SteveStephens
Have you been to lunch at Crystals - RAF Henlow? Counted the number of people that actually use the facility? It's not good and ESS are certainly not making money!
As for the quality of the food, menu options that would have normally been on offer before PAYD are now offered as A la Carte options costing you twice as much as the core menu!
Don't even get me started on bar prices!!!!! ESS don't make money on the drinks for a start, they buy the stock, provide the staff and sell the drinks on at cost plus whatever GPP has been decided by the committee. We are not allowed to choose who supplies the beer, which tends to suggest that ESS have their own preferred suppliers who, at the end of the year offer a bonus in the way of kick back as a percentage of the amount of beer etc purchased. The knock on effect of this, is that the supplier can (and does) put up the prices regularly and it makes no difference to ESS and actually benefits them. I would get my hand slapped if I even tried to phone the supplier to ask anything about prices.
Typical example recently, sun is shining, Sunday afternoon, jug of Pimms in the garden, you know the drill! ESS are buying Pimms in at £18/litre for the mess...... surely I should not be able to go to a supermarket and buy it for £12/litre! Admittedly, we don't pay a great deal for our drinks, but if we were using different suppliers and introduce a little competition, then at least we could increase our GPP putting more cash into ents funtions throughout the year. This problem is not just confined to the OM, ESS buy for Juniors and SNCOs too!
TheBeeKeeper
(DH82b)