The catering is an interesting one. I thought with fish and chips, burgers, pizza, the vintage tea tent, coffee and cake van we actually had significantly more on site that any other Club rally I can recall, where perhaps in the past we had one van, or a hog roast or somesuch. I even feared they all may go home having had poor sales. Not so however, most were flat out all day. So I have to ask why that was, and the conclusion I have come to is whilst the rally didn’t break any records for total cars and people attending the retention rate on site was a lot higher, people stayed a great deal longer, and therefore needed more feeding… Just a theory…
Spot on there Martin.
Its almost impossible to work out how many itemss of food or drinks people are going to buy, retailers also need to know they are going to make a profit. As far as we were concerned everything was spot on, waiting for food happens everywhere you go. The problem is you cannot please all the people all of the time.
To be fair, I think it’s unreasonable having waited some 30 minutes and still not received our two cups of coffee that we ordered, and having to ask for our money back. I’ve never been to an event, either local show or a big event and had to wait for that amount of time and still not had my order fulfilled!
It was just 2 cups of coffee…not a huge order!
Having seen on here that others who’ve attended previous ‘National Rallys’ take their own food and drink, I can see why, and we’ll do the same next time.
Crikey! How many food outlets do you want? There were plenty.
NOT the case for hot drinks outlets!
Bring a flask, we brought stuff with us just in case as i am sure many others did, easy, it is a day out in a field at the end of the day.
M-m
We plan on doing just that next time .
I guess a lot of the food queues were down to timing. Certainly when we got back from the house around 2pm the queue for the Car BQ was about 8 people (5 minutes) and when we arrived at that stand there was NOBODY waiting at the neighbouring Fish & Chip van. Nonetheless we always take a flask just in case…
From our perspective, one of the things that makes a rally great is the availability of alternatives to looking at MX5s and trade stands. While there are many men who would quite happily spend a couple of hours looking under car bonnets the same cannot be said of all the wives, certainly not mine. For that reason alone this rally ranks in our top 3 alongside Belfast and Chatsworth.
Well done to the organisers, this rally was one of the best on all reckonings.
This could have been so much more of a nightmare for me but it wasn’t so…
firstly big thanks to all the organisers
I enjoyed it and am glad you ordered the correct weather 
Re the ring: a break from events over the lunch period wouldn’t have been a bad idea having found myself to be hungry (very) at the same time as the Merlin finally got going (well done RR et al) and Tez announcing figures re his and Sam’s efforts for the RNLI (made up for both of you, mate)
Where was I?
sat with my better half on a rug by the car having lunch avoiding the queues
Having a bit of a crazy lead up to the rally I did not spot any pointers as to how best to approach the site so we were one of, roughly, 100 cars that came in from the house direction. I am guessing we were not part of the official figures and we didn’t get our photos taken (boo hoo sniff etc)
I enjoyed the moochhing level afforded me
I always go back to MX5 Parts nearer the end as i feel suffocated in the tent with so many people milliing around
We did enjoy the extras like the archery, segways and sniper rifle shooting (at the Go Compare bod)
The only real queuing I had to do other than initial entry was to chat the Adrian Flux bods as it seems that one punter needs both chaps attention.
I had to wait a whole five minutes 
… how wijll i cope
Btw, siince when was it decided to keep the Rally on the last w/e?Picked next year’s last weekend in Sept for a rather important event so that i could attend next year’s rally
That’s gone out of the wndow which is a real shame
Never mind, thems the breaks 
The clues were there as to the route to the rally field, maps as well, a search of the rally section on the forum shows the best routes to take.
I think the main gripe on the catering front was the problems encountered by the tea ladies “tea room” they had problems, twice I believe with the boiler heating the water. I gave up on getting a cuppa from them even when it seemed to be working ok, they didn’t seem to want my business as I waited and waited then gave up, only me there at the time.
I am glad that you enjoyed the Rally enough to want to come to our events next year! and I fully appreciate that you had a poor time and that a supplier to the event has fallen short of expectation. I very am sorry to hear this and of others issues with food and I will speak and feedback to the supplier on your issue. We try our best to put on the best day that we are able and our events rely heavily on the goodwill and voluntary input of many many members.
Further to comments on packed lunches, at Rallies many members like to picnic with their friends at the events, it is a common site at Rallies to see areas and groups in a Club event Shelter, or beside their cars having a bit of lunch etc, it is very much part of the day being based around social gathering - an element that is at the very heart of the Club’s foundation. However this also has a knock on in how we go about planning for food at the events - there is no certainty even up to Rally day on just how many people will come to an event and then also what percentage of these will need refreshment.
For this rally we planned and calculated resources based on an expectd 1000 cars and ergo circa 2000 people (which is pretty much what happened on the day), with these numbers in mind the Rally team sourced a diverse and suitable range of local catering options that should have been able to meet demand, on the site there were 3 refreshment stalls, 3 primary food outlet, a snack van plus a Restaurant at Sandringham just a short distance away, where we suspected that some members would also be visiting over the lunch period - all of this was in planning, very capable of providing for the numbers expected - but for whatever reason delays built up at the outlets and this led to some member dissatisfaction. In reflection I dont think more could have been done in the run up the bases were well covered for an event of this scale. Reading in to some of these comments there does seem to be an element of foundering lying in the delivery from the suppliers however.
Both the events next year are based at professional event venues both with multi site catering operations, these venues are geared for audiences much bigger than ours, but following on from these comments I am working to ensure that this area does not fall short, last thing I want to hear is people leaving a brilliant day pee’d off they couldnt get a £1 cup of tea…there will be space set aside to enjoy your own food with friends also.
As for dates for the national next year great factors are pressing on the event and this is the very best day that we can put the event on.
How can an appraisal of the last post be deemed off topic?
My god you think the food and drink side was bad at the rally??? wait until you go to classic event at wilmslow and tatton, then you can whinge big time ,you think you hit queues at lizz’s place ?,you ain’t see nufink.
M-m
I feel compelled to add to this thread in defence of the caterers at Sandringham!
We were the original bbq co with the mk1 car-b-q. I have read some very unfair criticism on this thread about us and the other food sellers. From our point of view, after setting up at 7am we had one bbq running to start cooking Bacon rolls and by 7.45 we were serving non stop until 3.15 pm, we were also serving hot drinks all day with only the minimal delay whilst the urn was topped up with water( I personally hate it when you go to catering vans for a cuppa and they have just refreshed the water and they carry on with luke warm water until the urn boils again) and brought back to boiling. I understand that the urns in the Tea tent were not working correctly and that was the problem they had.
With regard to the comments made by Midnightflyer who started this thread, I can empathise with the problems we had with our chip fryer, you are totally wrong, we do know how to use our equipment thank you, the brand new fryer actually was faulty and kept tripping out under load and has been sent back, tested and found to be a faulty heating element. You also stated a 25 min wait for food and then a cold burger, not the case, every single burger was straight from the grill and piping hot,The people that wanted chips with their burger or Sausage were NOT served and given their freshly grilled food until the chips were ready, NOBODY to my knowledge waited with a burger or Sausage in hand waiting until the chips were ready!
There will always be a queue during the lunch time rush at events like this, just the volume of people wanting to eat at the same time, it can’t be avoided, we had a queue at one point of about 50-60 people BUT, let me put it like this, the Pizza stall cooked to order, the Fish and chip van cooked fresh food, we cooked fresh food also, how many times have you been to an event, ordered food that has come from a Bain Marie and chucked on a cooking plate to re-heat and served, this event had freshly cooked food by all the food outlets, surely this is better than the normal rubbish you are served. All our Burgers are hand made using the very best Steak mince, all our Sausages are made to our exact requirements by a very well know and respected butcher, our chicken is only from Norfolk and Suffolk farms, it’s not cheap to buy or produce but the prices were very reasonable. Do you want premium food cooked to order at a reasonable price, or the normal rubbish served at most outside events these days? Your choice!!
Just for the record, we served around 850 meals that also include the breakfast bacon roll trade. Not bad really!!
Well done to all the E.R for their hard work in making this event a cut above the rest.
Regards,
Brian&April mx5revive.com and now theoriginalbbqco.com
Absolute TOP JOB done by one and all in my opinion!
(I had breakfast bacon butty and a cheeseburger and chips at lunch too!)
Get off your soap box and stop pushing a on line fight.
Because thats is how you are coming across, there as been a lot of hard work and peoples free time given from every direction, at the end of the day this ■■■■■ down to a load of people that own a one make car that all have the same passion driving through the night or have beem there a couple of day to spend a day or so in a field with everyone else who loves a car…in a FIELD as they all are besides the OC.
I am sure that the powers that be are looking at all this and thinking F**k it why should we bother, and they are right to, because all i have seen is whinging, if it was that bad i would of been the first one to say so, trust me on that one.
M-m
Wouldn’t be an OC event without some post match slagging really
Please keep it constructive so that comments and thoughts can be considered for the next event.
Sorry if you think I was winging Wayne, I thought I made a honest observation, perhapes I was spoilt at Falmouth and Prescott. Also I (like others) did not have a 4 hour drive back the same day on those events. I had breakfast at 09:00 and so by 14:00 was looking for some food and this I think was when the Qs were at there longest. We had planed to leave by 14:30 so could not hang around any longer. I would have liked to stay longer but as the other half had work on Monday (she is up at 06:30) we could not.
The comment I made about Gaydon re the food was how we found it when we finished a club run there, and they knew we were coming,
If this is winging then I will no longer post on the forum
I have not got a soap box,& thought I asked a simple question,but it would appear that any questioning of the “in crowd” is either deleted or ignored.There would also seem to be a very anti North Midlands (MXicans) section bias developing. I have not criticiced the rally in any way & in fact enjoyed the day very much.I am quite new to the club & thought the forum was for all members,but maybe I am wrong.I will keep any further thoughts to myself & maybe not bother renewing membership again.
Quite new? 3 years 3 months?
As I said above please keep this thread on topic which is about the National Rally at Sandringham in case it was starting to escape people’s attention!