Hospitality and concourses come in house
There has been a change the Hospitality and Concourse catering providers at the Greenhous Meadow with both coming in house.Towards the end of last season the club entered into a partnership with Venue Catering Partnerships to take over the Hospitality side of the club. This model ran until the end of the season but the decision has now been taken to bring Hospitality back in house. With the season now over the decision has also been taken to bring the running of the concourse catering under Shrewsbury Town’s control as well.
CEO Matt Williams explained the changes in an interview he’s done with ShrewsPlayer:”We entered into a partnership with VCP towards the end of the season using a model that we spent a lot of time looking at.
“We ran that to the end of the season and have now sat down with them and decided that model isn’t probably the one best suited for Shrewsbury Town.
“All the Hospitality is now back in house and not with a third party and we have also decided to bring the stadium concourse catering in house.
“It will be Shrewsbury Town that operate it and our staff who will be in there and it is a decision we have decided is the best one for the football club.”
Matt went on to talk about how the club will be looking to talk to the supporters to get an idea of that they would like and if that is achievable:”It is also a decision we feel is best for our supporters as we want them to have a say on the products that we sell.
“I’ve already had people saying chips, chips, chips, which I’ll go through process of looking into but I would guess that the cost of extractor fans, fire precautions will mean we won’t have chips.
“We are working with the Supporters Parliament and I’ve just spoken to Mike Davies and Roger Groves about getting a date to run ‘Pie Idol’.
“We have several companies pitching to supply pies and I feel it is important that we find out what our supporters want because at the end of the day they are the ones who will be buying them.
“We need to look at the range and of what we sell and give people, within reason, what we they want.
“We need to look at staffing the concourse, the queuing mechanism, whether we can sell draught beer on more than just the West Stand, we need to review everything.”
Bringing all the hospitality and catering under the clubs control will give us the ability to be more flexible about what we can offer on matchday and non-matchday:”Bringing the catering in house allows us to look to do other things; if we have a heat wave then we can look at a pop-up Pimms tent or a Guinness tent.
“I went to Doncaster on the opening day of the season a couple of years back, it was a red hot day and on the edge of the car park they had pop-up beer stands.”
The one thing on many Town fans wish lists is a supporter’s bar at the Greenhous Meadow. Matt is continuing to explore the possibilities of one but it won’t be in the immediate future:”I’m aware everyone wants a supporters bar unfortunately we don’t have the room in our current set-up.
“I wish i could change that and magic up a million quid to fill in all the corners at the stadium and put a bar in one.
“I need to look at the cost versus the profitability and if I suddenly went to Micky and said I’m going to knock a couple hundred grand off your budget to build a supporters bar he’s going to think I’ve had a bang on the head.
“It is something I want to do further down the line and I have met with countless people over the course of the last 12 months to look at developing the site and we have considered all sorts.
“You hope one will have legs and we will be able to progress that and we can utilise our site to bring in some more guaranteed income. “
The club would like to thank VCP and Jenny’s Catering for their work with the club and wishes them well for the future.