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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

ScottishChris said:
It would be genuinely interesting to know the mark-up on their offer. I have little doubt drinks are around the 200-300% range, with most of their convenience food not far off reaching the 400%+ range.

@Ash talks about places like Disney - the place where people are more than willing to pay £11 for a rice krispy treat, £5 for a small ice cream bar or £10+ for a bucket popcorn. The reason why people are happy to pay... quality and presentation. Yes, you do feel ripped off a tad, but you know you are getting something with a bit of quality behind it, or something unique to the park. It's not complicated - if they had standards for their food (not even needing to spend a huge amount more on raw materials) and added perceived value they would likely sell more without needing to lower the cost.

From a business point of view - I get why they outsourced. It literally puts all the issues and responsibility with staffing, procurement and legal stuff in the hands of someone else. I do think, however, it is crazy that a company the size of Merlin don't have their own wholly-owned catering subsidiary. You would think that from a cost-to-profit ratio this would make sense, and allow more specialist operations.
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themed food is where it is at, it is the reason that many people will spend £15+ on cakes, pretzles etc at disney and universal, people are happier to pay more when it is something unique and good and will showcase it on social media if it looks good enough, tbh i would probably pick something up if it was unique, look what has happened with the ice creams from by the curse at alton mannor.
 
havaska said:
I agree but they’ve gotten better.

The Coach House in Gloomy Wood offers actual themed food that is presented well, tastes good and offered at a reasonable price.

I just wish they’d learn from this place and roll it out all over the park.
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At the moment, there's no reason to think they won't this season or future ones. I guess we'll tell come the 16th March! I wonder if there'll be any new offerings in Forbidden Valley when Nemesis opens?
 
I’d happy to pay £15/£16 for a meal if it was in a nice sit down restaurant where the food was freshly cooked using good quality ingredients. I’m not happy to pay £14 for a burger meal for example with poor quality ingredients, reheated and either sat outside or at a grubby self service table with no waiter/waitress service.

Alton are missing the fact people will pay the money if they are getting something good. In this current climate people don’t and won’t spend money or something they deem to be not worthy of their hard earned cash. Will be interesting to see the reviews from the food outlets this year.

Although looking at the reviews from the pirate takeover of the food offerings looks like it’s just as poor as last year.
 
jibbsie said:
themed food is where it is at, it is the reason that many people will spend £15+ on cakes, pretzles etc at disney and universal, people are happier to pay more when it is something unique and good and will showcase it on social media if it looks good enough, tbh i would probably pick something up if it was unique, look what has happened with the ice creams from by the curse at alton mannor.
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I think the other reason is portion sizes. The Mickey Mouse shaped rolls and cookies have got to be aimed for sharing? They’re huge! I don’t mind spending €7 on a cookie and €15 on a sandwich (or whatever it was) when it was big enough for 2/3 to share
 
There are limited table service options at the park meaning that on busy days there's not a lot of capacity, and on quiet days the park isn't open long enough to spend 20% of your day sitting down tucking in.

Edible fast food should be accessed easily. You can do this at Thorpe by grabbing a Burger King or KFC. Before last season, you could do this at Towers. You're never going to get anything that isn't over priced and heavily processed in that sphere, but I don't think being able to get a portion a chips and a burger that's made of 100% beef is too much to ask.
 
GaryH said:
I’d happy to pay £15/£16 for a meal if it was in a nice sit down restaurant where the food was freshly cooked using good quality ingredients. I’m not happy to pay £14 for a burger meal for example with poor quality ingredients, reheated and either sat outside or at a grubby self service table with no waiter/waitress service.
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Realistically you aren’t going to get a £15 meal in the park nowadays, just Nando’s now is £14 for a half chicken and two sides or £13 for a burger and two sides, plus £3.50 for soft drink. Those prices have probably gone up from around £10 for the same meal four years ago. So add on a premium for being in a theme park and £15 is probably the cheapest I would expect to see now.
 
GaryH said:
I’d happy to pay £15/£16 for a meal if it was in a nice sit down restaurant where the food was freshly cooked using good quality ingredients. I’m not happy to pay £14 for a burger meal for example with poor quality ingredients, reheated and either sat outside or at a grubby self service table with no waiter/waitress service.

Alton are missing the fact people will pay the money if they are getting something good. In this current climate people don’t and won’t spend money or something they deem to be not worthy of their hard earned cash. Will be interesting to see the reviews from the food outlets this year.

Although looking at the reviews from the pirate takeover of the food offerings looks like it’s just as poor as last year.
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Everyone seems to be forgetting Merlin would have signed a contract for x period of time with significant escape clauses. Until that expires, we’re stuck.

What I don’t know is if the contract says ‘to cover all units’, or just existing ones, meaning Gloomy Wood and FV2 could have in house catering.
 
I still find it odd that the Merlin signed an Aramark contract for x number of years immediately prior to the change of management. It feels like an act of salting the earth.

Surely you would pause any such change and let the new leadership make the final go/no go decision.
 
Jb85 said:
What I don’t know is if the contract says ‘to cover all units’, or just existing ones, meaning Gloomy Wood and FV2 could have in house catering.
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Although I'm loathe to bring YouTube up as a reliable source, and especially this YouTuber, Bianca did say in an interview on Theme Park Worldwide that the Gloomy Wood café was Alton Towers first attempt at introducing themed food with Aaramark. I'm sure she also mentioned that the contract was very new and they hoped to expand the themed offerings later.


From: https://youtu.be/ozrEE16Vt04&T=16m14s
Edit: Should be around the 16 minute and 14 second mark, the embed system won't work with timestamps this morning for whatever reason!
 
There are doughnuts at Chessington and the "themed" turkey leg stand in Jumanji Land too that are above the usual woeful level.

I care buttons for theming really though; just give me a decent burger for a decent price and I will be happy. I think some of the execs must have been playing too much Rollercoaster Tycoon and diddling with the settings for the food stands to maximise profit.
 
jon81uk said:
Realistically you aren’t going to get a £15 meal in the park nowadays, just Nando’s now is £14 for a half chicken and two sides or £13 for a burger and two sides, plus £3.50 for soft drink. Those prices have probably gone up from around £10 for the same meal four years ago. So add on a premium for being in a theme park and £15 is probably the cheapest I would expect to see now.
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Yes your right - lets say £20 then for a decent sit down main course.

Same applies to the hotels - i'd actually stay in one if the evening meal options were not so dire.

As for the contract with Aramark - im sure in there somewhere would be right to cancel it should KPIs be poor/standards not met.

As it stands, bringing back the Pot Noodle machine would be a massive improvement in offerings.
 
Jb85 said:
Everyone seems to be forgetting Merlin would have signed a contract for x period of time with significant escape clauses. Until that expires, we’re stuck.

What I don’t know is if the contract says ‘to cover all units’, or just existing ones, meaning Gloomy Wood and FV2 could have in house catering.
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Gloomy Wood is Aramark, they have the Aramark tills and it says so on the receipts.
 
I know there’s been mention of Aramark rolling out the quality and variety offering of the Gloomy Wood outlet across the Resort, but just how long is it going to take them to start putting meat in the burgers again?

It didn’t take them long to raise prices across the board and value engineer their offerings after taking over the contract. It’s a little perplexing why we haven’t really seen much in the way of improvement since, if that is indeed the plan.
 
I know costs have gone up, but their profit margins have to be wayyyy bigger than when it was in-house. In the current economic climate, you can expect either price rises but quality maintained, or price maintains but quality decreases, yet they’ve managed to both increase the price and decrease the quality! It’d take a lot to get me eating at the park again now, it’s very easy to form new habits.
 
venny said:
I know there’s been mention of Aramark rolling out the quality and variety offering of the Gloomy Wood outlet across the Resort, but just how long is it going to take them to start putting meat in the burgers again?

It didn’t take them long to raise prices across the board and value engineer their offerings after taking over the contract. It’s a little perplexing why we haven’t really seen much in the way of improvement since, if that is indeed the plan.
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I doubt that is the plan. Removing the 100% Beef and chicken breast signs couldn’t have made it more obvious. The plan is to make more money by selling poorer quality ingredients at a higher price and paying the staff less.
 
Mick said:
I know costs have gone up, but their profit margins have to be wayyyy bigger than when it was in-house. In the current economic climate, you can expect either price rises but quality maintained, or price maintains but quality decreases, yet they’ve managed to both increase the price and decrease the quality! It’d take a lot to get me eating at the park again now, it’s very easy to form new habits.
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The latest filed accounts for Merlin state their profits have not been impacted by the outsourcing to Aramark.

Aramark take all the cash spent on F&B and then hand back a set percentage to Merlin. Let’s say Merlin were previously getting a 20% profit margin before they outsourced. If Aramark hand that level back to Merlin the other 80% then covers all their costs of staffing and food and any profit is Aramark’s to keep. That is where most of the price increases and savings on downgrading the quality of the food will be going - in Aramark’s pocket.

From Merlin’s point of view they still make as much money in profit as they always did, and don’t have any pesky employees or supply chains to deal with.

Here is the relevant extract from their accounts, revenue was down £12million, because that now goes directly to Aramark, but profit (aka EBITDA) is not impacted because they get that level of money back as part of the outsourcing deal:

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The huge downside of course is that Aramark are incentivised to reduce quality and up prices to maximise their profit and it’s Merlin that get their reputation hammered because most guests don’t have a clue it’s not Merlin running the F&B.
 
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