What is going on with BaxterStorey and British Airways lounge catering?

There has been a huge amount of complaining on Flyertalk, Business Traveller and Twitter about the new food offerings in British Airways lounges, primarily at Heathrow.

The contract moved to BaxterStorey last month, and was either accompanied by a MASSIVE budget cut or was negotiated incredibly badly.

(EDIT, October 2013 – The main BA lounge at Heathrow has now scored a shocking 2/5 in its first Food Standards Agency report since BaxterStorey took over the contract.  More details here.)

Here is a typical Flyertalk post:

In the Galleries First this lunch time; it gets worse; yes – I know it is extremely hard to believe but BA and BaxterStorey [the new caterers] continue to exceed my worst expectations.

The fresh orange juice has GONE – and been replaced by something which tastes like processed chemicals; it is cheap and very nasty packaged orange that you can buy for 39p a litre in a Tetra Pak – it is truly VILE.

The sandwiches; I braved a prawn mayo – had so much salt in it- that the prawn had probably died of salt poisoning. It didnt taste of anything except salt. I gave up after two bites; it was nasty.

The ham on the buffet was the only edible cold meat – apart from heart attack salami; and the ham was full of gristle.

The legendary hot buffet; what can I say that hasnt already been said? I tried the hot beef/hot pot dish. OMG – it tasted worse than my school dinners 35 years ago. It was watery and tasteless – apart from the salt. I think BS must have bought all the salt on the world salt market and decided to try and kill us off quickly.

The “Book of Shame” continues to be full of complaints.

Here is a typical picture of BaxterStorey food from the Galleries First lounge at Heathrow. I won’t repeat what my 5-year old said when she saw it!

I haven’t commented on this issue before. The bottom line is that I haven’t yet experienced the new British Airways lounge food offering and it seemed unfair to criticise BaxterStorey without having seen it.

However, there is now a dedicated website set up to pressurise BA to think again. The site is well worth a look, especially the comments, and includes links to all the relevant threads elsewhere.

I will be in Terminal 5 in a few days so I will take one for the team and try a few plates of BaxterStorey gloop. (Which is clearly more than Alastair Storey of BaxterStorey / WSH must have done.) I hope you’re grateful.

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