As I see it, PAYD gives the contractors running messes something that every other company in the Capitalist World has... competition! As people have previously stated, if the customers (offrs, SNCOs or airmen) do not agree with the quality/quantity/selection of food they simply won't eat there anymore and the business/mess will lose money. Some people are doing this already and simply accepting the fact that they still pay their messing. I know of a great number of people here at
who do just that, preferring to cook for themselves rather than put up with what can sometimes be a fairly poor standard of catering. I understand that the catering budget for the messes is tight and as a result the standard of ingredients may be compromised, however what I and several others do object to is poor standards of food preparation. Some examples:
1. Ordered chips at lunchtime last week. When they arrived, they had been reheated (several times!) and as a result were more like honeycombes full of oil than chips.
2. Friend ordered cheese baguette yesterday. Cheese Burger and chips arrives!
3. Vegetable selection last week comprising of drastically overcooked broccolli, lumpy mashed potato and rock hard roasties!
All of the above grumbles are not a result of under-funding, more a result of staff being generally sloppy. I really feel sometimes that the staff couldn't care less as they know full well that we have little choice in where we eat and that even if we do go elsewhere, we'll still be paying for the food that they serve!
Similar thing has happened behind our bar. ESS decided in their wisdom to withdraw the two most popular beers and replace them with 'extra cold' versions of the two remaining beers. If it wasn't for the bar prices in the mess, I doubt as many people would use it. A sad fact of life.
Think that just about sums it up.