How about that par-boiled microwavable pasta that's now available in stores, with a choice of separately packaged sauce?
What you want to see is what this change in service has done to sleeping car revenue. Of course, interpreting this year's figures is not going to be easy, as revenue has generally tanked for obvious reasons having nothing to do with the change in food service. I think the best you can do is compare sleeping car revenue performance on the Eastern trains for the period October 2018 to March 2019 with the period October 2019 to March 2020. And this has to be "net revenue," as presumably costs would be lower (they had better be lower, otherwise there was no reason to inflict Contemporary Dining on the eastern trains.)
—I have been wondering what happened to the wonderful people I knew from the dining crews.
Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall. (A 1-month trial for $1 wouldn't be so bad, though, so long as you are auto-renewed at a higher rate afterwards.)
How do you propose they pay their employees then?
My local regional newspaper's website has viewers who haven't subscribed to their digital edition answer several survey questions (apparently on topics requested by advertisers) to get access to articles. You then can read 5 articles (with a banner ad above each one) before they make you answer more survey questions. If you spring for a digital subscription (or log in as a subscriber to the print edition), you avoid the survey questions altogether, and get fewer ads.
'Break even' is an ambiguous concept... reasonable food service is due to passengers paying hundreds for sleeping accommodations. I recently asked the dining car attendant who doles out the flex meals what they actually cost Amtrak; and have been told several times there is much waste. I was also told that it costs Amtrak $25 to produce those tiny hot meals and that is how much an employee must pay if they want one. Expenditures and efficiency come into question. I think its reasonable to see a cutback in meal service until covid gets under control [airlines are doing the same]; but then Amtrak must find better efficiencies! Ending on an interesting note... just as the space program is hiring private enterprise groups to build and operate the rockets, why doesn't Amtrak look at subcontracting food service with vendors COMPETING to provide service?!?!
Hmm, so the website sells ad space, but they're not supposed to display those ad spaces to non subscribers? Why would someone pay for advertising space if they're not going to be seen?The same way the print newspaper my wife works for does ... Sell their ads to the advertisers ... that is how it is supposed to work. I should not have to pay to read ads.
The print paper does not require that I read the ads to look at the stories - a website should not require me to look at them either.
Now - back to the regularly scheduled "Flex -Dining"
In this case, it doesn't matter. Even with the ad blocker off, you can't get to the detailed story without a subscription.
It's not the 1950's anymore, most people aren't reading newspapers, and online ads alone won't pay the bills. This is an extremely common problem experienced by thousands of news sources that already vanished while you whistled the day away. If you don't think it's worth it to buy news that's fine but can you please stop complaining about your inability to access something for which you refuse to pay?
A possible option is to try to google for an answer. Too bad everything is so commercialized with those greedy reaches for $$$.
When adjusted for inflation a day pass to a news website costs about the same as a single newspaper did when I was a boy. As an adult I want to be paid for my work so why would I expect others to work for free? I hate ads and watch a lot of Youtube so I pay $10 per month to remove most of the ads and help support the folks I watch, which seems fair to me. Sure it would be nice if all information was free and living wages were guaranteed to everyone, but we don't live in that kind of society and until we do people are going to need a way to pay the bills. I don't mind breaking out the pitchforks against commercializing content like public records but it's honestly amazing to me that paying for news and entertainment remains a controversial topic. Nobody's getting rich selling news about Amtrak.
