Food and Drink at Football Grounds
Discussion
Was at the Emirates yesterday. Both my boys fancied a burger at half time.
First of all the queue was long and slow moving, why? Because there were only two people serving (who were also cooking them). Burgers were big and meaty, but good quality? Meh. For £11.50 I could have got - and enjoyed - twotwo better burgers at The Coronet on Holloway Road (and a free pint with each). For 'just' another £3.50 'WHY NOT ADD FRIES?'.
My bill for a couple of burgers (served by people who clearly have never eaten burgers in their life) each with fries, and a 4"x3" boat of fries came to £34.00.
You pay at the register, queue... then hand your receipt/ticket to one of the ladies behind the jump and watch her as she reads the order to make sure she gets it right. She then goes to the bag with all the buns in it, takes two out and starts preparing one 'bacon, double cheese' and one cheeseburger. No 'would you like onions/tomato/gherkins/mayo' etc. She just folded one slither of a gherkin and drowned it with burger sauce (youngest doesn't like any sauce) and placed it in a cardboard tray, took a deep breath and said, "you will have to wait for the fries because I do not have any". The guy behind me spotted the empty griddle. "You'll need some more burgers too!"
Nobody ever regrets buying quality, but this experience didn't even make the threshold, it was also Club Level. My most recent food and drink experience at the Emirates. If it was just me, I'd just stick to beers before getting to the stadium and maybe a couple on the way home, but I had both my sons with me and they were there for a bit more than the match.
Begs the question, why does it need to be so expensive AND such a sub-standard service?
What is it like at your ground?
Underhill burgers were okay; but still 8-quid... and the beer is quite punchy too.
First of all the queue was long and slow moving, why? Because there were only two people serving (who were also cooking them). Burgers were big and meaty, but good quality? Meh. For £11.50 I could have got - and enjoyed - twotwo better burgers at The Coronet on Holloway Road (and a free pint with each). For 'just' another £3.50 'WHY NOT ADD FRIES?'.
My bill for a couple of burgers (served by people who clearly have never eaten burgers in their life) each with fries, and a 4"x3" boat of fries came to £34.00.
You pay at the register, queue... then hand your receipt/ticket to one of the ladies behind the jump and watch her as she reads the order to make sure she gets it right. She then goes to the bag with all the buns in it, takes two out and starts preparing one 'bacon, double cheese' and one cheeseburger. No 'would you like onions/tomato/gherkins/mayo' etc. She just folded one slither of a gherkin and drowned it with burger sauce (youngest doesn't like any sauce) and placed it in a cardboard tray, took a deep breath and said, "you will have to wait for the fries because I do not have any". The guy behind me spotted the empty griddle. "You'll need some more burgers too!"
Nobody ever regrets buying quality, but this experience didn't even make the threshold, it was also Club Level. My most recent food and drink experience at the Emirates. If it was just me, I'd just stick to beers before getting to the stadium and maybe a couple on the way home, but I had both my sons with me and they were there for a bit more than the match.
Begs the question, why does it need to be so expensive AND such a sub-standard service?
What is it like at your ground?
Underhill burgers were okay; but still 8-quid... and the beer is quite punchy too.
Food and drink at football trades on the fact that most people completely lose their minds at football, they are over excited, it's a big day out, and they don't care. I stopped buying food at Stamford Bridge when the Bovril went up to sixpence and the wagon wheels went up to a shilling. f
k that. I'm not made of money.
However, to be fair, I've been lucky enough to have a couple of corporate invites to Chelsea, and the food was superb. The lobster was spot on and the Wagyu steak was done to perfection. Washed down with a rather good Chateau Neuf du Pape. I was glad I wasn't paying though, as I suspect, if I was unhappy with paying 7.5p for a Bovril and Wagon Wheel, I would have been pretty displeased.
k that. I'm not made of money. However, to be fair, I've been lucky enough to have a couple of corporate invites to Chelsea, and the food was superb. The lobster was spot on and the Wagyu steak was done to perfection. Washed down with a rather good Chateau Neuf du Pape. I was glad I wasn't paying though, as I suspect, if I was unhappy with paying 7.5p for a Bovril and Wagon Wheel, I would have been pretty displeased.
I was put off football ground food by a Scotch Pie at Palmerston Park (Queen of the South) about thirty years ago. Most of it ended up eaten by the pigeons on the empty terracing.
The food offering on the concourses at the Hawthorns is at best ok quality but poor value for money. I rarely buy anything, only occasionally at a night match when I've not had chance to go anywhere else. But they have big queues and presumably make money so somebody clearly likes it and buys it. I agree the queues are painfully and unnecessarily slow.
The food offering on the concourses at the Hawthorns is at best ok quality but poor value for money. I rarely buy anything, only occasionally at a night match when I've not had chance to go anywhere else. But they have big queues and presumably make money so somebody clearly likes it and buys it. I agree the queues are painfully and unnecessarily slow.
It's a classic 'captive audience' scenario isn't it?
If you want food and drink, they can serve you rubbish and charge a fortune for it, and you'll still pay it as there is nowhere else to go. Same as the food and drink served at motorsport/festivals/concerts/other sport and so on.
There is no point in trying to apply reason to it. It just is what it is. They are having your eyes out over the price/quality simply because they can.
They will keep doing it, until people stop buying it, and that won't happen as people get hungry, thirsty, or just fancy a burger and a drink, and again, they'll just pay whatever the cost.
If you want food and drink, they can serve you rubbish and charge a fortune for it, and you'll still pay it as there is nowhere else to go. Same as the food and drink served at motorsport/festivals/concerts/other sport and so on.
There is no point in trying to apply reason to it. It just is what it is. They are having your eyes out over the price/quality simply because they can.
They will keep doing it, until people stop buying it, and that won't happen as people get hungry, thirsty, or just fancy a burger and a drink, and again, they'll just pay whatever the cost.
Birmingham City fan here and although i haven't been down St. Andrews for a couple years the service as i remember was a joke.
Considering we dont get more than 20k , if you didn't go for a beer at 35 mins, you wasn't getting one at half time.
They made different kiosks, one for beer and food and then the others were food and softdrinks. They also tried to bring in a ''Gourmet'' option which was different to the usual pie & burger options and that was about £5/6 IIRC.
An away fan took this the other week that went viral so I don't think much is changing
Considering we dont get more than 20k , if you didn't go for a beer at 35 mins, you wasn't getting one at half time.
They made different kiosks, one for beer and food and then the others were food and softdrinks. They also tried to bring in a ''Gourmet'' option which was different to the usual pie & burger options and that was about £5/6 IIRC.
An away fan took this the other week that went viral so I don't think much is changing
I understand the poor quality and high pricing is a factor of the captive audience thing, but what I don't get is the poor staff training and slowness of service, particularly for serving the pints of beer. Doesn't the business manager realise that if you serve people more quickly and efficiently, you'll sell more beer in your severely limited time slots and increase revenues?
Surely they can see from previous matches that they will serve, on average X pints of lager, X pints of bitter, and X pints of stout, and therefore they can, at the start of half time, pre-pour dozens of pints and hand them out speedily (it's not like it's great quality artisan beer made from the tears of 1,000 John Terries anyway so it doesn't need to be super fking fresh, it's fking Carlsberg weakest piss variety), just needing the customer to swipe their payment card, instead of "Oh, it's half time, big surprise, right, here's the first customer, what would you like, oh another massive surprise a couple of pints of lager and one Guinness is it, hang on, give me 5 minutes while I dribble them out of our broken pumps - ha ha, looks like the first Guinness of the day is very lively, more surprise there, just another 10 minutes for that to settle then, one at a time whilst a massive queue builds up behind you, there's no rush I suppose, lovely day for a chat while you wait, nobody wants to "enjoy" their pint of sell by date stale horse urine and get back for kick off do they, no no that would be another massive fking surprise now wouldn't it."
Penises.
Surely they can see from previous matches that they will serve, on average X pints of lager, X pints of bitter, and X pints of stout, and therefore they can, at the start of half time, pre-pour dozens of pints and hand them out speedily (it's not like it's great quality artisan beer made from the tears of 1,000 John Terries anyway so it doesn't need to be super f
king fresh, it's fking Carlsberg weakest piss variety), just needing the customer to swipe their payment card, instead of "Oh, it's half time, big surprise, right, here's the first customer, what would you like, oh another massive surprise a couple of pints of lager and one Guinness is it, hang on, give me 5 minutes while I dribble them out of our broken pumps - ha ha, looks like the first Guinness of the day is very lively, more surprise there, just another 10 minutes for that to settle then, one at a time whilst a massive queue builds up behind you, there's no rush I suppose, lovely day for a chat while you wait, nobody wants to "enjoy" their pint of sell by date stale horse urine and get back for kick off do they, no no that would be another massive fking surprise now wouldn't it."Penises.
Edited by ElectricSoup on Monday 13th September 10:42
ElectricSoup said:
I understand the poor quality and high pricing is a factor of the captive audience thing, but what I don't get is the poor staff training and slowness of service, particularly for serving the pints of beer. Doesn't the business manager realise that if you serve people more quickly and efficiently, you'll sell more beer in your severely limited time slots and increase revenues?
Surely they can see from previous matches that they will serve, on average X pints of lager, X pints of bitter, and X pints of stout, and therefore they can, at the start of half time, pre-pour dozens of pints and hand them out speedily (it's not like it's great quality artisan beer made from the tears of 1,000 John Terries anyway so it doesn't need to be super fking fresh, it's fking Carlsberg weakest piss variety), just needing the customer to swipe their payment card, instead of "Oh, it's half time, big surprise, right, here's the first customer, what would you like, oh another massive surprise a couple of pints of lager and one Guinness is it, hang on, give me 5 minutes while I dribble them out of our broken pumps - ha ha, looks like the first Guinness of the day is very lively, more surprise there, just another 10 minutes for that to settle then, one at a time whilst a massive queue builds up behind you, there's no rush I suppose, lovely day for a chat while you wait, nobody wants to enjoy their pint and get back for kick off do they, no no that would be another massive fking surprise now wouldn't it."
Penises.
Whilst I totally agree with all that, and had a laugh, I think we can unfortunately assume that we are asking too much of staff at a football ground. Surely they can see from previous matches that they will serve, on average X pints of lager, X pints of bitter, and X pints of stout, and therefore they can, at the start of half time, pre-pour dozens of pints and hand them out speedily (it's not like it's great quality artisan beer made from the tears of 1,000 John Terries anyway so it doesn't need to be super f
king fresh, it's fking Carlsberg weakest piss variety), just needing the customer to swipe their payment card, instead of "Oh, it's half time, big surprise, right, here's the first customer, what would you like, oh another massive surprise a couple of pints of lager and one Guinness is it, hang on, give me 5 minutes while I dribble them out of our broken pumps - ha ha, looks like the first Guinness of the day is very lively, more surprise there, just another 10 minutes for that to settle then, one at a time whilst a massive queue builds up behind you, there's no rush I suppose, lovely day for a chat while you wait, nobody wants to enjoy their pint and get back for kick off do they, no no that would be another massive fking surprise now wouldn't it."Penises.
They are no doubt minimum wage and simply working on the occasional days that there is a match being played, so don't get into a regular routine of serving and solving the issues it may present. As you say though, there is no reason for the business manager of a ground to kick some backsides and come up with a plan.
There is a fish and chip shop near me, which is popular and well regarded, but on the reasonably rare occasion I go there, it never ceases to amaze me how slow the service is, and when you ask for fish and chips, they express almost total shock that someone has walking into a fish and chip shop and ordered fish. They then trot out the line "It'll be at least a 10 minute wait for your fish!"
I understand it's all minumum wage agency staff, but alls I'm asking is for the bar manager to instruct the staff to pre-pour, say 50 pints, to whatever proportions they usually sell between the different 2 or 3 varieties, and replace them as they're sold so we don't have to wait for our individual pint to be poured to order. Have someone keep an eye on the queue, and stop pre-pouring when it looks like the customers will stop coming or as you're approaching the average number sold per half time for that particular line. You might waste a couple of unsold pints at the end if you're rubbish at counting, but you will have sold loads more and the punters and club accountants will be happy.
I'm more forgiving of the fish'n'chip shop because I do prefer my fish to be freshly cooked to order and I don't have a limited 15 minute window to buy it, eat it and piss it out again in the swamp at the back of the stands, before getting back to my seat to see the opposition going 2 in front straight from the bleeding kick off yet again, what the fk is wrong with our defence, oi referee you've left your labrador at home you useless fking lump of lard, oh Jesus Christ I need another piss already, bloody Carlsberg I'm never touching that shi-ite again as long as I live, oh look we're three down now for fk's sake.
I'm more forgiving of the fish'n'chip shop because I do prefer my fish to be freshly cooked to order and I don't have a limited 15 minute window to buy it, eat it and piss it out again in the swamp at the back of the stands, before getting back to my seat to see the opposition going 2 in front straight from the bleeding kick off yet again, what the f
k is wrong with our defence, oi referee you've left your labrador at home you useless fking lump of lard, oh Jesus Christ I need another piss already, bloody Carlsberg I'm never touching that shi-ite again as long as I live, oh look we're three down now for fk's sake.Edited by ElectricSoup on Monday 13th September 11:10
I haven't been down Molineux for a good few years, definitely before Nuno stepped in. They did lovely balti pies years ago and I didn't mind paying the £3.50 or whatever it was. I always drove so didn't drink their overpriced lagers anyway.
Mind you, this was Championship times. The corporate greed of the Premiership has more than likely seen put to those days.
Mind you, this was Championship times. The corporate greed of the Premiership has more than likely seen put to those days.
Glassman said:
What is it like at your ground?
I'm a Spurs fan. I have a season ticket and a couple of corporate seats so I've experienced both the general admission offerings and the executive stuff. I have to say, even the GA food and drink offerings are night and day better than anything I've had at any sports ground anywhere. Which I guess is to be expected as it's all so new. It's also decent VFM and the beers are at least 50p cheaper than outside the ground.The only issue they ever seem to have is with the "bottoms up" pint pouring system. There was an initial problem for the first couple of games when the stadium first opened, which got quickly resolved and was fine since. This season, they've introduced new recyclable pint glasses which have a different valve on the bottom and the system was pouring pints of froth last game. Hopefully just another teething problem they will quickly iron out.
BTW my experiences are mainly from Fulham, but the situation as I describe it also exists at Wembley of all places. Not that, being a Fulham fan, I have the most comprehensive history of games at Wembley, but I do go to internationals and other club matches as a neutral there and the experience is always absolutely catastrophic. As it is at the Millenium Stadium, Murrayfield, the Madejski, and every other stadium I regularly attend for various reasons and various sports.
When our new stand at Craven Cottage opens, I won't be expecting any improvement. But I hope to be surprised.
When our new stand at Craven Cottage opens, I won't be expecting any improvement. But I hope to be surprised.
nealeh1875 said:
Birmingham City fan here
An away fan took this the other week that went viral so I don't think much is changing
Yes, BCFC's cheesy chips have become and internet sensation. An away fan took this the other week that went viral so I don't think much is changing
Having followed Chelsea home and away thru the 70s and 80s, I've always found football food to be universally crap and overpriced, be it Man Utd or Rotherham. With the exception of Gay Meadow, Shrewsbury, which in the 80s, had fabulous food for very reasonable money.
48k said:
Glassman said:
What is it like at your ground?
I'm a Spurs fan. I have a season ticket and a couple of corporate seats so I've experienced both the general admission offerings and the executive stuff. I have to say, even the GA food and drink offerings are night and day better than anything I've had at any sports ground anywhere. Which I guess is to be expected as it's all so new. It's also decent VFM and the beers are at least 50p cheaper than outside the ground.The only issue they ever seem to have is with the "bottoms up" pint pouring system. There was an initial problem for the first couple of games when the stadium first opened, which got quickly resolved and was fine since. This season, they've introduced new recyclable pint glasses which have a different valve on the bottom and the system was pouring pints of froth last game. Hopefully just another teething problem they will quickly iron out.
t most stadiums in the UK put out.Was strange ending up in a spurs bar afterwards with a Mourinho on the top of the xmas tree after celebrating him leaving united though!
Slow said:
Was at your new stadium in December 2019 and was actually impressed with it. Reminded me alot more of American stadiums than the st most stadiums in the UK put out.
Was strange ending up in a spurs bar afterwards with a Mourinho on the top of the xmas tree after celebrating him leaving united though!
The one thing that does seem to have gone downhill this season at Spurs, only 2 games in I know, but the time to get served is painful. Since the new stadium opened you could grab a drink and a bite in the half time break easily, last game you had no chance the guy next to us left his seat with 10 mins to go of the first half and still didn't make it back for kick off. 48k is ok though he gets waited on by a penguin t most stadiums in the UK put out.Was strange ending up in a spurs bar afterwards with a Mourinho on the top of the xmas tree after celebrating him leaving united though!
48k said:
I'm a Spurs fan. I have a season ticket and a couple of corporate seats so I've experienced both the general admission offerings and the executive stuff. I have to say, even the GA food and drink offerings are night and day better than anything I've had at any sports ground anywhere.
Following up on this - these are additional veggie options that have been added to the general admission food outlets for this Sundays match against Chelsea, which is trying to be a carbon neutral game.
Sadly it doesn't make any difference what shape the ball they play with is, either. It is all over priced, poor quality junk.
Make yourself a nice bacon sandwich - or two - at home, put it in your pocket and take it to the ground.
A child of five could work out that it would be better to do a load of burgers before half time and then have a table at the side where you (one) could add sauces etc as desired by the consumer.
Make yourself a nice bacon sandwich - or two - at home, put it in your pocket and take it to the ground.
A child of five could work out that it would be better to do a load of burgers before half time and then have a table at the side where you (one) could add sauces etc as desired by the consumer.
Lord Marylebone said:
There is a fish and chip shop near me, which is popular and well regarded, but on the reasonably rare occasion I go there, it never ceases to amaze me how slow the service is, and when you ask for fish and chips, they express almost total shock that someone has walking into a fish and chip shop and ordered fish. They then trot out the line "It'll be at least a 10 minute wait for your fish!"
Do you have one of those telephone machine things in the hall at your house? You could always telephone (I think that is what it is called) in advance of your arrival and then the F & C will be ready when your carriage lurches to a halt outside said fish and chip shop.I'm a regular worker at Madjeski and we do in fact pre-pour about 80 pints per kiosk and the food inside is actually rather good. I personally recommend the chicken balti pie. 
Downside of course is you get people understandably complaining about paying £5.50 for a room temperature pint of Heineken that's as flat as the polders of Holland.
Problem is we have wireless card machines that take ages to connect. Every. Single. Time. 10 seconds to get a pint, then we wait another 10 seconds for the card machine to be ready. That's a lot of customers not getting served in time. What's wrong with a good old wire? The bloody things never get moved anyway.
It completely wipes out the advantages of going cashless, in fact a cash only bar would be significantly quicker.
Though there is a shocking amount of food wastage and we aren't even allowed to eat the leftovers anymore.
Downside of course is you get people understandably complaining about paying £5.50 for a room temperature pint of Heineken that's as flat as the polders of Holland.
Problem is we have wireless card machines that take ages to connect. Every. Single. Time. 10 seconds to get a pint, then we wait another 10 seconds for the card machine to be ready. That's a lot of customers not getting served in time. What's wrong with a good old wire? The bloody things never get moved anyway.
It completely wipes out the advantages of going cashless, in fact a cash only bar would be significantly quicker.
Though there is a shocking amount of food wastage and we aren't even allowed to eat the leftovers anymore.
Gassing Station | Football | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff