It seems that I might have been the last one to come to the party... I had been talking about having a food delivery service [one of those companies which brings ordered food from restaurants, nominally to home] bring food to the CZ in GJT. So... last night I emailed the three services that google turned up for that area... sending a very tentative email, explaining what it was I was interested in, the variableness of the timing, and the narrow window that they'd have to hit etc... thinking that nobody had thought about this before or had tried such. Was I wrong. At least the one reply I got back from MyFoodTaxi... seems they've been doing this for some time. Seems actually that it has expanded beyond just ordered meals from their list of restaurants, but there has been sufficient demand - they will even do grocery shopping for passengers and bring that to the train. [Also seems that hitting the 10-12 minute window that the CZ is sitting there is not a problem, in that they have been hitting even narrower windows at the airport with planes coming in, picking up the food, and flying out.]
So... such takes away the pioneer spirit of trying something for the first time, being the first one to do such... but on the other hand, seems that given their success at doing such, I just might have a nice warm lasagna for dinner on the way back west in a couple weeks.
And actually, thinking about it: I've seen people from the train return to the train in Reno and Denver with pizza boxes... previously I had thought they'd gone and gotten the pizzas, but my guess now is that they simply connected with a food delivery service and during the smoke breaks at each venue, picked up what they had ordered.
Bottom-line: it seems that a) there is at least one alternative to either eating from the dining car or café and/or buying junk food at the smoke stops; and b) there are enough others that have grown dissatisfied with the Amtrak choices that at least one food delivery company considers delivering to the CZ nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary.
So... such takes away the pioneer spirit of trying something for the first time, being the first one to do such... but on the other hand, seems that given their success at doing such, I just might have a nice warm lasagna for dinner on the way back west in a couple weeks.
And actually, thinking about it: I've seen people from the train return to the train in Reno and Denver with pizza boxes... previously I had thought they'd gone and gotten the pizzas, but my guess now is that they simply connected with a food delivery service and during the smoke breaks at each venue, picked up what they had ordered.
Bottom-line: it seems that a) there is at least one alternative to either eating from the dining car or café and/or buying junk food at the smoke stops; and b) there are enough others that have grown dissatisfied with the Amtrak choices that at least one food delivery company considers delivering to the CZ nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary.