At Bike Virginia food is a top priority. From the comfort station rest stops to the meals, our team wants riders to have a great experience from sun up to sun down.
We know good eating and good riding go hand in hand to make for happy days!
We heard concerns from some riders in 2014 that lunches were not satisfying. We have taken big steps in 2015 to make sure that you’ll have more choices and more good food.
Food Concerns During the 2014 Bike Event
Early in Bike Virginia’s 2014 tour of Chesterfield and Williamsburg our staff heard from riders that lunches were not satisfying. Concerns were expressed about quantity and quality of the food that was being served by our primary lunch caterer.
Our Executive Director, Kim, began holding a series of meetings with the caterer during the event to address the problem. We saw some things improve as the event went on, thankfully. But, we knew all in all that it could be done better and our 2015 planning would need to be different.
Rider Surveys: Feedback on Meals
After the event in our post event analysis period we read every single email and survey comment that came in (over 1,000). Responses showed that you loved many things about the event but many were disappointed with lunches.
It really broke our hearts to hear that you were not happy but we had expected to see survey results that matched what we heard during the event about lunch meals.
Our staff was extremely upset by what had happened, our number one focus of our work in planning the event is to make sure you have a great experience. The 2014 lunch caterer had served us just fine the year before so we were really shocked and surprised when things went badly at the event.
When we surveyed riders and asked about satisfaction with lunches here is what we heard:
- 11% loved lunch
- 35% liked lunch
- 25% neutral
- 23% disliked lunch
- 3% no answer
About 255 people added written comments on lunches alone, some are below:
“Lunch choices were dismal”
“The lunches could be better, but it appears the rest stops have great food… and the lunches were not so great”
“The caterers were really stingy this year. Last year’s food was much better.”
While nearly 50% were fine with lunches, nearly 50% were not satisfied. In our minds that’s too many people having a bad experience.
The Challenges of Feeding 1,600 people
As you can imagine feeding big groups of people has its challenges. One of the first challenges is finding a caterer that can:
- Work in the field (no kitchen on site)
- Serve up to 1,600 riders plus volunteers in a 5 hour window
- Offer good food at a price we can afford
Many caterers can handle 200-500 person events. When you start inquiring about the ability to serve 1,600+ people for a single meal, and then need them to do it in a field kitchen you suddenly find your choice of caterers is VERY small. Then try to find caterer(s) to serve like this for 5 days straight, and you have a big challenge on your hands.
Pleasing Many- Meeting Nutritional Needs
Once you find caterers that can handle the demands of the event, then you must work on really dialing in a menu. Creating a menu that is pleasing and nutritionally sound takes months of planning for our staff, health department, the caterers, and a nutritionist. And, as you can imagine, it is very difficult to pick something that pleases everyone. Then you face the limitations of what can be prepared, served, and managed properly on site. Doing it over and over for 5 lunches exponentially grows the challenge.
A New Approach to Lunches
When we wrapped up the 2014 event we knew something had to change. It was getting harder and harder to find caterers to manage our meals. Riders wanted more choices, more quantity, and more quality. Our team began putting all ideas on the table. We reached out to events across the country to find out more about their lunch planning. Bike Virginia is part of the National Bicycle Tour Director’s Association and works with several events across the country each year for ideas and solutions.
Many other events are facing the same challenges. Some of them stopped providing lunch and made lunch on your own for this very reason. Some big events that have opted for the lunch on your own approach are Bike Florida and RAGBRAI.
One idea came through though with answers to many of our challenges: multiple food vendors. By going with multiple vendors, riders get variety and we get companies that can handle a portion of riders (but don’t need to feed them all). By going with vendors that serve in food trucks or at festivals they are already prepared to work in field environments. Plus they have the vending permits and relationships with health departments that are required to serve food on demand.
We ultimately created the 2015 Bike Virginia “Food Truck Fiesta” and the menus look great! A lot of thought and planning have gone into making the switch and creating a better solution event food. Our team feels like it’s going to be a win-win for everyone.
Here are the cool benefits:
- Multiple vendors will offer a selection of food choices.
- Ethnic and American food standards will be available.
- You pick what you want to eat from a pre-determined menu with the vendors
- You pick the time of day you want your lunch meal from 11:30-8:30pm. (Really it’s lunch or dinner, your choice).
- You can buy additional items if you want more than the provided lunch.
- Vendors will be on hand to sell food to you at other times too!
The Bike Virginia Team is excited about this new plan. Menus are being finalized right now.
Dr. Kim Perry said, “This is a really exciting change for us for two reasons. I feel like it puts the choices back in the rider’s hands, that’s something which is important to me as a consumer, so I want to give that to our riders. Second, it bridges the ultimate challenge of finding caterers that can and serve will quality food to so many by breaking the load down across multiple vendors.”
Kim went on to say, “we look forward to this year’s approach to food. It’s worth the effort of tackling the normal fears associated with change to try something new. The old way wasn’t working for a variety of reasons for the rider and for our organization. There’s lots of reasons why this new approach is good. I’m excited to be making progress toward something better.”
We Listened and Responded with A Fresh Approach
The team at Bike Virginia listened and analyzed what our participants had to say about food at the 2014 event. We considered all the options available to us for making the experience better. The team looked at comparable events for their ideas. When we found out that events had success with multiple vendors we knew we had a big opportunity to change the way we had approached meals, ultimately giving the participant better food and more choices. Read more about the details on our Bike Virginia Food Page. We hope you’ll come out and give the Bike Va. Food Truck Fiesta try as part of our bike event June 26-July 1, 2015.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]