Catering

[Seasider78]

The thing I do not understand is why in a world with so much cashless technology do we only have a quarter of the tills that have a card reader??!!!!

 

[kingcole]

ESL last night was awful. At high time the lines were so long they actually went to the back wall. So not only could you buy anything without missing some of the game, simply walking around the concourse was a challenge.

And, I suspect the ESL had about 50% of it's seats empty last night too

 

[dazzer6666]

Catering's generally fine in the North Stand, seems to be just about the only area of the ground where the catering can cope with the numbers.

Think the 'customers' are more spread out making things easier. From where I sit the North starts emptying on about 35 mins.

 

[halbpro]

They seem to have got rid of the signs in the WSU that tells you which tills take cards and which don't. I mean they should all take cards, but at least the signs gave you a bit of a chance of getting to the right till.

I also think I heard someone serve a family and tell them they could take there beer and wine into the stands. Seemed to say that the only booze limit was they couldn't serve 10 minutes before kickoff. I don't expect staff to be brilliant, or even good, but it'd be nice if they had some basic information about the law.

 

[BBassic]

I wonder if travel woes might have had anything to do with it. My previous experience of getting to the WSU before 7 has been that there's a bit of a queue but nothing as relentlessly tiresome as yesterday.

Personally I put it down to there being a few thousand additional early arrivers.

 

[Billy the Fish]

I do wonder how Sodexo pitched for the contract to the Albion. Did they really say "Oh, for the first few games every season we'll not be able to get the smart but cheap students in, so service will be absolutely appalling. But they'll come back around October and once they'll be semi-decent when they do."

Did the then club go "Ah, gotcha, makes sense. We'll palm off any complaints we get, using that as an excuse. Appreciate you flagging it up early doors."? Because that's how it comes across every time it is mentioned.

I'd imagine that's pretty close to the truth.

If there was an easy solution they would do it because their take last night must've been well down on what it was at the end of last season when it was relatively efficient. I don't see what else they can do at this time of year when the students are away, there's no point in spending loads of money training temps who won't be there in a month's time.

It's just a big sh1t sandwich, and the fans,sodexo and Albion all have to take a bite!

 

[Billy the Fish]

I find it a bit sad when people allude to being rude to the staff. They've had little to no training so you can't expect them to know every deal, offer or rule. Someone above mentioned them not knowing the UK football alcohol laws - why on earth would anyone that isn't a UK football fan know the alcohol laws?

The best thing we can do is help them by keeping the orders simple to try and keep the queue moving and ditch the inflated sense of entitlement for a couple of games until the regular staff come back .

 

[Dick Swiveller]

Blimey, non 1901-ers don't half like to whinge, don't they? Stupid crisp and beer munchers.

In all seriousness, I don't know what the solution is. I don't get to many away games these days and haven't been to a big game as a neutral in the home end for years but I don't remember queues as long and chaotic as the one I stood in in the ESL for the Lazio game. As I had walked from Lewes so was very thirsty and it was a friendly, I went to get a bottle of water 5 minutes before half time. I got back to my seat just in time for second half kick off having joined a queue that turned out to share a sales point with another queue. A Lewes A27 roundabout merge in turn type deal. There were girls in suits claiming to be in charge walking backwards and forwards without really doing anything. It took 30 seconds for the guy to work out where the water was.

In 1901, we have the advantage of a bar manager who knows what they are doing but the other bar staff are the same kids as in the concourses - just in a uniform. It was painful watching the girl try and get the last bit of my beer in the glass last night. But how do you get experienced staff to work essentially one day every two weeks? Is the wide choice of food and drinks options making the problem worse by making too many people want to buy? Would bottled beer make serving quicker at the expense of losing custom?

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

I dont think it has demised.
It is not shown on all the fancy fascias with all the deal prices on, but i had a pie and a pint and was expecting to pay £8 something, operative said £8 and the till showed £7-50, same as last year.
I was well chuffed, until he forgot to give me any change from a £10er. So maybe it still exists.

Yes it does. As does a meal deal for a soft drink, packet of crisps or chocolate bar, and a pie for £7.00. Identical price to last season.

 

[BN9 BHA]

Blimey, non 1901-ers don't half like to whinge, don't they? Stupid crisp and beer munchers.

In all seriousness, I don't know what the solution is. I don't get to many away games these days and haven't been to a big game as a neutral in the home end for years but I don't remember queues as long and chaotic as the one I stood in in the ESL for the Lazio game. As I had walked from Lewes so was very thirsty and it was a friendly, I went to get a bottle of water 5 minutes before half time. I got back to my seat just in time for second half kick off having joined a queue that turned out to share a sales point with another queue. A Lewes A27 roundabout merge in turn type deal. There were girls in suits claiming to be in charge walking backwards and forwards without really doing anything. It took 30 seconds for the guy to work out where the water was.

In 1901, we have the advantage of a bar manager who knows what they are doing but the other bar staff are the same kids as in the concourses - just in a uniform. It was painful watching the girl try and get the last bit of my beer in the glass last night. But how do you get experienced staff to work essentially one day every two weeks? Is the wide choice of food and drinks options making the problem worse by making too many people want to buy? Would bottled beer make serving quicker at the expense of losing custom?

Bars selling bottled beer only would be a winner, not all bars, but it would be nice to just go up get 1 or 2 bottles and be on my way.

 

[TrickyOne]

I do wonder how Sodexo pitched for the contract to the Albion. Did they really say "Oh, for the first few games every season we'll not be able to get the smart but cheap students in, so service will be absolutely appalling. But they'll come back around October and once they'll be semi-decent when they do."

Did the then club go "Ah, gotcha, makes sense. We'll palm off any complaints we get, using that as an excuse. Appreciate you flagging it up early doors."? Because that's how it comes across every time it is mentioned.

Bozza@northstandchat.com, I work in the academy next door and we recently changed the food contract. What was displayed and offered and what they actually produce is exactly the same as what we had in the first place. Bottom line it's a much of a muchness. That's how it works unfortunately.

 

[essbee]

WSU catering last night was a f******* disgrace.

Half the tills we normally have - idiots on the tills and poorly labelled signs. FFs - it's not rocket science.

 

[Official Old Man]

Lot of talk about training. I'm in retail (not catering but then waiters don't cook) and wonder how long it takes to train someone to use a touch screen till with maybe 30 items on and then fetch said item from a known position behind you?

 

[pasty]

Have to say it was appalling tonight.

And why have they removed a couple of tills from the WSU kiosk at the north end, huge queues.

And turned the small one in the middle by Block G into Harveys only

 

[Bwian]

ESL last night was awful. At high time the lines were so long they actually went to the back wall. So not only could you buy anything without missing some of the game, simply walking around the concourse was a challenge.

And, I suspect the ESL had about 50% of it's seats empty last night too

WSL in the centre was the same.

I joined the line at about 6:55, there were about 10 people in front of me. At 7:25 I got served. Person ahead of me ordered 3 half pints of lager-took nearly 5 minutes from ordering to delivery.

1 pump of Harvey's and nobody on the second available one.

So much revenue being lost.

 

[Albumen]

The catering was terrible last night. Was in a long queue at the pie n beer kiosk, only to get stopped as the penultimate customer as there was a "strict 10 minutes before kick off" ruling. 4 minutes later people were walking away with fresh beer at the main kiosks, which delighted us as you can imagine.
Just before half time, the Harvey's had "run out", and the guest pie turned out to be plain tasteless chicken gammon leek, which piglets need to look at.
We then took a beer out after the final whistle which tasted off.

It's not difficult.

 

[Wozza]

Catering fine in East Lower.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I'd imagine that's pretty close to the truth.

If there was an easy solution they would do it

I just don't get why it's not easy though. Why is selling a handful of items at dates and times you know weeks, if not months, in advance so difficult? I can only guess that it's short-sightedness in paying minimum wage which prohibits them employing proper "event" bar and catering staff?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

It was painful watching the girl try and get the last bit of my beer in the glass last night. But how do you get experienced staff to work essentially one day every two weeks?

Hire from an established event staffing company? You'll have to pay more than minimum wage though and this is probably the very short-sighted reason.

 

[essbee]

I don't want to sound all high and mighty although I probably will -but there is some reasonably basic maths/simulation/queue
theory to plug in different models to **estimate** the likely serving time. Even rough would surely be on improvement on last night.

If we had the right data - it would be trivial. For Christ's sake - we must be talking 10's of 000s £ lost across the season because of the
poor situation.