Adieu Azure

[Josky]

Read the letter. Clearly the retention of local brands is central to the club's catering offer and is the one area winning brownie points with supporters.

The issues must be 1901 catering etc and concern that members wont renew and they wont fill the extra boxes they have built in the south stand etc. Concourse catering is unlikely to be much enhanced whoever runs it. Short term I guess the college plus local caterers will have been engaged and most of the staff who are casual employees anyway will carry on just as before. It may well be that concourse catering will be run direct by the club for a while. Good news if it was as rheir customer care training is top notch from my experience.

Agree with this. I think this is entirely to do with 1901. I can't speak for experience on the concourse, but the 1901 East barely has anyone taking up the hospitality option. It just isn't sustainable as those tables need to be filled and booked week-in, week-out.

 

[8ace]

So long as they keep Strongbow on I don't give a f***.

 

[n1 gull]

Good work! I hope a local company gets the contract

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

The ESU has been fine lately.

A long term agreement was signed with Harveys about six months ago as far as I remember.

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

Who does the Catering at Tottenham?

Not me.

 

[The screamer]

I disagree. There is plenty of scope for speeding up kiosk sales.

Care to share? I work bloody hard and don't believe I could do anything else to get through the queues any quicker

 

[mikeyjh]

Wow, big move. Guessing Azure did not contend the fact they were shit or there were suitable breakout clauses for us ?

Wouldn't they only not contend it if they weren't making any money? Likewise, the only reason the club would end the relationship.....

 

[Acker79]

Everyone is focusing on piglets and harveys. What about other local producers? Could this mean a chance for other local pie/snack producers or breweries either alongside or instead of the current ones?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Care to share? I work bloody hard and don't believe I could do anything else to get through the queues any quicker

I'm not knocking the staff; I do not doubt your hard work. But I think the organisation, training and set up could all be improved. A beer only queue with pre-poured pints and pre-paid beer tokens would speed things up for starters.

 

[Czechmate]

Care to share? I work bloody hard and don't believe I could do anything else to get through the queues any quicker

Blimey , you come a long way to work at the Amex

 

[Uter]

Paul Barber is ambiguous , the paragraph can be read 2 ways.

In isolation I suppose, but having stated above this that the ethos is to use local suppliers and keep the customers happy it's not very likely that they'd do something as universally unpopular as this.

Besides which they make an awful lot of money from sales of pies and Harveys so it would make no commercial sense.

 

[Seagulltonian]

Does this mean the emergency caterers have got the gig until the end of the season and the new caterers will take over OR the new caterers take over next season with Pukka Pies and Carlsberg as "symbiotic partners" to make a bigger buck ?

It appears we are getting a "Chelsea/Rafa Benitez" type deal on the catering until the end of the season then??!!

 

[The screamer]

What would help IMMENSELY is if there is actually some competant supervision on hand to help. What I've seen time and time again in the WSU concourse queues is one member of staff running into a problem with the till, being unable to resolve it, and so calling over another member of staff from another till to help sort it out. The result ? TWO massive queues getting held up to sort one problem out.

The level of training needs to improve, and the level of support on the job needs to be better.

In the venue I work in I am the Supervisor and a good one at that. I've had training in how to use the tills but last week two of the tills failed. The tills are electronic, Electronics fail sometimes and it took me a few minutes to sort one and the other was broken for the remaining of the shift. There was NOTHING I could do about it and no training would have solved while behind the bar. Until any one on this forum who is moaning has worked in a venue you have no idea of the pressure serving a huge amount of people in such limited time.

 

[otk]

I doubt it is the concourses tbf. As someone pointed out, the hospitality take has nose-dived. If you go to a restaurant and get poor service, you probably don't go back, and slate it to your pals. People have voted with their feet, and wallets

 

[Publius Ovidius]

They had their chance, but blue it

I see what you did there! azure - blue genius

 

[Colossal Squid]

I'm guessing this means its going to be chaos tomorrow trying to get beer and pie?

So business as usual then

 

[BigGully]

I love this, not because I have had any issues with the catering as I havent used them, but from what I can gather it has been poor and it has been acted upon.

With such a captive and lucrative market it shouldn't be too difficult to organise staffing and stock levels and turn a handsome profit.

It seems in our country in this service sector we really cannot see beyond controlling costs ( staffing levels and stock levels ) whilst being unable to foresee the likely increased in turn over and profits, if you improve the service.

Just employ more staff, its only five quid an hour and you will sell more of your stuff and you kinda know the numbers that are gonna turn up and buy your stuff because its a football game.

 

[The screamer]

I'm not knocking the staff; I do not doubt your hard work. But I think the organisation, training and set up could all be improved. A beer only queue with pre-poured pints and pre-paid beer tokens would speed things up for starters.

Fair enough, and I do see this as a excellent idea, however we tried something similar and you get complete donuts who don't pay attention, queue and get to the front and refuse to accept it's a certain item only queue and while they are arguing their case, the customers behind are held up. So basically it works until others mess it up. I'm guessing that is why they stopped the Smart Card only queues too

Blimey , you come a long way to work at the Amex

I don't.. I work where there is a very similar set up

 

[chucky1973]

I'm guessing this means its going to be chaos tomorrow trying to get beer and pie?

its always chaos trying to get beer and pie

 

[Hamilton]

I've heard that they are casting the net quite wide. There were some peeps in asking questions of the independent caterers at the last game.