This does not make me want to eat there BTW.
For me, the loudspeakers on the 225s do make it sound like "FUBAR". It seems extra emphasis on the "d" is needed.
Although from my sole experience of using it, the food bar is aptly named. The last time I was on a heavily delayed EC service, they served everything bar food.
All this 'shop, cafe bar, food bar' nonsense really annoys me. Just call it the buffet car. AGA have started the ball rolling by adding a thick RED bar above the windows.
The HST i used a few weeks back from Donny-Pbo looked very shabby with the Food Bar vynal already peeling off the front of the counter & only 3 sandwiches & a toastie left & it had only come from Leeds!!
It's not a buffet bar though because the selection is always rubbish and expensive.
Of course those in charge of catering will tell us there is poor choice because of lack of demand. However if the product was good, looked appetising and was value for money then they would sell a lot more of it! Reality is that customers have a huge choice of places to buy food before they get on a train, and the food on a train needs to compete with that or be different. At the moment it does neither.
Have you been on Newcastle station recently, Greggs is shut so the choice has gone rather much downhill as a result...
It'll just be moving to one of the bronze pods in the portico or the new retail box where the old ticket office was.Have you been on Newcastle station recently, Greggs is shut so the choice has gone rather much downhill as a result...
Superb!I'd have rebranded it "Penalty Fayre", myself.
Superb!
Whoever it was didn't do any sort of sound check through a PA system, because every time it is announced it sounds exactly like 'FUBAR'. This does not make me want to eat there BTW.
Have you been on Newcastle station recently, Greggs is shut so the choice has gone rather much downhill as a result...
Sounds about right for East Coast, sadly. They only had a couple of sandwiches left when I went on the 12:39 from Retford to London (ex York) back in July with my parents and sister (back in the CafeBar days though).:roll: A lunch time train with so few sandwiches is ridiculous!
East Coast are a good company and I am impressed with most of the things they have done, but the one area that lets them down is the catering. Bring back the restaurant car, I say! While I never ate in it, the menus I've seen look good and the reviews were always good as well (in GNER days that is).
While I appreciate the , this, and this whole thread, is not a 'first world problem' but a joke. It wasn't meant as a critique of catering, a complaint about naming conventions for buffets or anything remotely serious. It was a response to being amused by repeatedly hearing the word FUBAR on EC announcements.
I know! I just dont know why it isnt simply called a buffet!
As for running out of food, in the old days they could pick up stock at stations en route when the buffet on the platforms belonged to them, not any more, another thing that come about through privateiseation of the railways.
I wonder what it cost East Coast to come up with the name of Food Bar, it will be some agency brought in to make it sound something better than the Buffet Car as it sounds common these days and not upmarket for East Coast.
Its another of the image thinks again, re brand it and make it sound better as you say its still the buffet what most people know it as.
Can anyone confirm if you pay VAT on purchases on a train ot not? as I understood that you pay VAT on a train as its a service on a train as against purchaseing food from a shop at a station been VAT free.
As for running out of food, in the old days they could pick up stock at stations en route when the buffet on the platforms belonged to them, not any more, another thing that come about through privateiseation of the railways.
Isn't a buffet normally a format whereby you pay a flat fee for open access to a table of regularly-replenished offerings?
So a British Buffet Car never contains a buffet.
Oxford Dictionaries gives one possibly definition of a buffet as "a counter where light refreshments are served". The French word "buffet" and all subsequent definitions arise from means (or meant, I'm unaware of most of the French language) "sideboard", which seems perfectly apt.Isn't a buffet normally a format whereby you pay a flat fee for open access to a table of regularly-replenished offerings?
So a British Buffet Car never contains a buffet.
As for running out of food, in the old days they could pick up stock at stations en route when the buffet on the platforms belonged to them, not any more, another thing that come about through privateiseation of the railways.
It's still happened, albeit rarely. Several stories on here of staff diving off the train and into the local shop to grab some packets of bacon, bread etc.
Greggs? Newcastle? Shut? WTF? I assume you mean the little kiosk on the platform rather than the big shop over the road. Otherwise the entire space time continuum may shatter and suck us all into a vast abyss of healthy salads and wheatgrass shakes!
I think the stories about staff jumping off the train to grab things like bread etc. are more unofficial restock attempts for food that's prepared on board (e.g. Travelling Chef); after all, things like loaves of bread and uncooked bacon don't have a place in an actual buffet car.
Depends entirely what you mean by not having a 'place'.
Many East Coast services don't have a chef as such, but bacon is prepared in the on board oven and bread is toasted for the breakfast service.
Chrisgr31:1799768 said:Of course those in charge of catering will tell us there is poor choice because of lack of demand. However if the product was good, looked appetising and was value for money then they would sell a lot more of it! Reality is that customers have a huge choice of places to buy food before they get on a train, and the food on a train needs to compete with that or be different. At the moment it does neither.