Review our new menu please.

[billiboing]

Just starting to do food at the clubhouse at Hinton at weekends. First five aircraft to fly in, with ppr can have free food. Heres the menu;

Soups; £3 each

Tomato OR Butternut squash Soup, OR Spicy Beef and Tomato, or Pea and Ham.


Mains, £4.50 each.

Lasagne, Shepherds Pie, Chilli Con Carne, Beef in Ale, Beef Meatballs, Pork Sausage Casserole, Chicken Chasseur, Chicken in Mushroom Sauce, Tomato and Vegetable pasta.



Would really appreciate what people think if this is what is wanted on a cold winters day??

Many thanks guys.

[x933]

At this time of year, just the ticket. Secret with menus is to keep them fresh - that's good hearty food that is ideal at this time of year but in the height of summer the last thing I want to eat is beef stew and dumplings. If I wasn't driving to the other end of the country this weekend i'd pop in myself...

[GeeWhizz]

Looks fantabulous! Just what I'd be looking for this time of year. PPR now please? ;)

[BackPacker]

A bit thin wrt. vegetarian choices. Other than that, looks fine (assuming most of these dishes come with chips)?

You might want to add something bread/toast-like (club sandwich, omelette, ...) if you do lunch too.

[BRL]

No full english???

[GeeWhizz]

I know nothing business. But the last time I flew into Wellesbourne (about 3 or 4 months ago) they had quite a good set up with a busy licensed cafe restaurant style serving all manner of dishes (and a crazy lady offering biscuits to all and sundry)!

Edit: steakandchips, will you be about at the weekend Sunday in particular?
I've got another trip planned for Sunday, but swaying toward beef in ale to be honest.

[Say again s l o w l y]

£4.50 for a main? I think you might want to bump your prices up a bit!

Other than that, looks fine to me, but at that price, it might be better to stick to a smaller menu with just say 3 choices on it. How many covers will you be expecting per day?

Nice to see you canvassing for opinions though and all the best with it.

[Intercepted]

Just starting to do food at the clubhouse at Hinton at weekends. First five aircraft to fly in, with ppr can have free food. Heres the menu;

I have never been to Hinton and I'm loking for a shortish lunch flight on Sunday. Lasagna and Chips would be nice. If it happens I'll make sure I'm PPRd etc. before I set off, but for now, what is the joining procedure, circuit etc. and what too look out for? I didn't find much on my web search.

[Genghis the Engineer]

£4.50 for a main? I think you might want to bump your prices up a bit!

Other than that, looks fine to me, but at that price, it might be better to stick to a smaller menu with just say 3 choices on it. How many covers will you be expecting per day?

Nice to see you canvassing for opinions though and all the best with it.

Agreed.

Also, if somebody has spent several hundred quid getting there, they may be prepared to pay a bit more for some decent nosh. However, if they're flying out again, they also want it quickly!

Don't make yourself so cheap you make no money - that's daft.

I agree about a full English; also a bacon or bacon and egg sandwich, which is quick easy and cheap plus the ingredients keep for a week in the fridge.

I'd love to see a decent American style Chilli at a British airfield, not the "Chilli Con Carne" pap most usually sold, which bears little resemblence to one of the USA's few truly good contributions to world cuisine.

With anything resembling sandwiches, or soup + (roll / sandwich) get a local baker to supply some decent bread, not the cheap white sliced which is normal at most airfield cafes. It'll cost a few pennies more, and impress people far beyond the price increase that'll cause.

G

[Winhern]

First five aircraft to fly in, with ppr can have free food.

Is 30l of Avgas on the menu?

Regards
PA28 :)

[billiboing]

PPR can be got from the phone numbers on hintonpft.co.uk

There is also a burger van on the airfield at the parachute school offering the bacon, egg, sausage fry up kind of menu and we really didnt want to take their business away but offer hearty warm healthy food.

Want to offer value at first whilst we find our feet- hence the low prices. Cant promise they will stay that way. :\

Chris

[Genghis the Engineer]

Want to offer value at first whilst we find our feet- hence the low prices. Cant promise they will stay that way
Frankly, I think you're daft. Start with the quality and price you expect to carry on with or you'll get people grumbling about the apparently ever-increasing prices. Also pilots have probably spent anywhere from £60 to £600 to visit you, and given that whilst they may not want to spend silly money, will really not have a problem paying £7-£10 for a decent lunch.

G

[mad_jock]

Go with Genghis on this one.

Start at about 7:50 for lunch make it two course if you must but make it good.

Ie decent steakpie not your cash and carry premade and frozen crap.

Don't tin can the veg get decent stuff and steam it

[Slopey]

£4.50 is way too cheap for a main - that's cheaper than a Chicken Royale Meal in BK!

As with the others, I'd happily (and do) pay £7-9 for a main, especially if it's decent. Everything on the menu looks great, it's making me hungry!

At £4.50, you start to wonder what the quality would be like because you wonder how you could do it so cheap, and assume it might not be good - not casting aspersions on your quality by any means, but a quality product usually attracts a quality price point.

[airborne_artist]

See if you can source from local producers/growers. The kind of person who spends £150 on Avgas will appreciate quality ingredients.

[IO540]

I agree.

There is a perception that airport cafe food is OK to be crap. One can see most pilots are pretty unfit so perhaps that is what leads to that kind of Wellesbourne-type "catering".

But all that results in is that the unfit pilots who don't give a flying &^*( about their life expentancy eat in the airport cafe, while those more health conscious eat off-premises.

I would offer real homemade veg soups for a start. Not one that's full of salt and cream (you can make a days-dead cat taste OK that way).

On mains, go for some organic stuff. Smart people everywhere happily pay a big premium for that.

And do some fish. Fish can be really tasty and unless done with tons of sauce etc it is quite healthy, especially if grilled. Many people are suspicious of chicken (I never eat it in cafes unless organic which is very rare) but will eat fish.

When doing jackets, offer the usual fillings but go for quality. Don't buy rubbish prawns at £1/50kg.

The gross margins on catering are huge. They are needed to cover high fixed costs; fair enough. But they also mean that going for quality ingredients costs very little extra, while allowing you to stick say 30% on the price of the finished product which increases the gross profit by an amount far greater than the extra cost of the ingredients. Most restaurants just don't get that at all. Quality ingredients make it taste much better, at no increase in labour costs, and people will pay extra for it.

OTOH it would be a mistake to go for the "BMW Z4 crowd" which is what most country pubs have done. I have one across the road from me here. We rarely go there because it is so expensive - £20 a head easily.

Just my view :)

[Dan Dare]

or the sort of person paying £150 for AVGAS may only have £3 left for the burger van round the corner:yuk:

Most airfield food has gone all posh now. I do miss the airfield bacon butty, which used to be available anywhere. Probably not great for profit margins, but they really hit the spot and you would fly for miles for a good one.

Seriously though, the menu sounds just the sort of thing I would enjoy provided good quality ingredients. Some one-pot stew type of dishes seem to improve with freezing and re-heating so you could always have a supply of them and a fresh dish of the day. If you're really good the leftover fresh dish of the day would freeze for later use too! The others are probably right about the prices though. I would rather see a successful ongoing concern charging realistic prices than a flash-in-the pan disappearing and leaving another airfield with no food at all:D

[stickandrudderman]

I would be suspicious of the ingredients in any main that was only £4.50 and therefore wouldn't buy it.
I'd happily pay 7 or 8 quid for a decent chilli, lasagne or cannelloni though.
I also really like it when these dishes come with a little cherry tomato and a sprig of parsley or corriander. It costs almost nothing and really creates a good impression of someone who's proud of their offering.
I eat in France and Switzerland a lot and nearly everywhere does this.

[Tupperware Pilot]

Nothing like a good old bacon butty at an airfield.
had a really good bacon/egg/sausage and chips for about £8 at Thruxton last weekend.
There is a good butty van at Hinton already......