If you are a player at Profound Decisions’ Empire, this should be of interest to you. This year we are giving you the chance to pre-buy your Mhorish meal tickets for all four Empire events. This meal ticket gives you all your meals over the course of the event at a cost of £5 per meal, with your choice of when to start your ticket from (so you’re not paying for food for Thursday if you’re not arriving until Friday night, for example). It also contains a built-in “bring your own bowl/cup” discount (see below) that will not be available to those buying individual meals.
Not only that, but with each meal ticket bought in this way before April 20th 2018, you get a free “Mhorish dozen” drinks ticket, giving you thirteen hot drinks over the course of the weekend. Drinks are no longer included as part of the meal ticket.
Get your early bird Mhorish meal tickets (and free Mhorish dozen) for the 2018 season here, but only until April 20th:
Of course, meal tickets will still be available to buy in the field for the same price, with a half-price “Mhorish dozen” drinks ticket (usually £10, but £5 with a meal ticket bought on-site).
Individual meals will now cost £6.50, or £6.00 if you bring your own bowl.
Individual hot drinks will now cost £1.50 each, or £1 if you bring your own cup.
We don’t usually get a lot of interest in meal tickets for children, so we haven’t created the advance meal ticket option on this site for the time being. However, we can do you a children’s meal ticket for any children under 12 years old at a cost of £3 per meal. Please contact us if you are interested in buying a children’s meal ticket, and we will sort something out for you.
And now, the bit where we try to anticipate your questions!
This looks suspiciously like a price increase. What’s going on?
We have resisted any increase in price for a number of years now, but there are a number of factors that are making this financially unsustainable, such as:
- Increased food prices
- Increased Calor gas prices (most of our equipment is gas-powered, to limit our reliance on in-field electrical supply)
- Increased crew costs to cope with the year-on-year increase in demand from rising player numbers, and the enormous amount of work that goes into building our kitchen for every event.
- Being unwilling to drop our standards – part of the reason that people love Mhorish is that we serve burgers that are pure beef (with a little seasoning, but no bulking agents), our teabags are Yorkshire Tea, and we sell Linda McCartney’s vegetarian sausages and burgers rather than cheaper, less delicious alternatives. We take great pride in our quality, and that pride gives us that little extra reason to keep going when we are exhausted.
- Feeling like it would be somewhat discriminatory to charge extra for gluten-free products – sadly, supermarkets do not feel the same way.
- The impending “disposables tax” – more on that below
However, with a lot of number-crunching, we have managed to keep the overall increase in costs to a minimum, and if you can buy meal tickets in advance and bring your own bowls and cups, that will make the price increase from previous years negligible.
So what’s this about the bowls and cups?
There has been an awful lot of talk about the environmental cost of single-use plastics recently, and it looks like a tax on disposable products is in the offing. While we pride ourselves on using sustainably-produced and biodegradable/compostable disposables (and pay 5-6 times as much for doing so) – wooden cutlery, plates and bowls made from fallen palm leaves, cups from sustainable cardboard – the law that passes might not reflect this, thanks to the different types of wording being proposed. Maybe we could plump for a technically cheaper option, but that wouldn’t look as in-character, which is kind of our ‘thing’. And the amount of extra work involved in going back to using our own crockery and having to wash that up is simply unthinkable without a heck of a lot more crew. Hence the financial incentive – we want everyone to get used to the idea of bringing your own.
Our usual eco-friendly disposables will still be available, of course – we won’t make you carry your food in your bare hands!
I’m not sure I can afford a meal ticket, what can I do?
Help us, and we’ll help you! By which we mean, we are often in need of player volunteers to help us out, both on front of house and in the kitchen. We have a deal where you can volunteer for four hours per day during the event and receive a meal ticket in return. If you are interested, you can either contact us or come and ask in person at Mhorish at the start of the event.
We are often in need of full-time event crew as well (particularly chefs/short-order cooks), where you work on average two shifts per day, in return for free entry to the event, some expenses paid, meals, drinks, and (if needed and available) a space in one of the crew tents. Please note that this work is physically and mentally demanding, but very rewarding. Contact us in advance if you are interested in a full-time role helping Mhorish at Empire events.