Have posted on this a number of times. At least we've heard recently there are plans though, so fingers crossed for decent changes.
The pricing is ridiculous. However you look at it. That has to change... unless there's a conscious decision to have fewer customers and therefore make it easier for the serving staff... off-setting it by charging people a fortune. Surely the queues at the various vans outside the ground tell their own story though.
Greggs or similar would be a good, simple, quick fix as a medium term solution over say three years.
Ultimately with 50,000 people turning up long term it seems stupid to be outsourcing though, if we can run that internally and keep the profit internal.
Whilst a range of choice would be nice, that might be tricky in reality. Hard to have an extensive range in each kiosk due to space. Also, there are limits on what they can cook due to the kitchens being underneath the stands (ie with regard to open flames). Specialising the individual kiosks could work but then has the potential for chaos if one particular kiosk is much more popular (eg if everyone wants pizza slices and the other four kiosks are left empty). Ok, in time you can use that info to fine-tune the offerings across the board, but short term could be messy and just piss people off more.
Other things we could be doing:
- cashless payment (fucking unbelievable we're still not using this in 2019)
- bottled water (I know the stuff coming through the pumps isn't good, no excuse for not having a few pallets of plastic bottles though)
- looking carefully at the stalls outside the ground to see if a deal could be done with the people running them to have them either brought entirely under our control (and rebuilt to have something branded and more solid looking), or regretfully thank the licence holders but move them on so we can set our own up units
- engage with local colleges to see if there's scope to do something creative with their catering courses and students re product range, staffing, internships etc (plus brownie points for the community aspect)
- investigating a pre-ordering system (my employer is currently doing this - 26,000 students and 8,000 staff)
None of this is rocket science. It just needs a bit of time and willing and someone tasked with sorting it out. The stadium restaurants are excellent, it's ridiculous that the match day catering kiosks are right at the other end of the experience. It basically suggests no-one has been giving a %^*& about it for a long time. Which might be understandable in some ways if the contract doesn't bring much to the club... but it also makes a statement about what they think about US.
Scottish football on the pitch has been left well behind of late. When you look at the match day experience at some of the newer stadia down south we're looking at the same thing happening in the grounds too. We (and other clubs up here) need to decide if we just shrug our shoulders and except that, or whether they care enough to do something about it.
