Bad Food in the Parks…

lowest bidder mentality

DNC is a company that should be shut down.

Spot on, Paul.
Many issues here but the top two are:
1) Outdated facilities in the parks. The process to update them can take up to 5 years. Remember that this is the NPS after all, and often times requires updates to a 'Historic' structure.
2) Outdated models of both food service management practices, hiring practices and basic food service operations that (in spite of required NSF training)seem to be stuck in the 1960's. The concessioners are only concerned with keeping their government contract.
Having been in Food Service Supervisory roles since the 1970's, I knew that any prayer that I had of getting a perfectly cooked bison burger flew out the window when I walked past the Head Chef (over all 8 food service locations in this national park) as he gathered his staff around a pot of water for "Oatmeal 101 Class".
The best food that I have tasted in any national park, forest or grassland I cooked myself… no, wait a minute, it was from a food truck parked in town right outside the national park gate. We bought food there and "catered" lunch at our office in the park a few times.

It's even worse than you might think!

On our way around Mt Rainier on the Wonderland Trail in 2006 we ate at the restaurant at Longmire. I forget what my wife had but she got food poisoning. The rest of us (four others) ordered something different and had no problems. Of course we ate from the same pot on the trail the previous few days.

It seems pretty clear she got it from the restaurant.

Though written in 1993, this book is still timely:

http://www.amazon.com/Yosemite-Embattled-Wilderness-Alfred-Runte/dp/0803289413

The concessionaires run the national parks to large degree..hence the sub-par facilities in many cases.

The recent push for more Wi-Fi in Yellowstone and Teton is largely being lead by the National Park Hospitality Assoc for examples.

Parks Canada is having a similar incident happen as well.

http://bit.ly/1vTAR83

Zion Lodge's Red Rock Grill for the win.
I always drop by there to eat when in the area. Food and service are consistently good(5 trips in 4 years, and 4 different months of the year), the burgers are great, and the breakfast buffet is off the chain.
Too bad it can't be that way everywhere.

I had an interesting experience in Badlands NP: worst service ever with the best steak ever.

The food in the parks cannot be any worse than most of the places
in my local town.

They are in prime locations where quality of service is not necessary to stay busy. It's hard to find good services where the majority of customers are one time customer. I guess you can't blame them either for charging as much as they can since after all, they are there to maximize profit

I don't remember the last time we bought anything other than minor supplies in the national parks…

"The food in the parks cannot be any worse than most of the places
in my local town."

Yeah. There is that too. Pretty lackluster most places. But they think they're doing great.

A contract to the concessionaire is in many ways a license to over-charge and under-serve. They concessionaire has no competition, only their own, other operations – the general store, the snack bar, the pizza place, the cafeteria and the sit-down restaurant in a larger park like Yosemite or Grand Canyon. And why pay living wages to skilled kitchen and wait staff? They'll have just as many customers hiring essentially temporary workers for whom a season in a national park working with other young horny people sounds like fun.

It seems like there is competition just outside some parks – West Yellowstone, Tusayan just outside GCNP – but in-park lodging is ALWAYS full during the peak season, and those people aren't going to leave the park for dinner.

Obviously, if contracts for food services selected at least two vendors to operate the different outlets, they'd start to be a little competition. More so, there just isn't adequate seating in facilities built 50 to 80 years ago when park visitorship has increased so much in the last few decades.

How about a program of food trailers – whether the classic "roach coach" that go into business parks and industrial areas at lunchtime and then to stadiums and fairs on the weekend, or the new style of upper-end offerings in Portland and the SFBA with more trendy and ethnic menus. Those could bid on parking spots or even locations in the parking lots of trailheads (Bridal-veil Falls, South Kaibab Trailhead, etc). All the times I've come up South Kaibab Trail after hiking to the River and back, I'd love a food trailer there serving lemonade, beer and a decent burrito.

I have a different view on the matter. Instead of a rolling tourist destination, I think our NP's should have no roads and no facilities—America the beautiful is already full of roads and restaurants. Do we expect our NPs to be the same?

Complaining about food being served in a NP is weird—step back a few feet and see how crazy it sounds.

I like Ed Abbey's view—

"On wilderness preservation, DON'T rely on the Park Service; all they can think of is more asphalt paving, more picnic tables, more garbage cans, more shithouses, more electric lights, more Kleenex dispensers. Those bastards are scared to death of congressmen, who in turn are representatives of and often identical with local chambers of commerce." Edward Abbey, 1956.

"All the times I've come up South Kaibab Trail after hiking to the River and back, I'd love a food trailer there serving lemonade, beer and a decent burrito."

I've always thought there should be a pretty girl waiting for me, with a couple slices of pizza and some cake. It's never happened.

About 15 years ago we were in Kruger National Park in South Africa. At each designated camping/hut complex (you get locked into them at night, kind of like human bear bagging) there was a market, a cafeteria, and a restaurant. Different price points, different products, but all were clean, well staffed and had great food. I've not seen the equal here.

I love the idea of food trucks at a trailhead!

After yesterday’s post, we did want to share a great place to eat in Bakersfield. Yes, Bakersfield. As we drove along highway 178 across town, we noticed a small café: the 24 St. Café. It isn’t hard to find. It’s on 24th St. and Highway 178. And it is everything that a small café should be: lively, fresh cooked food, inexpensive, hearty portions, friendly and helpful service. It is only open for breakfast and lunch, and even on a Wednesday it was pretty full at 12:15. But they squeezed us in at the counter, gave us our delicious lunch with a smile, provided some welcome driving directions, and had us on our way in less than 45 minutes. You can’t ask for more than that, and everyone in that restaurant was enjoying the experience, from the customers to the staff. And yes, the owner was present and paying attention to the customers with a smile.

In Stovepipe Wells we would have been just biting into our (cold) food. And paid double.

I am not food picky and like what I have eaten at Big Bend NP, Grand Canyon NP…

I worked for a park concessionaire for a couple of years, and all of the above is largely true. At the time, where I worked in West Glacier was either the last or one of the last family-run major vendors in or bordering the national parks (we're talking full service concessionaires, with a whole host of facilities that cover the full spectrum of retail and hospitality). West Glacier is technically not in the park, but it borders it and all of the land along the road into the park was owned by that one family. It was clear to us that our conditions were far, far better than those in the park–better lodging for employees, no enforced employee dining rooms (if you want to see the worst food in the parks, step inside one of these, where they cut costs so low even the employees can't eat anything reasonable), a reasonably good (but not great) restaurant and bar, etc. It helped a lot that West Glacier is a real (albeit very small) town and that the family who owned it have been community members here in Northwest Montana for nearly a century.

When I was working there, Glacier Park, Inc. had the contract with NPS for concessionaire services, and they progressively squeezed their employees harder and harder to cut costs there and clearly had little interest in serving the needs of the tourists traveling through, just extracting as much money per capita from them. Food was universally horrible inside the park, and the employees couldn't care less, given how hard they were being squeezed as well.

Now, several years later, GPI has lost the contract to run the NPS buildings and restaurants because they were underbid by Xanterra, who runs the majority of the park concessionaires throughout the entire National Park System. GPI has been steadily buying up all properties on the border of Glacier, and even our beloved West Glacier was been sold off to GPI last summer (amid much protest and frustration by the citizens, who had been organizing to buy the properties). Locals are now waiting to see how drastically GPI changes the character of West Glacier and how much they'll develop it (the sale included 120 acres that had been intentionally left undeveloped, which residents found really helped maintain the character of the historic town).

Things have gotten so bad that Xanterra and GPI hire the majority of their employees from overseas (laregly eastern Europe) with false promises because American kids won't tolerate such poor conditions, and plane tickets are expensive enough to keep their non-resident employees working despite the conditions.

I'd say it's a petty, unjust, and corrupt system all around. It certainly doesn't honor the majesty and beauty of these national cathedrals.

As a former Xanterra employee, I think it's quite fair to blame and disparage them all day. Plenty of decent folks work for them, but as a headless corporate entity they're pretty evil. I try to avoid giving them my money.

That said, there are good dining experiences to be had in the parks. Dinner at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge was excellent (granted expensive, and this was winter), and the Lake Hotel has always been quite good. Breakfast at the Old Faithful Inn is also respectable (dinner is not). Breakfast at the Ahwahnee was exceptional the one time I ate the there, though for the price it better be. Sadly, the El Tovar as always managed to disappoint. Thankfully at the North Rim lodge you can get beers from the TR bar and B- pizza from the cafeteria and consume both out back on the most fabulous deck in the world.

We need some Roosevelt and Knox style trust busting of park concessions.

"" … we’re from Napa, and used to better things … ""

"" … a disaster from beginning to end: bad reception, lousy service, and terrible food, all bundled up into one restaurant … ""

ok, are we talking about food here, or Napa life style ??

I sure hope this post is mostly a joke.
these are National Parks for gosh sakes, the edge of amazing wilderness. if you want Napa stay in Napa. When I'm preparing to launch out into the wilderness, I don't exactly demand Napa level service.
The food, well, as long as its functional, its probably better than what I'll be eating on the trail. I'm not saying "Zannterra" should not try and provide tasty meals, they should for all the special treatment they get from the Govt.
But I really don't go to National Parks for the food, that's what I go to Paul's neck of the country for … :-)