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Matchday Munching


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3 minutes ago, Paolo Di Catio said:

Quite a few, Bradford, Celtic, Donny, Sunderland, Portsmouth, Bury, Ipswich, Millwall, Toytown, Inverness, Hibs

Few rugby & cricket teams, And surprisingly Liverpool Arena. 

How on earth have they managed to make such a boobies up at ours?

 

http://centerplate.co.uk/venue-partners/

 

 

 

Wow

 

that has surprised me. Are they all as Shi'ite as what we get. 

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Lot of food places have the Rollover hotdogs now at £1.75 -£2 each

Think MK Dons are the only Champ side that has them but at £3.60 stadium price , make them £2.50 or so and they'd be an improvement.

Other than that if they get the drinks and pies amounts/timings right imagine most will take that as a start.

 

At Northampton we've got Centerplate on a 10 year deal from 2014, poor too and so expensive that even a lot of London away fans refuse to buy anything, including the lukewarm foil bag burgers.Luckily lots of food chains and good food right outside so think they give up competing.Think we should have in house catering to have control over it and with a franchise system or just some good products it can be so much better.Centerplate seem to be pot luck as to what they do for you, their Sunderland guy won a big national catering award last year and they seem to do a lot for Portsmouth in the lower levels.

 

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7 hours ago, ANDY said:

Do centreparc supply any other clubs facilities ? How do they compare/perform. 

 

surely a lucrative contract like swfc would have companies fighting over it. 

 

Do they supply swimming pools and family bike rides?

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Generally it's the same comments. Speed and price. 

 

1) More staff/better system of ordering/delivery. The fact a steward has to help pour pints at the tiny kiosk on Lower kop is laughable. Pre-pour drinks - if someone asks for a fresh one then make it, but I would guess not many would be bothered to ask. 

2) More simple, easy to serve food. Pies and sausage rolls are ideal as you can just bung in a bag and serve. I hate being stuck behind someone that decides to order 3 trays of chips which takes the teenager 10 minutes to plate up.

3) Sauces/seasoning in sachets - You want ketchup? here's a sachet now do one. Salt? take this sachet and gtfo of the queue area. 

 

 

 

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Guest Maxine

Veggi pies.

spicey wedges 

nachos 

cheese toasties 

pot noodles

chips n cheese 

jacket spuds 

made myself hungry now. 

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2 hours ago, folger said:

No matter who provides the catering we will always be complaining. Ours is in line with the rest of the league. Everything's expensive and the staff are foetuses paid probably below minimum wage. The only possible way to improve would be to appoint a chain food company.

If we took it in house we'd probably end up like tickets and the shirts - the most expensive in the division.

 

Maybe categorise it - have premium pricing for big games. £5 a pie for the Villa game. £3 for Burton Albion.  Get onto it DC - there's brass to be made.  

 

Might drop the relish though - not a fan of black shorts. Probably anti-black condiments too.  So on second thoughts.....

 

:tango:

 

 

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I'm sorry if this is really boring but I'd like to give my two penneth... Now I don't have much experience in large scale contract catering but here are my thoughts...

 

I've been working in the hospitality industry for nearly two decades and am still amazed that people can manage to do it so badly... A company like Centerplate will have a multi million pound turnover across numerous sites; this might lead you to thinking they know what they are doing... in our experience at S6, it really seems like they don't!

 

It all works on the basis of economy of scale; they'll have huge centralised kitchens producing the majority of the food sold across their venues. Obviously the offering will vary slightly from place to place but ultimately the principle is to produce as much stuff at the lowest possible price. This also includes the employment of often young, untrained underpaid, demotivated people; it may look like they barely have a brain cell or control of their limbs, when in truth they are just suffering from the lack of investment from their employer (financial or otherwise). Centerplate won't care if the customer experience is poor or even if the profits are low at Hillsborough, if this is supplemented by the success of other sites.

 

If we were to end the contract and put it out to tenure the chances are it would be taken over by a similar company who operate in pretty much the same way, the problems would persist... for me the club have 2 options which would work both for them and the fans

 

1. Take control of the catering themselves- logistically this would prove extremely challenging in the short term at least. It would require significant financial outlay (obviously nothing in comparison to first team costs but significant nonetheless) and the establishment of a clear system. I don't know how many clubs actually do this but I doubt its very many; the money made from matchday catering is obviously deemed insignificant in comparison to other revenue streams otherwise, so they think why bother? and contract it out to another company.

 

However there is some money to be made otherwise no one would take the contract in the first place; a captive audience of 20k plus even just for a few hours a fortnight is still a really attractive market. Surely that money would be better going to the club than an outside entity that has no interest in the club or the fans? Clubs seem obsessed with the "matchday experience" these days, surely a deep filled pie and a pint served with a smile would add to this massively!?

 

Also while everyone talks about price, I think what we all actually want as consumers is relative value, £4 for said excellent pie, efficiently served by friendly staff wouldn't seem so much and would represent a healthy profit margin for the club

 

2. Sublet kiosks to individual businesses - this would seem a much more straight forward option; what would be wrong with leasing kiosks to different companies on matchday!?

 

A Beres stand? Owlsman's Noodle Bar? Wetherspoons on the South? This would lead to a healthy competition (to a point after stand restrictions) between vendors which would keep prices realistic, standards relatively high and add massively to choice for the fans. 

 

whatever anyone thinks the status quo is a shambles

 

 

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