’re not, being unknowingly given to someone with gluten issues. Rare but it does happen, it’s why we have to note down batch codes etc where I work to make things easier to trace if something like that were to happen.

I’d like to see Merlin/aramark be more inclusive with their food offerings but only if they can be confident they can do it safely, which with a little bit of preparation, training and precaution taking, shouldn’t be too difficult imo.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
I’ll have you know the meat content in my cats food is 95%, granted that’s probably mostly the bits us humans don’t like to eat, but i’d Imagine it’s still higher than what is in an Aramark burger patty. It’s also gluten free so it beats Aramark/Towers on both counts🤣
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All pet food meat has to be up to a good standard and "decent quality" before production.
It is only the processing that makes it unfit for humans.
 
Dannyski said:
I just don’t get why Aramark, or any external company have been contracted in - Merlin have a huge number of attractions, with massive numbers of guests and the opportunity to charge (and get) well above the market rate for food and beverage products. Why haven’t they hired the expertise, invested in some infrastructure and set up their own catering business - which one day could even compete with Aramark!
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Hiring in a company like Aramark that does nothing but catering is on the face of it a sensible decision as you can in theory trust them to be the experts.

Where it falls down is that companies like Aramark have several price points for their offerings and if you choose the lower ones you end up with things like what you see at Merlin. You can get glimmers of what could be with the Alton Manor ice cream stand and the place that does doughnuts and the turkey legs at Chessington but someone somewhere up the food chain has made the executive decision to cut costs and raise prices in the sit-down eateries which just results in sub-Harvester standards or that famous pizza-box breakfast from the start of last year.
 
I’m sure there was logic to bringing in Aramark in a board room and on paper, but F&B is both a big for profits and reputation- if they’re going to hand that part of the business to another company, why not go the whole hog and outsource everything - they can start by giving Mellors a call about operating and maintaining the rides, NCP about the parking, and some random country the other side of the planet to do customer service.
 
Dannyski said:
I’m sure there was logic to bringing in Aramark in a board room and on paper, but F&B is both a big for profits and reputation- if they’re going to hand that part of the business to another company, why not go the whole hog and outsource everything - they can start by giving Mellors a call about operating and maintaining the rides, NCP about the parking, and some random country the other side of the planet to do customer service.
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Outsourcing to Aramark was a great idea, but badly executed. Merlin are an entertainments and experiences company, they are not an F&B operator. They design everything and then get others to implement it, which is pretty much how most businesses operate in this country.

Let's take McDonald's. McDonald's don't sell food. McDonald's instead designs a building, they bring in contractors to build it (who use materials manufactured by someone else) and then will then allow you, or anyone else, to run a restaurant on that site with the branding and a menu which they've designed for you. You must rent the machinery, which has been designed in conjunction with specialist manufacturers, from McDonald's to cook the food which you buy from McDonald's, but they also outsource that part too. A company which is synonymous with food actually has very little to do with producing and cooking of that burger you consume. McDonald's designed the burger and the store, but it was farmed by someone else, butchered by someone else, processed into a burger by someone else and cooked by someone else working for a franchiser and not McDonald's.

Heck, even Apple don't actually make anything. All of the manufacturing and assembly is pretty much farmed out to Foxconn in China, using components also made by someone else (although some are designed by Apple).

Merlin design theming and experiences. They don't own their parks, they lease them. They own the ride hardware, sure, but they don't make it. They have a hand in designing some of the layouts, but that's mostly outsourced too, to experts within a ride manufacturing company. Merlin assemble everything and put it together to make everything work cohesively, but of course they outsource where they can.

The Aramark deal isn't working, but there has to be a reason why. Merlin will have some sort of overall control and say, their contracts will enable them to hold Aramark to account if agreed service levels aren't being achieved or delivered. Aramark are clearly delivering what they believe is permissible, under their agreement with Merlin, within the financial constraints set out by their agreement; it's this that needs to be addressed.
 
Having lived through several different outsourced catering contracts at my previous workplace, the quality you get depends on the budget they are allowed. Even from the same catering company we had food varying from "it actually won awards" one year, to "this is awful" when the budget was reduced. In our case, we took all the income and paid the catering company a cost per plate, I'd imagine in Merlin's case Aramark are taking the income and kicking back a certain percentage to Merlin.

We also found that it is slightly cheaper to do in-house (you are paying more for ingredients as you don't have the same scale, however you are no longer paying for the outsourced company's management structure) however managing the staffing is no longer your problem once outsourced,

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But that said, there is something that needs looking at with their agreement to make sure they are actually sticking to it - I remember at our place even on the "low budget" version, the food that was offered to the leadership when they were running the tender was a completely different level of quality to what they were serving on a daily basis once they won the contract.
 
My personal experience in local government with such contracts...
Great for the first month or so, then downhill all the way until the end of contract, usually pulled early for lack of agreed quality and service.
Every last time, bar one, in twenty odd years.
And in house staff...better quality presentation and long term retention.
We loved our dinner ladies!
 
The Google and TripAdvisor reviews for the various food establishments make grim reading. This one caught my eye, where a raw burger was served to a child, and nobody seemed to care about resolving the issue, never mind taking it seriously as a food safety issue.

I still don't understand why Aramark were brought in, except as a cost saving exercise or a lazy CBA attitude (let somebody else work out how to do it because we can't make it work ourselves). F&B should be something you want to create as an experience, something enjoyable and memorable, something to have pride in, and therefore it seems unwise to me to outsource that part of your business. Simply treating hungry guests as an inconvenience and providing minimal subsistence is totally missing the mark.
 
rob666 said:
My personal experience in local government with such contracts...
Great for the first month or so, then downhill all the way until the end of contract, usually pulled early for lack of agreed quality and service.
Every last time, bar one, in twenty odd years.
And in house staff...better quality presentation and long term retention.
We loved our dinner ladies!
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Yup, same experience here. Back when I was working in theatre, we tried out sourcing our catering operation to three different companies (one of which was Aramark), before bring it back in-house as it proved to be the only cost-effective solution, where we could also guarantee a reasonable quality of catering and service.
 
Question! When ATH first opened am I right in thinking they actually had real chefs who cooked to order on site in the large kitchen they have behind the scenes. I’m sure I recall the pizza oven being used in the past with staff freshly preparing the ingredients on the counter in front of it. Or am I mistaken?
 
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