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Food & Beverage: The Aramark Era begins

GooseOnTheLoose said:
I thought you weren't drinking anyway, mister!

Alcohol is actually usually pretty much the F&B option I think is reasonably priced. It's comparable to a city centre pint and much less than at nearby sports and leisure venues (looking at you Villa Park, NEC, MEN and Bet365 stadium etc).

It is important to note that the picture above is from last season. The quality MAY have improved this year, we can only hope and pray, so don't write it off just yet... But perhaps write it off once the first reports come in.
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I’ve already lost that, I’ve been having a gin in the evening I must admit. But I’ve not been out for a while on the drink now. thanks for the kick up the rear @GooseOnTheLoose 😂

And on topic again I’m going to probably do as @rob666 says. Packed lunch in the car parks, but might be a little hard to bring much on the motorbike.
 
SuperMuscleMan said:
We know M£rlin love to have a marketing gimik but Chessington beat Alton with the first 0 for food hygiene! Aramark really need to be ditched by merlin. Only so long until this really tarnishes the brands.
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I have a feeling that’s inevitable now. But there will be a contract length and no doubt excessive get our clauses. May be to expensive to remove them right now.
 
It's not just the quality of the food it's the kitchen prep as well. 0 stars shows that food is not being stored and prepared correctly. It shows a failure in management and standards. Food hygiene ratings are not based on how good or bad the food is but the running of the food outlet. There are some serious questions for Merlin here and how much oversight they have with Aramark.
 
Jb85 said:
I have a feeling that’s inevitable now. But there will be a contract length and no doubt excessive get our clauses. May be to expensive to remove them right now.
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Some contracts do include a get out of jail free card if certain terms/standards/conditions fail to be met (the contracts I've known with this do have a time limit for improvements but if there's continual failure, the unhappy party can jump ship with little/no financial cost).

I wonder if 'bedding in' issues will be used to play off the ever growing list of mishaps and failures over the last year or so 🙄
 
Yes, it is worth noting that every Aramark outlet at Alton Towers has a food hygiene rating of 5. The only outlet at Alton Towers not to have a 5 is Eastern Express which has a 4.

It would be wholly expected that any food establishment operated by a national/international food company should be getting 4s and 5s as standard.
 
Poisson said:
This seems to be a Chessie thing rather than a Merlin one though?
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It's worth noting that this appears to be a bit of an exception for Chessington too. Having looked at the other Aaramark outlets at Chessington, this is the only one with 0. The lowest rating for any other venue is 3, and those are also outliers (I think there's 2/3 over ~20 outlets), which is usually down to not having paperwork completed, or readily available at hand during inspection (fridge temperatures etc).
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
It's worth noting that this appears to be a bit of an exception for Chessington too. Having looked at the other Aaramark outlets at Chessington, this is the only one with 0. The lowest rating for any other venue is 3, and those are also outliers (I think there's 2/3 over ~20 outlets), which is usually down to not having paperwork completed, or readily available at hand during inspection (fridge temperatures etc).
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Chessington absolutely have form for this. Last year the hotel was awarded a 2 rating. I can’t find the post with the very grim pictures but this article covers the details.

www.getsurrey.co.uk

Chessington WoA hotel had 'fly infestations' and mouldy food

The Safari Hotel was found to have a "consistent lack of routine cleaning" in its food hygiene report
www.getsurrey.co.uk

They did appear to clean up their act and a further inspection upped the rating. But a few months later this zero rating has appeared for the Smokehouse. It suggests a problem in management at this park that this keeps happening.
 
AT86 said:
Chessington absolutely have form for this. Last year the hotel was awarded a 2 rating. I can’t find the post with the very grim pictures but this article covers the details.

www.getsurrey.co.uk

Chessington WoA hotel had 'fly infestations' and mouldy food

The Safari Hotel was found to have a "consistent lack of routine cleaning" in its food hygiene report
www.getsurrey.co.uk

They did appear to clean up their act and a further inspection upped the rating. But a few months later this zero rating has appeared for the Smokehouse. It suggests a problem in management at this park that this keeps happening.
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And a lack of internal accountability, you'd think that they'd be having daily inspections from the senior management team until confidence was restored.
 
We had a store that scored a 3 a few years back. The pressure on the SM was immense. Disciplinary warnings were getting handed out left right and centre and other store's had to support. Hygeine, code controls, falsified temperatures, paperwork, and cross contamination were all issues. To get a 4 is like falling off a log. A 5 isn't that difficult. So any establishment that gets less than a 4 is to be avoided at all costs.
 
Something is definitely amiss with kitchen management at chessington. The fact that other Aramark outlets at other merlin parks seem to be consistently getting 4’s and 5’s suggests that there is a specific issue within the kitchens at chessington that needs to be addressed otherwise this is going to keep happening.

Those photos from the hotel last year were bad and that was a 2, I dread to think what any photos from the Smokehouse would look like.
 
I know I’ve told this story before, but about 10 years ago I went for an assessment centre to be an F&B manager at Chessington. They did this kind of public interview, where they’d ask someone a question, and if they got the answer wrong it went to the next person, and so on until someone got it right.

The person running the assessment centre got to me and asked, “When you’re a restaurant manager, what’s the most important thing?”
I was pleasantly surprised, because it sounded like an easy question. “Health and safety”, I said confidently.
“No, it’s not health and safety”, he said.
It went to the next person. “KPIs”.
“And that’s the right answer. When you’re running a restaurant, KPIs are the most important thing”.

To be fair, they might have failed their food inspection, but I bet they’re really smashing their KPIs.
 
Funcone said:
I know I’ve told this story before, but about 10 years ago I went for an assessment centre to be an F&B manager at Chessington. They did this kind of public interview, where they’d ask someone a question, and if they got the answer wrong it went to the next person, and so on until someone got it right.

The person running the assessment centre got to me and asked, “When you’re a restaurant manager, what’s the most important thing?”
I was pleasantly surprised, because it sounded like an easy question. “Health and safety”, I said confidently.
“No, it’s not health and safety”, he said.
It went to the next person. “KPIs”.
“And that’s the right answer. When you’re running a restaurant, KPIs are the most important thing”.

To be fair, they might have failed their food inspection, but I bet they’re really smashing their KPIs.
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That must have been a trap? They must have wanted someone in that room to stand up to walk out and say they don't want to work in any food position where the most important thing isn't food safety, and that person would have crowned the winner? Wow.
 
Funcone said:
I know I’ve told this story before, but about 10 years ago I went for an assessment centre to be an F&B manager at Chessington. They did this kind of public interview, where they’d ask someone a question, and if they got the answer wrong it went to the next person, and so on until someone got it right.

The person running the assessment centre got to me and asked, “When you’re a restaurant manager, what’s the most important thing?”
I was pleasantly surprised, because it sounded like an easy question. “Health and safety”, I said confidently.
“No, it’s not health and safety”, he said.
It went to the next person. “KPIs”.
“And that’s the right answer. When you’re running a restaurant, KPIs are the most important thing”.

To be fair, they might have failed their food inspection, but I bet they’re really smashing their KPIs.
Click to expand...
Surely one of the KPIs is maintaining an excellent level of food hygiene!
 
The problem with Theme Parks is that you don't have much choice - you eat what they have at the price that they charge you. It is even worse with kids parks - so much is designed to get the "I want" tantrum from the little darlings. Sadly so many parks designed the offering around the "maximum revenue for the smallest effort" policy - which is why Chessy are in the state they are now in with their attitude to standards and the prison food offering at Towers.
 
Been taking picnics for decades...especially since the millennium nosedive in food standards in parks.
I remember half decent McDonalds at the Towers, and decent quality pies with a pint at Blackpool.
 
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