Following a blog criticising the service in the East Stand bars last season, it's been assured work is being done to improve the situation
Last season I had a bit of a rant in the aftermath of the Aston Villa game after not being able to get a pint in the Riverside at half time. I was invited to the stadium to discuss this, which resulted in fans being able to put questions directly to the company who controls the food & drink facilities - here's their response detailing the main issues which were raised.
Speed of Service
A number of the complaints that have been received relate to speed of service – particularly at half time. Average waiting times before match kick off tend to be around the one minute mark but we are working extremely hard to reduce the waiting at half time.
There are a number of factors which can hamper speed of service, many of which we will try and address when we can, but a number of things can sometimes be out of our control such as staff shortages, equipment failure, limited concourse space for queuing systems and inability to produce ‘pop up bars’ and hawkers. Hopefully the below will address peoples’ concerns and provide answers as to why we can and can’t do certain things.
Pre-Pouring
We will be emphasising the importance of half-time pre-pouring this season and ensuring all bars are focusing on this. There have been occasions where producing pre-pours has been difficult in certain areas due to significant mechanical failures on our dispensing equipment, but working with Molson Coors we are doing everything we can to ensure these faults are located and rectified as soon as possible. We will also be ensuring those kiosks which do not have dispense facilities but instead serve canned products will be pre pouring also. We will shortly be adding extra dispensing taps in our bars across the stadium, including an extra 6 Carling dispense points in the Riverside Lounge, and another 12 across the East Stand in general.
The policy of having to pour bottled products has also changed for this season with bottles (soft drink and alcoholic) now allowed to be handed to all customers without a lid. This is on a trial basis and maybe withdrawn if any safety issues arise from the policy change. The North Stand Bars will still be decanting bottled and canned products. Supporters are though reminded that alcohol cannot be taken into the bowl area.
Staff Levels & Training
With Swansea being a University city, the majority of our labour pool are students who are looking for casual work which is what we provide on match days. There are occasions where we will have to use agency staff in order to cover those periods where our ‘regular’ team members return home for the holiday periods. We also experience a high turnover of staff during the summer months as a significant portion of our team leave the city to pursue their careers.
We also have an ‘overbook’ of staff on every match day to cover any potential staff drop outs but last season we experienced a higher than normal occurrence of late staff drop outs which unfortunately led to us being short staffed for a number of events.
There will be further focus on the ‘basics’ training of all of our staff this season as we look to improve and emphasise the importance of speed of service. We have also increased our staffing levels for this season in certain areas to provide extra service points and extra help for our production teams.
In total, we have added an extra 20 service points across the stadium over the last year and into this coming season.
Queuing Barriers
This is something which we have looked at a number of times but has been difficult in areas due to physical space on the concourse and positioning of pillars. Unfortunately a queuing barrier system in the East Stand just isn’t feasible due to the limited space of the concourse.
We will be looking to trial a temporary snaking queue barrier system in either the South or West stands at some point during the beginning of the season in order to see if this will lead to more effective and efficient queuing. This trial is awaiting sign off from the health and safety group before proceeding.
We have also looked at ‘Queue Here’ signs to be placed above existing till points to identify where queues should be formed but we haven’t gone ahead with this as of yet due to some movement of tills on the counters.
Hawking and ‘Pop Up’ Bars
It’s been widely questioned as to why we don’t use beer dispense hawkers (American style back pack servers) and floating members of staff to sell snacks and soft drinks in the stands. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions placed on our licence we are only permitted to sell food and drink in the confinements of the kiosks. It is something we will continue to work on with the licensing authority though.
We are looking at a number of other options to combat excessive half time queues such as a smart phone pre-ordering app [which sounded impressive and easy to use - Ed] which will allow customers to pre order and pre-pay for certain items which can then be collected at a designated point. We are currently looking in conjunction with the Swansea Stadium Management Company at what infrastructure will need to be installed to accommodate this.
We are also looking at a possible voucher system for some areas, which again has its challenges due to the space on the concourses/kiosks.
Pricing and Products
We understand purchasing food and drink at any sports venue can be a bit pricey but this is due to the operation itself being particularly pricey as it is used for a limited time through the year. For this coming season we have taken fans comments on board and held the price of many of our products(including a pint!) where at all possible for the coming season. A pint will still cost £3.50, but for the canned equivalent which are served from our kiosks that do not have draught equipment, we have dropped the price of a Carling can to £3.40.
We have also introduced Wild Berry Cider to our bars for this season which will be available in the next couple of weeks!
In terms of food, we have removed some of our less popular items and replaced them with products to provide a bit more of a variety. We will be selling Jacket Potatoes (cheese or chilli fillings), Chicken Noodles and Homemade Vegetarian Cottage Pies for this coming season in addition to our usual burgers, hot dogs and Peters’ pies.
We did last season trial in a number of stands a new fresh local burger and a higher quality frankfurter for our hot dogs but these weren’t to many peoples taste and this was reflected in the sales. We therefore decided to end the trial period and revert back to our current product where we have now seen sales increase. We continue to look to develop our food offering and are in constant discussions with our suppliers and other venues as to how we can all improve food offerings across a range of stadia.
Before we change aspects of our service/products we aim to trial the changes in small areas of the stadium first to assess the feasibility. So please be assured that if you don’t see anything immediately happening in your areas there is good chance that there are trials going on elsewhere in the stadium.
Thanks to Josh from FMC for taking the time to answer our questions, and after meeting him I can confidently say that the situation will improve. Mine's a Doombar, if you're going...