"There's no excuse. We should have done better," stated Joe Armstrong, President of Boston Culinary Group.
After all the hype and then the season opener, serious problems were found with the amount of water that was available to fans within the new UCF stadium. The President of UCF, John Hitt, had now come out and blamed the concessionaire for last weekends failure and warned them that they would do better in the near future ot their successor would.
It is always nice to see those in charge, shift the blame as quickly as they can, to someone else. Armstrong admitted that his company, which has an exclusive 10 year contract, had underestimated when it stocked the amount of water it had for the season opener. Not only did fans discover that there were no water fountains in the new $54 million stadium but they also were unable to buy water in the third quarter, when it had run out.
"They are not the most efficiant way to hydrate people. At least we won't be fixated on water fountains," stated Hitt.
UCF is said to be rushing to spend $125,000 to install 50 water fountains, something they evidently didn't feel was a good use of money when they began building the stadium. Grant Heston, spokesman for UCF, stated that there should be 10 installed by the next game and possibly as many as 16. Heston added on Thursday, that some of those fountains would be installed outside of the stadium. The stadium has a no re-entry policy, which is wise but that also makes those fountains inacessable to patrons within the stadium.
Officials for Boston Culinary have stated that they plan to have 135,000 bottles of water available for sale at the next game. They also have said that they plan to have another 11 employees working, in an attempt to end the long lines which fans had also complained about. The Boston Culinary Group handles for dozens of companies and several large stadiums. They added that they had informed UCF officials that they believed stocking only 30,000, 20 ounce bottles of water would be sufficient for the game that day and no one evidently at the university did any simple math. They certainly should have notified the company that there was no other water source in the stadium except the faucets and toilets in the bathrooms.
Once again, I have to wonder..... they are putting in water fountains that I feel, as well as many others, should have been there when it was built. Now they are even going to install some where they will be of no help during a game. I don't buy that both the company and the university believed that 30,000 bottles for almost 45,000 fans was enough and forcing fans to pay $3 a bottle is certainly a great way to make a profit.
For my previous post, go here.
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