Amtrak dining and cafe service

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I would think that everyone knows that new customers, brand, new customers, want to experience the food and beverage of what a train offers be at medium distance or long distance.

The RPA has staff people like Maddie Butler, who create an experience that foodies want.
 
I would think that everyone knows that new customers, brand, new customers, want to experience the food and beverage of what a train offers be at medium distance or long distance.

The RPA has staff people like Maddie Butler, who create an experience that foodies want.

I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. What does some staff person at RPA have to do with creating Amtrak menus?

Actually, the last thing I want is a “foodie experience”—on the train, I just want decent basic meals with ingredients that aren’t full of salt, sugar, fat, and preservatives.
 
I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. What does some staff person at RPA have to do with creating Amtrak menus?
Maddie is the RPA rep on the Congress instigated F&B Committee overseeing improvement of food service on Amtrak.
 
Zero. Amtrak is returning traditional dining to the silvers and coach passengers to the diner on the western trains “sometime” in 2023. I wouldn’t expect anything too crazy beyond that before FY2024.

Traditional dining on the cardinal would be quite notable - it hasn’t had what we now call traditional dining for a number of years.
Texas Eagle already has traditiondal dinning but from San Antonio to LA and flexible dinning from San Antonio to Chicago and those are only for sleeper passengers that started in July 2022. On the cardinal currently still has flexible dinning and only for sleeper passenger too.
 


I should write more about this video in the Internation section, but of relevance to this thread is a comparison of Trenitialia's food service with that of Amtrak's. For the high speed trains, it's all snack food or the equivalent of flex food from the bistro car, except for the absolute top class of service, where they do serve you real food at your seat. They also took a 21 hour sleeper train ride from Milan to Palermo, and all that was served to them was some packaged snacks and coffee for breakfast at their compartment. Lunch was whatever they remembered to buy at the station in Milan.
 
I guess I’ll give this another shot - until Amtrak correctly accounts for costs and revenue, there will be no correct analysis of the food service. In simple terms, the costs include the cost of the food, the salaries of the food service employees and the
fixed costs of the cafe and dining cars. How one apportions the fixed costs is too complex a question to deal with here. In any event, against the costs, one applies the revenue to determine whether the food service bottom line is positive or negative. So let’s now look at revenue and tackle the coach passengers first. This is relatively simple, you just total up what they actually pay for the food they purchase.The sleeper passengers revenue is different. It has been asserted ( I have never seen the accounting from Amtrak) that they count as revenue the menu listed price of the food ordered by the sleeper passenger. As I have stated before, this is an incorrect accounting. While that is a fine measure for coach passengers as indicated above, it doesn’t reflect properly revenue from the sleeper passenger. In fact, the sleeper passenger has paid for the meals when the ticket was purchased. One can calculate the number of potential meals that the sleeper passenger will have during any particular trip. The question then, what is the proper apportionment of the revenue received (cost of the ticket) which is attributed to the meals provided. That apportioned revenue, then needs to be added to that received from the coach passengers (plus any actual purchases in the cafe car by sleeper passengers) to determine total revenue. To account for sleeper car food revenue as it is apparently being done by Amtrak results in absurd results. Note that if a sleeper passenger decides not to eat a meal or meals, though the passenger has paid for all meals, Amtrak will show no revenue from the food service while it’s actual cost for the food will be lower (I didn’t say 0 since there is some potential cost of spoilage for food bought but not ordered. This cost of spoilage is part of accounting in all food service operation on board a train or not). The question of the proper amount of the ticket to attribute to the meals is an accounting issue but one that clearly affects any analysis of whether or not the food service is profitable or how much it is losing money as the case may be. To only post as revenue an amount for meals eaten by sleeper passengers causes a ridiculous situation where Amtrak appears to be losing more money when a passenger doesn’t eat a meal (no revenue posted) than when a passenger actually consumes food.
 
The entire problem is a Mica creation in attempting to run the F&B as a separate P&L center. If the train is run as the smallest granularity P&L center all this mental gymnastics pretty much goes away. The cost of running the train includes the cost of providing the services in the non-revenue cars, and the revenue consists of the fares paid and the revenue collected from passengers for services provided that were not included in the fare. End of story. But noooo we need to run every nut and bolt as a separate P&L center and then spend endless hours arguing about how to essentially arbitrarily apportion stuff or not. Just my naive view of the world I am sure. ;)
 
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For the high speed trains, it's all snack food or the equivalent of flex food from the bistro car...
One benefit of high speed rail is that you rarely need more than a simple snack because it's not a slow meandering slog at coal era speeds.

Lunch was whatever they remembered to buy at the station in Milan.
My hometown station sells no food and only receives trains in the dead of night when nothing nearby is open. I'd love to have Milan's "problems."
 
People on the Amtrak Silver Star & Silver Meteor facebook group are reporting confirmed reservations with traditional dining on 3/16 on the northbound Meteor. Someone said they were told by AGR that the Star will not start until sometime in the summer. But SCA's are saying the Star in March, and the Meteor in the summer. Confusion reigns, as usual.

As of now, the booking page still shows Flex on that date.
 
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I forgot…were the sleeper fares different between traditional and “flex” dining?
If so, that may provide a clue as to which train will offer traditional dining first…
 
I forgot…were the sleeper fares different between traditional and “flex” dining?
If so, that may provide a clue as to which train will offer traditional dining first…
If I remember correctly, the fares on the Star went down when dining service was removed, but I do not think fares on the Meteor went down when contemporary dining started.
 
No difference in Sleeper fares regardless of Flex or Traditional dining,which was always a sore point.I always thought with the obvious downgrade in food service,fares should have reflected that.

That would suggest an admission by Amtrak that there is a substantial obvious downgrade in food service.....
 
One benefit of high speed rail is that you rarely need more than a simple snack because it's not a slow meandering slog at coal era speeds.
Many years ago I rode the Nozomi Shinkansen from Tokyo to Fukuoka. I don't recall any more than a snack cart for food service. Like you say, even going half the length of Japan the trip was only a few hours.

I think if the cost of meals was broken out as a separate line item many people would bring a bag of freeze dried camp food. Providing a full-blown rolling restaurant has to be fantastically expensive.
 
Texas Eagle already has traditional dinning but from San Antonio to LA and flexible dinning from San Antonio to Chicago and those are only for sleeper passengers that started in July 2022.
The only reason that the Texas Eagle "has" traditional dining is because cars get connected to the Sunset Limited at San Antonio. That wasn't "started in July 2022". I can speak for personal experience that on April 25, 2022 I (traveling CHI-LAX in a sleeper car) was taking meals in the dining car.
 
Providing passenger rail service at all is fantastically expensive.

Providing my club soda and biscoff cookies on Delta is a crazy high line item as well.

Airline meals and snacks are crazy expensive, which is why budget airlines don't offer them and mainline airlines try to scrimp on them at every opportunity. Don't get me started on just how awful the food was on Delta when I flew from Atlanta to Athens in Oct '21.
 
Airline meals and snacks are crazy expensive, which is why budget airlines don't offer them and mainline airlines try to scrimp on them at every opportunity. Don't get me started on just how awful the food was on Delta when I flew from Atlanta to Athens in Oct '21.
On long international flights at least most still provide complementary meals even in Coach, good, bad or indifferent. Food in Business and First Class has generally been quite good, much better than Amtrak Flex and often as good as traditional, depending on the airline.
 
The only reason that the Texas Eagle "has" traditional dining is because cars get connected to the Sunset Limited at San Antonio. That wasn't "started in July 2022". I can speak for personal experience that on April 25, 2022 I (traveling CHI-LAX in a sleeper car) was taking meals in the dining car.
When the Western trains returned to traditional dining in mid 2021 the only holdout was the Texas Eagle. Without traditional dining and the lack of a Sightseer Car on a 32 hour trip the Eagle is the worst of all the long distance trains
 
Texas Eagle already has traditiondal dinning but from San Antonio to LA and flexible dinning from San Antonio to Chicago and those are only for sleeper passengers that started in July 2022. On the cardinal currently still has flexible dinning and only for sleeper passenger too.
Sorry, I forgot what flexible dining is. Could someone explain again. thanks
 
Providing my club soda and biscoff cookies on Delta is a crazy high line item as well.
Is it just a coincidence that AA distributes the same brand of cookies on their flights?
Perhaps the cookie manufacturer provides them to airlines at reduced cost?🤔
 
Many years ago I rode the Nozomi Shinkansen from Tokyo to Fukuoka. I don't recall any more than a snack cart for food service. Like you say, even going half the length of Japan the trip was only a few hours.
And Japan has a tradition of bento boxes being on sale at the stations, often featuring local specialties. That's how I managed my one visit to Japan, using a Japan East rail pass from Tokyo to Aomori and back.
 
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