1901 Club food

[Cowfold Seagull]

Indeed. People moan about Barber, but he has been bought in to fix the absolute mess made when we moved into the Amex

Correct. Much of what Paul Barber is doing, is fixing other peoples mistakes. Whatever decisions he makes in trying to address the 8.5 million a year shortfall, is bound to be unpopular with fans. The man has been brought in to do a job, not to be popular.

 

[bhawoddy]

Correct. Much of what Paul Barber is doing, is fixing other peoples mistakes. Whatever decisions he makes in trying to address the 8.5 million a year shortfall, is bound to be unpopular with fans. The man has been brought in to do a job, not to be popular.

well £19 for a curry is massively unpopular......as are the prices for a few chips

 

[Smeagull]

What really worries me is that these were just test runs for the caterers for both the normal and 1901 stands, serving somewhere between 8-12K people. How the hell will they cope with 30K on Saturday?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Correct. Much of what Paul Barber is doing, is fixing other peoples mistakes. Whatever decisions he makes in trying to address the 8.5 million a year shortfall, is bound to be unpopular with fans. The man has been brought in to do a job, not to be popular.

But the current 1901 catering fiasco is his own doing. He sacked Azure, he knew the parameters within which he had to operate and seems to have gone backwards on this.

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

But the current 1901 catering fiasco is his own doing. He sacked Azure, he knew the parameters within which he had to operate and seems to have gone backwards on this.

True, but then not everything he does is going to work straight away. Maybe he felt the Club just weren't making enough profit from the original Azure deal? Either way l think most of us accept that SOMETHING has to be done in an attempt to avoid this shortfall. Maybe in time this will work, maybe it won't, only time will tell. And as an earlier poster commented, at least it's only the corporates (largely), who are involved with the 1901.

 

[Pretty pink fairy]

Do you know what's funny. I hate reading your absolute tosh on here, I really do. I can't say anything that will piss you off, or suddently turn you into a useful poster.

But what I can do is take heart from this one thing:

No matter how short and annoying your post on a thread is.
No matter how irrelivant or provocative.
No matter how offensive.
No matter how BORING.

You, at the end of every single post, have to type the word "regards", press Enter, hold shift and then type "DR" before clicking submit. All just for your EGO.
That must be WEEEEEEELL annoying - and to think you've had to do that nearly 11,000 times makes me happy.

Best Wishes,
Thomas

thanks
regards
DR

 

[abc]

It strikes me that the time for it to be an official committee is perhaps passing and the time for a lobby group is edging closer.

Elsewhere in this thread someone mentions an expected price hike at the end of the five years. I wouldn't be surpirsed if by then we are in the premiership if they double it, because they will be comparing corporate seats at Old Trafford, Emirates etc.

I suspect what we as a group of 1901ers want is a a better fan experience, but what the club want is a proper corporate expereince because when the time comes they can charge through the nose for it. At that stage the proper fans, which currently make up 80% of 1901 will be priced out to be replaced by the corporates. It may be that at that stage they chose to have different tiers of 1901, if not a lot fans will be very pissed off.

I for one would support this.

 

[dragonred]

reading this makes me feel things just won't get better any time soon, in fairness the club are trying to change concepts as previous ones didn't work but there just seems to be a hell of a lot of non joined up thinking and ideas going on here - surely the club need to pick a decent sized sample of people using all 1901 and corporate areas and ask them to openly say what they do want and will pay for, what they don't want and will just ignore and somewhere in the middle is the answer to what the club need to provide - if that is fine (expensive) dining or instead a buffet of just 2 or 4 well known and well liked dishes every week (cheese ploughmans, sausage & mash, pie & chips, curry) and then ensure these are always available and at a sensible price of say £10, then so be it - the increase in take up and sales would be huge. I consider myself a fan first but also use 1901 for corporate entertaining and in my experience most people at the Amex in 1901 are fans first but who either use for business too or who just want, understandably after years of dreadful facilities, to pay for a bit of extra comfort and luxury as a sports fan - the two groups are similar (we are not Chelsea with city plastics demanding top notch for sake of it and not there for the match, just for show) and I am confident if the club were willing to listen and then change, it would be easy to satisfy everyone. An accountant told me it baffles him how the money people think at the Amex - as he said, 4 people eating £40 of food may well also drink that sum and more as will be in ground for far longer on match day - guaranteed repeat income for the club every game - but 4 people eating off site and then coming to the Amex at kick off and just for a drink means an instant loss of 50% + and all because can't get the basic idea of catering right. Crazy really and I hope I am proved wrong in thinking the present set up is unlikely to change as peoples mindsets at the club are fixed as to what is 'right' despite the clear evidence of unhappiness all around them.

 

[Daffy Duck]

reading this makes me feel things just won't get better any time soon, in fairness the club are trying to change concepts as previous ones didn't work but there just seems to be a hell of a lot of non joined up thinking and ideas going on here - surely the club need to pick a decent sized sample of people using all 1901 and corporate areas and ask them to openly say what they do want and will pay for, what they don't want and will just ignore and somewhere in the middle is the answer to what the club need to provide - if that is fine (expensive) dining or instead a buffet of just 2 or 4 well known and well liked dishes every week (cheese ploughmans, sausage & mash, pie & chips, curry) and then ensure these are always available and at a sensible price of say £10, then so be it - the increase in take up and sales would be huge. I consider myself a fan first but also use 1901 for corporate entertaining and in my experience most people at the Amex in 1901 are fans first but who either use for business too or who just want, understandably after years of dreadful facilities, to pay for a bit of extra comfort and luxury as a sports fan - the two groups are similar (we are not Chelsea with city plastics demanding top notch for sake of it and not there for the match, just for show) and I am confident if the club were willing to listen and then change, it would be easy to satisfy everyone. An accountant told me it baffles him how the money people think at the Amex - as he said, 4 people eating £40 of food may well also drink that sum and more as will be in ground for far longer on match day - guaranteed repeat income for the club every game - but 4 people eating off site and then coming to the Amex at kick off and just for a drink means an instant loss of 50% + and all because can't get the basic idea of catering right. Crazy really and I hope I am proved wrong in thinking the present set up is unlikely to change as peoples mindsets at the club are fixed as to what is 'right' despite the clear evidence of unhappiness all around them.

Sorry, dragonred, but I started to try and read that and almost lost the will to live after a couple of lines.

Nothing to do with the point you're trying to make but you might want to space the sentences out a bit more next time.

 

[martyn20]

There must be a way to take the concept of footie food and scale it up and at an affordable, or if not that, reasonable price. The balance has to switch from corporate first and fan second to the other way around and the best way to do that has to be to talk to current 1901 members, engage them and make it a place they want to be in and spend money.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

True, but then not everything he does is going to work straight away. Maybe he felt the Club just weren't making enough profit from the original Azure deal? Either way l think most of us accept that SOMETHING has to be done in an attempt to avoid this shortfall. Maybe in time this will work, maybe it won't, only time will tell. And as an earlier poster commented, at least it's only the corporates (largely), who are involved with the 1901.

But large scale catering isn't rocket science and it is not a new concept. And Barber has had a full year to sort it out. How much longer do we give him? PS The stop gap caterers did a very good job with little to no notice.

And given the job he has he is paid to make the right decisions especially with something so simple but so important as catering.

I have lost confidence in his ability to do his job. The fact he will not properly discuss the issue with his customers is a serious worry. And I do not know one person who is happy; and let's not forget most fans have given the club 2 years of patience on the promise Barber will sort it out; the patience has finally snapped.

 

[keaton]

But large scale catering isn't rocket science and it is not a new concept. And Barber has had a full year to sort it out. How much longer do we give him? PS The stop gap caterers did a very good job with little to no notice.

And given the job he has he is paid to make the right decisions especially with something so simple but so important as catering.

I have lost confidence in his ability to do his job. The fact he will not properly discuss the issue with his customers is a serious worry. And I do not know one person who is happy; and let's not forget most fans have given the club 2 years of patience on the promise Barber will sort it out; the patience has finally snapped.

Who were the stop-gap caterers? They did a fine job and I assumed they would just continue

 

[GM98]

I was in one of the boxes last night, we had the buffet curry delivered, the quality was very good, however there was so little given to us, 8 had very small portions to make it go round, and we had to ask for more that was served up in 2 bowls.

I have done this once before with a group of us and it was excellent.

We will not be doing this again, thank you Mr Barber, you have just saved us loads of money

 

[Goldstone1976]

I'm in the process of swapping my seat in ESU with a 1901 50-year licence holder. It hasn't been an easy exercise, to say the least.

I went on the waiting list for several months and was repeatedly told (by a club employee who should remain nameless) there was no-one holding a licence in a central-ish location who was looking to sell their seat. I picked up on here that there was indeed such a person and that individual had also contacted the club asking whether there was anyone on the waiting list who wanted a single seat and had been told "no". Following agreeing terms, the fellow fan and I have tried to get the club to process the swap - radio silence ensued, prompting me to escalate the matter to Paul Barber. He responded immediately and I'm assured by the individual he delegated the task to that I will receive a call with an update today. We'll see!

On the food matter of the thread, I have yet to sample the delights, but would agree with the poster who said that some sort of tiered availability would seem to make sense: concourse food, some sort of decent two course buffet and a full-on fine dining experience. I would have thought that most 1901ers would then partake of one of the offers.

Separately, and perhaps most interestingly, I had an email exchange with Paul Barber about mid-term pricing (i.e. at the end of the 5-year fixed price deal), as I was worried about whether the club would price the "normal", but perhaps better-off fan out of the 1901 club in order to get more genuine corporate customers. This concern was exacerbated by the fact that we sell so many season tickets. If we are by then in the PL (let it be so!), it's not impossible that a "normal" fan could find him/herself effectively priced out of the 1901 club and have very few options left for a decent seat elsewhere in the stadium.

I don't want to go into details about what Paul's replies were (they were sent to me 1:1 and he probably didn't expect them to turn up on here), but I can say this without breaking any confidentiality:

1) He is absolutely aware of the disquiet in 1901 generally and is intent on fixing it.
2) The club has not yet thought about long-term pricing models for 1901, but he is fully aware that there are a large number of "normal" fans in 1901 currently, who will not be able to afford full-on corporate hospitality prices.
3) While giving no guarantees about how the pricing model may turn out, Paul provided me with enough comfort to proceed with the transaction (if only we can actually get the admin done!).

Finally, I have now had occasion to contact Paul about two matters in the last month; perhaps 10 emails in total? Every time, he has responded promptly and helpfully, occasionally with humour too. On this latter issue, he responded in 16 minutes, while taking a break from a (routine) Board meeting. My experience of him has been universally impressive. My experience of others in the organisation has always been less good, occasionally woeful. I doubt that such endemic poor customer service will be allowed to continue - no CEO as focussed on customer service as Paul undoubtedly is will tolerate individuals performing unsatisfactorily.

I can but speak of my dealings - the above is what has happened to me; no doubt others will have had different experiences.

 

[Giraffe]

I doubt if Barber had been here 2/3 years ago the 1901 Club would have been set up how it was, it is one massive mess up now and not easy to change the way it operates without upsetting lots of loyal fans.

I completely agree with this. In fairness to them they did a very good job of getting the seats filled, however what they underestimated was that normal fans were willing to pay premium prices for a better seat. As a result fans took the best seats. What they should have done is take the central 500, doubled the price and then offered theothers at the gold price. I think that would probably have made it a bit clearer where corporate seats were, and where "premium season tickets" were. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The point is now they have a corporate tier which is full of fans who don't want the corporate stuff. So they have a choice:

1) sit tight with it as it is, hope they reach the premiership and then screw the fans over and a) hope they pay up or b) leave and corporates willing to pay take over, or
2) try and do something about what they currently have and adjust the product accordingly

At the moment they appear to be adopting approach 1), but we will only know if we reach the glory and expense of the premiership.

 

[TheMajor]

£19 for a curry in the 1901.

Can they not also run a free soup kitchen for the plebs of the North Stand ?

 

[les dynam]

The catering is incredibly important at the Amex for all sorts of reasons, but one of them is that the entire transport plan hinges on the fact that people arrive early and leave late. If Sodexo continue to balls this up - in all areas of the ground - the ramifications will be immense.

 

[Icy Gull]

£19 for a curry in the 1901.

Can they not also run a free soup kitchen for the plebs of the North Stand ?

Only if they can sell more curries

 

[TheMajor]

Only if they can sell more curries

Good point. Perhaps I should leave this all to Barber.

 

[Icy Gull]

Good point. Perhaps I should leave this all to Barber.

You'll be staying hungry then if what is posted about him on here is even vaguely true.