Alternative Catering

[tompo]

I started reading the Alternative Food at AG thread. As soon as I read the first post I wondered how long before someone would start picking it to pieces. If you think this just another of those "Trust Member sticks up for Trust" threads I suggest you stop reading right now.

The views expressed are mine and neither do I make any apologies for the use of puns, intentional or not that may or not have crept in by the time I finish.

I make no secret of the fact that I do not buy food at AG. However, when I read the thread I thought why don't they sell hot soup? It seemed logical given the present weather and if it was available I would be tempted to buy some, either before the game or even at half time. And that set me off.

For those who think that the provision of alternative food is of little importance I suggest you take your blinkers off and actually think about it. It certainly gave me food for thought.

There are numerous issues. I do not think for one minute that the present caterers are going to suddenly stop selling the traditional football fare of pies,hot dogs, Bovril etc but perhaps we can open their eyes to the fact that some people do not want this and by varying what is on offer they may actually attract more customers, benefiting themselves and in some way the club.

I accept that some people are perfectly happy with the range on offer but for some people the food may be completely unacceptable. Its not really about providing nut cutlets or tofu burgers (not everyone's cup of tea) its about opening out what is on offer.

Aside from the variety issue some people have restricted diets. They may be vegetarians or have religious, moral and ethical reasons for not being able to eat what is on offer. More importantly, there are also an awful lot of people who have special dietary requirements that are not currently catered for. Its easy to say that people should be able to go without food for two hours. For some people, as in the case of certain diabetics, that is not always easy.

I am sure that people would not have made some of their comments about alternative food not being important if we were talking about providing better facilities for disabled people.

For anyone who thinks that provision of alternative food is a minor issue compared to burning topics like the East End, Terracing etc I suggest those people also think again. It is just the tip of the iceberg and ultimately can and does have some impact on other issues.

I used the search facility and did a quick search by simply typing in catering. It threw up lots of results.

For example, the catering at Rovers is better than ours, apparently the best meat and potato pies can be found in Huddersfield and so on and so on. However, it also revealed lots of other things. There were the obvious things like complaints about service, queues, price, quality, variety (again) but there were other things that hit me.

The catering contract(s) is important to the club in more ways than one. Hasn't work on developing the ground stalled because a lot of the funding that was to come from a catering contract is not in place? It appears to me that catering is far from being a minor issue and should not be taken lightly.

It may be too late for anything to be done with the present contractors and contract but there is no harm in telling them what we think. It has to be in their best interests to listen and hopefully take on board what we say. I am sure that the people who run Philpotts never said "I know lets a sandwich shop and because everyone likes cheese and pickle that's all we will sell". Of course they didn't, they did research and as well as basic stuff, tried various other things out. And that is what Lindley's should be doing but if they are unwilling or unable to do any research then we will do some for them.

The club should also be aware of issues like this. Again it is in their best interests to listen and hopefully consider their options the next time they tender for a new catering contract. For example, is there scope for giving the contract to several companies or concessions rather than have a sole contractor responsible for the whole club? Is there scope for stalls to be manned by volunteers? There are lots of other things that could be considered but these may be for the "ideas people" to come up with.

Looking at provision of alternative food is not just about giving "Quiche a chance" as someone very wittily put it ( I believe it was Dorset Cider - your cheques in the post) its about seeing the bigger picture and raising awareness. Its also about telling the club that we are not happy with what is currently on offer and it is in their best interests to work with us to see if things can be improved.

Like it or not catering is key to the survival of this club so why should we treat it lightly?. I am also sure that there are lots of other issues surrounding the catering at AG that need to be addressed or looked at but at the moment have a blinding hangover and bed beckons.

[robins72]

How about sending out a questionnaire to all the fans before kick off much like was done for the supporters trust launch or would that not be feasable? Just a suggestion. Surely we should let people outside the forum have their say on what they want to eat too. Ive worked in the catering industry so know all about value for money and I can assure you that more people would eat in the stadium if there was a better choice and quality of food. There must be hundreds of city fans that use the corner shop on Coronation Road or the local cafe because they don't want to eat a luke warm burger or wait in a long queue for food before kick off. Lots of things to be consider as well as food is the service but I'm sure that issue will be tackled as well.

[Guest DrFaustus]

You could try by using the same caterers as we use. Those pasties are gert lush.

[budbcfc]

it would help if the meat was dead first let alone cold

[Guest North Street]

Tompo in another thread i wanted to know what was going to be done to canvass the opinion of City fans regarding what they felt were the most important issues affecting Bristol City eg a questionaire.

Of course catering is a part of a bigger picture and a huge part of the letter the club sent me concerning their

Premier club which is now part of my compost heap. But unless our ground is inhabited by lots of Delia Smith types [Atyeo maybe] I would expect the catering to be well down on a list of concerns although i could not prove this. All i have heard so far is that a questionaire takes time, could be costly, you have to ask the right questions, it's a science..... My answer would be it is not that hard in this day and age to quickly and very quickly at that to gain access to thouands of City fans via the trust, pubs, supppoters club, fanzine, net etc to find out quite simply what Bristol City fans are really concerned about. Bog standard twenty questions stating agree, disagree, don't know could provide in weeks overwhelming evidence that the catering really is gripe numero uno. I have found despite good intentions i cannot get to the Ship and Castle at 7pm otherwise i would volunteer in person to help out.I will willingly wander around the streets of Ashton with any questioanire babbling to myself if you want me to but at this rate the season will be over soon.I want the trust to be a huge success and i have fears about the direction Steve Lansdown is taking the club but the catering is not one of them. Apologies for any offence caused

[tompo]

Tompo in another thread i wanted to know what was going to be done to canvass the opinion of City fans regarding what they felt were the most important issues affecting Bristol City eg a questionaire.

Of course catering is a part of a bigger picture and a huge part of the letter the club sent me concerning their

Premier club which is now part of my compost heap. But unless our ground is inhabited by lots of Delia Smith types [Atyeo maybe] I would expect the catering to be well down on a list of concerns although i could not prove this. All i have heard so far is that a questionaire takes time, could be costly, you have to ask the right questions, it's a science..... My answer would be it is not that hard in this day and age to quickly and very quickly at that to gain access to thouands of City fans via the trust, pubs, supppoters club, fanzine, net etc to find out quite simply what Bristol City fans are really concerned about. Bog standard twenty questions stating agree, disagree, don't know could provide in weeks overwhelming evidence that the catering really is gripe numero uno. I have found despite good intentions i cannot get to the Ship and Castle at 7pm otherwise i would volunteer in person to help out.I will willingly wander around the streets of Ashton with any questioanire babbling to myself if you want me to but at this rate the season will be over soon.I want the trust to be a huge success and i have fears about the direction Steve Lansdown is taking the club but the catering is not one of them. Apologies for any offence caused

No offence taken.

This may be going a bit off topic but I do recall what you said in a previous thread and was disappointed that you didn't make the last meeting.

There is currently a small group of us looking at how best the ST can represent the fans. Because we are meeting as and when we can (lunchtimes, before games etc) progress has been perhaps slower than we would have liked. However,we are getting a few ideas together and hopefullly we will be in a position to discuss them at the next ST meeting.

I outlined some of the ideas in another thread but basically one of the main things we are looking at is an improved Ask Steve L type of thing but in a very different format. One thing we are keen to do is get views from as broad a cross section of fans as possible and not just from internet users. We are looking at the options as to how to do this. We need the club to buy in to what we are setting out to achieve and obviously need to run our proposals by them before we go public. I am sure you will agree that this is better than simply rushing in to something if the club are not committed to it. However, I do not see any real problems, either with what we are proposing or the club not wanting to be involved. Once everyone is happy some sort of formal statement will be released outlining how things will work.

We are also looking at other ways to serve fans' best interests and again are looking at several areas. Because we can only meet infrquently, we gave the Ask Steve L thing priority (and that wont be the name by the way but we may be looking for a name a bit further down the line before we are ready to go "live".) but are now looking at various other ways to canvass fans views, seek opinions etc.

One thing that we are looking at is some sort of survey. This is very much in its infancy and needs a lot of thought as to how we tackle it. We may need to agree to disagree on this though. I do hear what you are saying. It should be relatively easy to do and in theory it is but I think that if we were to limit any survey to narrow bands of people then we would not get particularly accurate results.

To conduct a survey properly will require a lot of work and we may be looking for volunteers who have experience in that type of thing to help draw up the questions and how we tackle the survey, who we target etc and how we collate responses and act up on them.

Its a shame that you can't get to the meetings. Even if you could only pop in to discuss a specific subject I am sure that your input would be very helpful. If necessary we could schedule the topic into the agenda for a time when you could be there. Alternatively would you be up for a meeting, say next Saturday lunch time? A couple of us plan to meet and although I would need to run it by them I am sure that you would be more than welcome to join us.

[Nibor]

I've never bought food at the ground, I don't have the patience to queue up and don't think it's worth the price.

All I'd say on the alternative food thing is... judging by the number of complaints over the last couple of years, wouldn't it be better to get the basics right first before adding to the menu? Sounds like Lindley have enough trouble with that.

Nibor

[Chappers]

You could try by using the same caterers as we use. Those pasties are gert lush.

Spot on. Just reading the stuff about this, it almost seems that the caterers contract ranks as more important than what is served to the customers.