I have my super simple double beneficial answer to this:
BGW should bring in food trucks to be the food providers for F&W and reach out to wineries and breweries for drinks.
The State of the Park: Busch Gardens Williamsburg
- Thread starter CoasterTalkBob
- Start date
BGW should bring in food trucks to be the food providers for F&W and reach out to wineries and breweries for drinks.
First off, I wholeheartedly reject any "solution" that involves watering down thematically appropriate culinary variety at BGW or eliminating more premium offerings like Food & Wine. Even if I did think doing so would solve some problem for the park, BGW is priced as a premium regional theme park. The price tag is partially justified by the existence of investments into park features like this.
Speaking more broadly, these are all solutions in search of a problem. We can look across the industry and see that it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE to expect much better food than we have right now at cheaper prices than we have right now with better service than we have right now. Cedar Fair and Herschend parks, despite being priced lower than SEAS parks, already offer all of the previously mentioned advantages.
Don't let BGW off the hook on this shit. We deserve better as paying customers at this park. It works everywhere else and it worked at BGW for decades. Looking at ways to cut the budget elsewhere in culinary to bring back simple, basic elements of functional theme park dining is unreasonable. The correct answer is for SEAS to stop bleeding the department dry.
Speaking more broadly, these are all solutions in search of a problem. We can look across the industry and see that it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE to expect much better food than we have right now at cheaper prices than we have right now with better service than we have right now. Cedar Fair and Herschend parks, despite being priced lower than SEAS parks, already offer all of the previously mentioned advantages.
Don't let BGW off the hook on this shit. We deserve better as paying customers at this park. It works everywhere else and it worked at BGW for decades. Looking at ways to cut the budget elsewhere in culinary to bring back simple, basic elements of functional theme park dining is unreasonable. The correct answer is for SEAS to stop bleeding the department dry.
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Oh please, no more food trucks. As good as the food may be, they are ugly, tacky and detract from the atmosphere. They create bottlenecks and crowd movement issues, even though BG tries to place them out of the way.
BG should still set up the booths, but let them be operated and staffed by food truck owners. A franchise type of set-up.
So that Korean bbq truck could run the Korea booth?
Agreed. Although some were outstanding, we only had one or two decent meals through these, and even then we waited forever in lines that crept into the midways causing havoc.
Twice we had food from the trucks that were basically salt-licks in burger form, I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest from all the salt and fat right there on the spot. They were so bad we only got a bite or two in, and just went hungry for the rest of the evening.
I like the variety that they offer, and love giving small businesses the bump, but they just don't really fit in with the park.
I see two names there my dude. Having witnessed the process first hand, some credit might be appreciated.
I’m sorry but these responses are kinda bs to me. All there is going on is complaints about BGW and what someone suggests something to help them start working their way back they get crapped on.
Yes. I rather see BGW focus on doing a few things really well than half ass 500 different things.
Do I appreciate their attempt at variety? Yes. Do I applaud their effort? Fuck no. They can’t even do a good burger right now because they have too many things they are attempting to do. Yet it seems some are happier to complain about the state of all the food than thinking of ways for it to get better.
Like I said, outsource the F&W events. Take out those booths. Sorry but that complaint about food trucks gumming things up? From the sounds of lines at booths it’s not enjoyable anyways.
Les Frit being slow and bad? They should do plain, and 2 preset styles. Keep it simple and get those two options good.
Yes - to me it is very annoying to continually read that things are crap - but the solution often seems to be “just do better”. I’m sorry but they can’t. They need to take something off their plate metaphorically speaking.
Making F&B a chance for beers, wines, and restaurants of VA to showcase themselves would be a great way of doing that. And yes, to me having a space that’s bigger and open (FHP) host some food trucks in a temporary setup should be an option.
Paring down the number of options of the variety should be an option. Even if it’s something like I suggested with the fries, or having 2-3 base meals available anywhere so there can be something they are very good at doing and become known for again. Hell I don’t care if it’s a base of pizza, and FH gets sausage pizza, MP can do pepperonis, and so forth. But make the base the same so they can work to become good at making pizza then start expanding once that is a set procedure.
EDIT -
And I want to add - I do enjoy this community and enjoy these talks on a lot of topics - but the praise of KD/CF and the backlash to BGW is getting very out of hand IMO.
It’s especially evident when I suggest BGW do basically what KD is doing now and it gets met with massive pushback of “oh they can’t do that” when KD is getting praised for changing it up and simplifying things.
Yes. I rather see BGW focus on doing a few things really well than half ass 500 different things.
Do I appreciate their attempt at variety? Yes. Do I applaud their effort? Fuck no. They can’t even do a good burger right now because they have too many things they are attempting to do. Yet it seems some are happier to complain about the state of all the food than thinking of ways for it to get better.
Like I said, outsource the F&W events. Take out those booths. Sorry but that complaint about food trucks gumming things up? From the sounds of lines at booths it’s not enjoyable anyways.
Les Frit being slow and bad? They should do plain, and 2 preset styles. Keep it simple and get those two options good.
Yes - to me it is very annoying to continually read that things are crap - but the solution often seems to be “just do better”. I’m sorry but they can’t. They need to take something off their plate metaphorically speaking.
Making F&B a chance for beers, wines, and restaurants of VA to showcase themselves would be a great way of doing that. And yes, to me having a space that’s bigger and open (FHP) host some food trucks in a temporary setup should be an option.
Paring down the number of options of the variety should be an option. Even if it’s something like I suggested with the fries, or having 2-3 base meals available anywhere so there can be something they are very good at doing and become known for again. Hell I don’t care if it’s a base of pizza, and FH gets sausage pizza, MP can do pepperonis, and so forth. But make the base the same so they can work to become good at making pizza then start expanding once that is a set procedure.
EDIT -
And I want to add - I do enjoy this community and enjoy these talks on a lot of topics - but the praise of KD/CF and the backlash to BGW is getting very out of hand IMO.
It’s especially evident when I suggest BGW do basically what KD is doing now and it gets met with massive pushback of “oh they can’t do that” when KD is getting praised for changing it up and simplifying things.
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No, they literally just can do better. Like legitimately. That's a perfectly viable option here. I assure you the chain can survive cutting dining profit margins by 10 or 20%. Their current margins are ludicrous.
Yeah, maybe corporate will need to tighten their belts a bit and stop buying back so much stock or maybe they have to add one less waterslide a year chainwide. Either way, I'm sure they can manage that minor inconvenience—every other park in every other chain in this whole industry does.
KD isn't reducing variety. Far from it. They keep adding new, original, innovative offerings at cheaper prices than BGW with better service than BGW provides. Plus, KD sees far lower attendance than BGW, sells admission and passes at far lower prices than BGW, doesn't scam their guests out of an extra 5% for shits and giggles, and even has higher staffing costs than BGW to boot.
Oh, and KD has the dining plan meaning that they're giving away a bunch of those meals each day for a fraction of what they could be making. Not to mention that KD continues to maintain their premium, seasonal food offerings, completes a comprehensive, park-wide menu switch for their holiday event, and doesn't fill their park with generic food trucks.
Despite all of these unfavorable-looking headwinds, selling food to guests at KD continues to be great business for Cedar Fair—as evidenced by the fact that the park continues to reinvest and improve dining at KD year after year. They're not running a charity—they're making a lot of money. Now imagine what BGW, with all of their far more favorable environmental factors, higher prices, surcharge, less variety, less innovation, much lower quality, etc. is raking in...
I'm sorry that people keep bringing Cedar Fair and Herschend parks into this, but we're doing it because those parks are doing far more with, often, far less than what BGW has to work with. We should expect dining at BGW to be better than these other parks—just as it was for much of the park's history. We're not even asking for that though—we're just asking that BGW at least make an attempt to match their competition.
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Easy (not really) fix - pull a KD, hire an exec chef and restaurant-oriented kitchen crews vs. the watered-down convention food service on a budget mindset they have cooking now, and also like @Zachary indicated, give them a reasonable budget to make things happen.
Fuck yeah use the show grill all the damn time at Trappers, make some crazy grilled stuff with it. Get a couple of them bigass wood burning pits too, and put on a show. Hell, make burnt-ends and pork belly bites as a quick serve option right to the side of that grill with all the platters, sides, drinks, etc being available in the main lines.
FestHaus - just bring back the mile high sandwich, sausage platters, the warm potato salad and cabbage stuffed, and reopen the line for pizza/fries. Don't need to get too innovative with it, just tasty and filling stuff for not crazy stupid prices.
Marco Polo's central theme is noodles across cultures (such as Chinese origins of spaghetti and so on). If they realistically can't scratch make much of the pasta, at least they can showcase local ingredients and make their own sauces/toppings/broths. Tbh I like where @warfelg's head is at - if there were ever a place for decent scratch-made pizzas in a park (going from your standard Costco toppings to eventually specialties based on the theming - Chinese pizza could be a good thing), this would be the spot. The only thing they'd want to do is a showpiece clay/brick pizza oven if there isn't already one there (been awhile so my memory is a bit hazy).
Put some hearty stews and soda bread in Killarney for those that want to eat, and the Trapper's crew can smoke some corned beef for service as well. Plus, decent and cheap quick-serve pub food too, such as fries and Irish nachos.
Banbury Cross keeps Squire's though should be similar to a peanut-free 5 Guys. Dead simple in execution, can quickly get good burgers and fries out during a rush, and allows for some level of order customization. Or go In-n-Out on it... Not too much different except there's less to customize. Also, given the strong connection between Britain and India, an Alehouse location where one could find cask-aged bitters and lagers, of course IPAs, and some options for fish and chips and curries. And of course, bangers and mash... And mushy peas too.
Festa... I'd hope they'd lean towards a Greek retheme, but barring that you have two Italies. So perhaps maybe do some kind of generic Mediterranean concept, something similar to a Kava or Mezza where there's several options of fresh-prepped foods to be layered in a bowl over rice or greens.
Bring back the smoked jumbo turkey legs and fresh popped kettle corn, if it isn't there and I just missed it - used to be some pop-up stalls and they had some at the quick-serve in Aquitaine.
... And not sure where the best location for this should be, but riffing on a Chopt salad bar concept would be a good option for a relatively inexpensive but high margin eatery.
Almost all of these ideas are proven concepts somewhere, if not having been proven right there in the park during the AB years. But it'll take time and money along with the right leadership to make any of that happen.
Fuck yeah use the show grill all the damn time at Trappers, make some crazy grilled stuff with it. Get a couple of them bigass wood burning pits too, and put on a show. Hell, make burnt-ends and pork belly bites as a quick serve option right to the side of that grill with all the platters, sides, drinks, etc being available in the main lines.
FestHaus - just bring back the mile high sandwich, sausage platters, the warm potato salad and cabbage stuffed, and reopen the line for pizza/fries. Don't need to get too innovative with it, just tasty and filling stuff for not crazy stupid prices.
Marco Polo's central theme is noodles across cultures (such as Chinese origins of spaghetti and so on). If they realistically can't scratch make much of the pasta, at least they can showcase local ingredients and make their own sauces/toppings/broths. Tbh I like where @warfelg's head is at - if there were ever a place for decent scratch-made pizzas in a park (going from your standard Costco toppings to eventually specialties based on the theming - Chinese pizza could be a good thing), this would be the spot. The only thing they'd want to do is a showpiece clay/brick pizza oven if there isn't already one there (been awhile so my memory is a bit hazy).
Put some hearty stews and soda bread in Killarney for those that want to eat, and the Trapper's crew can smoke some corned beef for service as well. Plus, decent and cheap quick-serve pub food too, such as fries and Irish nachos.
Banbury Cross keeps Squire's though should be similar to a peanut-free 5 Guys. Dead simple in execution, can quickly get good burgers and fries out during a rush, and allows for some level of order customization. Or go In-n-Out on it... Not too much different except there's less to customize. Also, given the strong connection between Britain and India, an Alehouse location where one could find cask-aged bitters and lagers, of course IPAs, and some options for fish and chips and curries. And of course, bangers and mash... And mushy peas too.
Festa... I'd hope they'd lean towards a Greek retheme, but barring that you have two Italies. So perhaps maybe do some kind of generic Mediterranean concept, something similar to a Kava or Mezza where there's several options of fresh-prepped foods to be layered in a bowl over rice or greens.
Bring back the smoked jumbo turkey legs and fresh popped kettle corn, if it isn't there and I just missed it - used to be some pop-up stalls and they had some at the quick-serve in Aquitaine.
... And not sure where the best location for this should be, but riffing on a Chopt salad bar concept would be a good option for a relatively inexpensive but high margin eatery.
Almost all of these ideas are proven concepts somewhere, if not having been proven right there in the park during the AB years. But it'll take time and money along with the right leadership to make any of that happen.
This is very close to what I’m asking for. Simplify things, stream line it, and do a few very high quality things. Makes me think of the old adage with food. You can have two of good-fast-cheap. People want fast, BGW wants cheap (but you pay a lot).
BGW, for most of its history, offered a great variety of foods with great quality. And for many years, BGW also managed to run the F&W Festival while still maintaining good quality and variety in their restaurants. Plus, KD, other CF parks, Herschend, and others are demonstrating that parks can still offer great variety and great quality in 2023.
I don’t understand the argument that the solution to BGW’s problems is simplifying and streamlining — not investing their bloated margins into improving their culinary capabilities.
I don’t understand the argument that the solution to BGW’s problems is simplifying and streamlining — not investing their bloated margins into improving their culinary capabilities.
Too bad the companies that did this decided to sell.
BGWs offerings between all the different countries and F&W is massive. IIRC about 125+ plates. That’s a lot of different offerings to have to overhaul ordering and processes for. On top of training everyone that did all of that. It’s a much more massive undertaking than it seems.
KD is doing a little bit at a time. One or two places. That’s a lot to do too. I was trying to think of a way that BGW could improve things across the board since changing one place at a time could easily overload and stress the place that makes the first change.
That’s not exactly true. KD is doing complete, strip-down-to-the-bolts renovations of one or two restaurants at a time, true (Grain & Grill, Outpost, Chick-Fil-A replacement). But pretty much every restaurant in the park has had a post-COVID overhaul of their menu, with better quality food, better ingredients, better variety, and bigger portions. It’s not an accurate representation of KD’s culinary status to point to only the full renovations like G&G and Outpost, when practically every restaurant now has an improved menu designed by Chef Denis since he fully took control in 2021.
Which is to say, nobody is calling for BGW to go for the in-depth infrastructural overhauls to their restaurants that KD is gradually doing. (In fact, I’d argue that BGW already has in place a much stronger culinary infrastructure than KD does.) BGW just needs to make easy changes like better staffing, higher quality ingredients, bigger portions, and more variety of menu options. They used to have all of those things, so the infrastructure is in place. BGW would just rather reap huge margins on cheaply made food sold at high prices, and that’s the only reason we haven’t seen those changes.
I just counted some of KDs offerings:
6 places serve some variety of pizza. I would easily bet on the dough, sauce, cheese, even majority of the toppings is the exact same - the difference is some have signature styles you can’t get at the other.
Same goes for the burgers. Sausages/hot dogs.
Heck I would bet that the base of a majority of the sides are even the same with one or two flavor changes happening to make it taste unique to that eatery.
The issue with doing BGWs is the cost is immense for them to go back to the menus they had because each spot needed unique ordering and bases for all food.
Just think for a second. BGW can save on costs by having a sausage meal at each major spot. They order that in general. In Marco Polos you do a pasta with sausage, in Festhaus you have a beer boiled sausage plate, at Trappers you smoke the sausage, and in Grogans you do a loaded potato with sausage. One base, made different ways.
You could do it with Mac and cheese where Trappers smokes it, Festhaus does a beer cheese, Marco Polos does a parm with pan fried chicken version. You can do that with chicken too with it prepared differently.
Expecting each place to have its own unique options and even base of what goes into something Asks for financial and culinary disasters. It’s harder to properly order, leads to things out of date, makes staff crossover harder.
Yes corporate greed is part of why the problems exist. But cutting wasteful spending would happen in any case. Did SEAS go about this in a terrible way? Absolutely. Do I believe it reasonable for them to just go back to old ways? Absolutely not. So what’s the issue with finding a middle ground that improves their F&B program without them being killed on costs?
6 places serve some variety of pizza. I would easily bet on the dough, sauce, cheese, even majority of the toppings is the exact same - the difference is some have signature styles you can’t get at the other.
Same goes for the burgers. Sausages/hot dogs.
Heck I would bet that the base of a majority of the sides are even the same with one or two flavor changes happening to make it taste unique to that eatery.
The issue with doing BGWs is the cost is immense for them to go back to the menus they had because each spot needed unique ordering and bases for all food.
Just think for a second. BGW can save on costs by having a sausage meal at each major spot. They order that in general. In Marco Polos you do a pasta with sausage, in Festhaus you have a beer boiled sausage plate, at Trappers you smoke the sausage, and in Grogans you do a loaded potato with sausage. One base, made different ways.
You could do it with Mac and cheese where Trappers smokes it, Festhaus does a beer cheese, Marco Polos does a parm with pan fried chicken version. You can do that with chicken too with it prepared differently.
Expecting each place to have its own unique options and even base of what goes into something Asks for financial and culinary disasters. It’s harder to properly order, leads to things out of date, makes staff crossover harder.
Yes corporate greed is part of why the problems exist. But cutting wasteful spending would happen in any case. Did SEAS go about this in a terrible way? Absolutely. Do I believe it reasonable for them to just go back to old ways? Absolutely not. So what’s the issue with finding a middle ground that improves their F&B program without them being killed on costs?
I think the issue is that BGW has previously demonstrated both the infrastructure and the capability to support the variety required to appropriately theme their culinary options. Very recently, BGW appears to have made a decision not to apply the resources needed to maintain the quality and regional appropriateness of its restaurants.
Given that BGW is meant to be a theme park and not an amusement park, in my opinion, watering down culinary options is a shortsighted allocation of resources. Regional food is an essential component of a park themed to nation states. It is just as important as music/sounds, decoration, architecture, and naming conventions in place-making.
Perhaps if they hadn't provided themed food for decades, it would be more reasonable to look at work-arounds. Since, however, we know that they have the infrastructure and capability, I don't understand why we wouldn't expect a return to previously-established levels of quality.
Given that BGW is meant to be a theme park and not an amusement park, in my opinion, watering down culinary options is a shortsighted allocation of resources. Regional food is an essential component of a park themed to nation states. It is just as important as music/sounds, decoration, architecture, and naming conventions in place-making.
Perhaps if they hadn't provided themed food for decades, it would be more reasonable to look at work-arounds. Since, however, we know that they have the infrastructure and capability, I don't understand why we wouldn't expect a return to previously-established levels of quality.
That was under pervious ownership though. One that had to sell because the parks weren’t profitable enough. There at 100% ways to do both themed food and be highly profitable by looking at ways you can use the same base products in multiple ways.
Like I’m sorry but I’m going to keep disliking and eye rolling at posts that push every single spot have unique things that share little to nothing with other eateries.
It’s not like I’m asking them to only serve burgers and fries. I’m asking them to find something very similar across multiple cultures to use as the base, and then do the things that make it individual.
Can you support the claim that the recent drop in quality is correlated with a sale?
I understood your suggestion, but I disagree with it. As I said, I think is a bad allocation of resources. Just because they are doing something, doesn't mean they should. Moreover, we know that they have the ability to return to the established level of theming and quality.
Additionally, my experience at KD trying all of the new food leads me to believe that your assumption that they are using the same "bases" for sides across the park is incorrect.
I understood your suggestion, but I disagree with it. As I said, I think is a bad allocation of resources. Just because they are doing something, doesn't mean they should. Moreover, we know that they have the ability to return to the established level of theming and quality.
Additionally, my experience at KD trying all of the new food leads me to believe that your assumption that they are using the same "bases" for sides across the park is incorrect.
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We’re going to just have to agree to disagree at this point. Staying completely unique across the board is not viable.
As for the BGW part - I started going regularly in 2016, and I’m sure if I were to be bothered to look we would see posts of declining quality at that time.
As for the KD part - that’s the point of bases, you have the ability to make it unique from a similar starting point so you don’t think it’s the same.
As for the BGW part - I started going regularly in 2016, and I’m sure if I were to be bothered to look we would see posts of declining quality at that time.
As for the KD part - that’s the point of bases, you have the ability to make it unique from a similar starting point so you don’t think it’s the same.