During the classic era of North American railroad passenger patronage, two railroads did manage, at least at times, to earn money instead of losing it on railroad dining and beverage service, the Atchison, Topeka and Sate Fe and the New York New Haven and Hartford. The former contracted all food and beverage service to the Fred Harvey organization, while the latter subsidized dining and grill car meals with profits from commuter bar-car beverage sales. The first of these, the Fred Harvey sytem, seems a workable role-model for Amtrak’s future.
Station restaurants as suppliers
No railroad has broken even let along made a profit, on dining-car meals alone. The Fred Harvey organization combined dining-car service with their Harvey Houses, which formed a high-qualaity restaurant chain throughout the western United States. My suggestion is that a chain of Amtrak Station restaurants be established, each one of sufficient quality as to develop customers from the local population, much as does the Oyster Bar in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal and the Oak Room in Cleveland Union Terminal. Each restaurant would offer:
Scroll to the bottom of the page and open the attached WORD document. Sit down before you read it or you will collapse in shock. Amtrak finally realizes what food service should be in this RFI. Note the comparisons to VIA Rail Canada’s Canadian as well as Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer service.
Also interesting to read about Amtrak’s current labor structure. Example: whats up with the ride along restroom cleaners dedicated for LD trains and then only having a base in Oakland, CA and then only on some Western LD trains? Why not all the trains? That is wierd but also a little funny…lol.
Also kind of strange is the revelation that the Train service employees in Fort Worth also run the Commissary there in a kind of dual role.
Well then, Amtrak should be happy with my suggested program.
There are those that say that a large chain can not be gourmet quality. I never exprerienced Fred Harvey restaurants, and by the time I rode Sante Fe trains, possibly the dining-car service had already been absorbed by the railroad (top notch but i doubt money-making) and the Harvey Houses were a separate business . But as a yougster, mostly with uncles and aunts, Howard Johnsons were the typical place to eat, and the food seemed to me to be excellent.
A possible solution from another site. Have the Diner operate 24/7 . Understand Amtrak tried that on the Sunset and it was sucessful. The main problem with that will be the need for catering / restocking locations along the route. As well additional crew to man the diner 24 hours. Diner could open as soon as possible leaving initial station and only stop serving ~ :45 minutes before time expected to arrive at final destination not scheduled time.
That way coach passengers could dine in off times !
According to Amtrak’s IG report(s) covering food and beverage services, approximately 98 percent of the F&B losses are incurred on the long-distance trains.
Approximately 85 percent of the passengers on the long-distance trains are in coach class. Although there may be a few multi-millionaires in the coach’s, I suspect most of the coach passengers are there because that is what they can afford. An upscale dining experience probably is not high on their radar scope.
There probably is no market on the long-distance trains for an upscale dining experience that the customers would even come close to covering.
The best solution would be to eliminate the dining cars, upgrade the lounge cars with more and better choices, serve them - eats and beverages - in the lounge cars or at the passenger’s seat, and price the offerings so that they at least break even. Or, an outsource the F&B services to a strong operator. F&B is not an Amtrak core competency.
Except for Chicago and possibly Dallas, most of the major stops on the Texas Eagle, as well as the Sunset Limited in Texas, as examples, are in marginal or downright seedy areas of town. An upscale restaurant in or near the Little Rock, Austin, or San Antonio stations probably would not draw many people.
Wolfgang Puck tried a restaurant on the second floor of Dallas Union Station many years ago, if I remember correctly. It did not work out. If someone wants to g
The Rocky Mountaineer Food Service is awesome and includes dabs of caviar with some of their dishes…along with pretty decent wine / champaign. If Amtrak could duplicate that it would get high praises from me.
According to Amtrak’s IG report(s) covering food and beverage services, approximately 98 percent of the F&B losses are incurred on the long-distance trains.
Approximately 85 percent of the passengers on the long-distance trains are in coach class. Although there may be a few multi-millionaires in the coach’s, I suspect most of the coach passengers are there because that is what they can afford. An upscale dining experience probably is not high on their radar scope.
There probably is no market on the long-distance trains for an upscale dining experience that the customers would even come close to covering.
The best solution would be to eliminate the dining cars, upgrade the lounge cars with more and better choices, serve them - eats and beverages - in the lounge cars or at the passenger’s seat, and price the offerings so that they at least break even. Or, an outsource the F&B services to a strong operator. F&B is not an Amtrak core competency.
Except for Chicago and possibly Dallas, most of the major stops on the Texas Eagle, as well as the Sunset Limited in Texas, as examples, are in marginal or downright seedy areas of town. An upscale restaurant in or near the Little Rock, Austin, or San Antonio stations probably would not draw many people.
Wolfgang Puck tried a restaurant on the second floor of Dallas Union Station many years ago, if I remember correctly. It did not
I think that is a good idea. The reason Amtrak does not do that currently is explained in the RFI above. They feel the lounge snack bar should be for coach passengers and to fill in for the Dining Car when the Dining Car is not open and the Dining Car should be primarily for the First Class Passengers. Somewhat how it operated in the old days. An Updated version would have the Dining Car have specific seatings for first class passengers, perhaps use table cloths, linen, and china there. Then after the seatings for First class strip the tables of the linen and china and serve anyone else the snack bar fare between the meals?
Also, don’t be stupid with the snack bar fare and duplicate it on the First Class menu but at a higher price (which is what they do now with the hot dogs and hamburgers).
You are correct about Wolfgang Puck’s function at Union Station. Still, I am hard pressed to believe that an upscale restaurant could make it in that location, given the better options in Victory Park, etc.
Amtrak says that the average age of its sleeper class passengers is 61 and 52 percent of them are retired.
If the average age is 61, a substantial number of sleeper passengers are well above the average. Moreover, 91 percent of them are traveling for vacations or to visit family and friends. They had an average income of approximately $102,000 in FY17. Most of them probably are middle class folks that are price sensitive.
I can see an upscale dining experience for a train like the Rocky Mountaineer, but I have my doubts about duplicating it on Amtrak. I believe Amtrak is going the other way. It will continue to scale back the level of service in its dining cars, and it is possible that Amtrak will drop them altogether within a decade.
Trying to bring back to passenger rail travel what was in vogue 50 or more years ago is not going to work. That era is over. Most of Amtrak’s passengers, I suspect, are not looking for a five star restaurant on wheels
It is possible if part of a large successful business. The station restaurant chain with take-out is the essential major business.
Dallas and cities with similar location problems would have station restaurants only if they were train-origination cities, and then would require subsidy from the successful restaurants.
The menus would cater to as wide a range of tastes and pocketbooks as possible.
That is how it is today. I would be curious to see what happens as more and more of our jobs become automated and more folks have more liesure time available to them.
If you told me 4 years ago I would be working at a new employer that offers essentially 5.5 paid weeks off and a full pension…I would have laughed but companies are starting to expand their benefit packages again as skilled workers become more difficult to find. Likewise technology is reducing workloads and as a general rule your going to see leisure time increase. So say in ten years in a future world with a lot more liesure time…what will be the demographics for LD passenger trains. I think the market will increase vs decrease. Throw in that less Americans will probably own two cars vs one car due to costs and the convience of Uber and increasing convienence of mass transit…will that not also drive folks to use the passenger train more?
Also, according to Trains Newswire, Amtraks operating deficit this year would have been a mere $68 million dollars except for the $100 million accident they had in the cheap tin can Talgo WaDOT bought. $68 million is probably the lowest Amtrak Deficit I have seen in a while. It’s not sustainable due to all the pending Capital Investment Amtrak needs but it is kind of a light at the end of the tunnel that huge operating deficits might not necessarily be Amtraks future in perpetuity.
Amtrak numbers show whatever they want them to show for whatever political purpose Amtrak is pushing at the time. Anderson is pushing the thought that he is all about efficiency and the deck chairs on the Amtrak financial reportings have been moved around to present the story Anderson wants published.
Dallas would get its Amtrak station restaurant eventually. When the station restaurants have a nation-wide excellent reputation, and one in Dallas can more than break with mainly home delivery and take-out customrers.
I’m not sure about Anderson. However, if his goal is to focus Amtrak on its mission - passenger transportation by rail - then that is good. There will be a transition, but I believe Amtrak needs to ue its resources wisely congruent with that mission, not defusing its impact by running restaurants and traveling hotels. The idea of Amtrak pushing for a Fred Harvey redux operation in the 21st century is comical, but quite emblematic of the desire by a miniscule portion of the public, mainly the elderly, to have a heavily subsidized nostalgia land cruise service, i.e., long distance trains.
Agree, it used to be Milwaukee’s Intermodal Station was in an area of warehouses…still is kind of but now right next door there are plans to develop the large Post Office facility and just down the street they rehabbed the historic third ward. So heavy foot traffic to the Intermodal Station area is getting closer and closer.
Same deal with Dallas. Plans on the table to build the HSR station fairly close and construct a large real estate development there. They also have the Dallas trolley going to DUS as well so, matter of time.
Wolfgang Puck is still in operation I believe they just do not cater anymore but I think he runs one of the restaurants in the Hyatt Regency. I don’t like his food as it is overly bland and not seasoned well, crappy choice for a franchise in Texas in my view.
Charlie, I agree about Amtrak resoures. The operation would be supervised by Amtrak but would be completely private, profitable, tax-paying, investor-paying operation. It can be profidtable with a chain of very well-run station restaurants where Amtrak is just a fraction of a large take-out and catering business.
Fred Harvey did not have the internet and magnetic plastic charge cards and menues on home computers and cell-phones and everything else that will make the operation work a lot better today. I’m not sure Harvey Houses even did take-out. The houses and dining cars certainly did not have microwave ovens!
What is your idea to make on-train beverage and food service profitable? As a stand-alone, nobody else in the world has done it -except for a while the New Haven because of the extreme profitability of commuter-train bar-cars.
I don’t think Amtrak should be judged on a profit basis, anymore than your fire department or a university medical center. That said, I don’t think Amtrak should be running LD trains, sleepers or dining cars. The Bord Bistro concept as seen on German Rail would work fine.
I don’t think you need to put a restaurant in the Amtrak stations. There are plenty of chain restaurants in the towns Amtrak serves. Just do a search on the Darden chain (Longhorn, Olive Garden, et.al.) for example.
Also, rather than locating a restaurant in or near the current station, maybe the station should move to be near the restaurant. More than likely, that’s the part of town that generates the passengers.
Historically railroads and their rights of way do not define the best sections of any town. Stations, no matter where they are located in a town are rarely in a area where ‘class’ or sit down chain dining outlets (such as Darden) have their stores.