Not if you give them the whole shebang. It actually gives Amtrak one less thing to worry about.
you betcha! Not intractable in the long run, though.
Sooo, one area I agree with ACD on is Railroad Dining is different from Restaurant Dining in how they prepare the food. Railroad kitchens for example do not have the unlimited square footage and varied utilities to prepare the wide selection of food your asking for above.
Long ago I bought the book “Dinner in the Diner” about railroad dining car recipes. They tend to compliment each other (in order to reuse as much as they can) vs offering selections radically different from each other (such as your proposing above). So say for example on one RR Dining car they would have baked Ham, on the same menu they might offer split pea soup with Ham in order to reuse the Ham Bone., Then perhaps cubed Ham on some of the salads or possibly a Ham and Swiss sandwich. Just seemed the dining car was setup that way so that one ingredient could be used in multiple dishes and used in it’s entireity with as little waste as possible. That was the old days of Dining Cars.
These days they would have to use prepackaged food vs preparing from scratch as I do not believe a Superliner Kitchen has all the prep utilities to prepare from scratch a wide varietty of recipes. I do not know for sure but my guess is Amtrak took some shortcuts with the Superliner orders to speed
I don’t want to single out any one person here, but I suggest some folks who have such prescient ideas should submit resumes & hire out as Amtrak chefs.
Darden is an expert at selling meals for profit. I am not , but neither is Amtrak. Why not let the experts do what they are expert at? Is that such an unreasonable thing?
Darden has kitchens everywhere and national supply network. Let them figure the best place to cook what and what should be on the menu and how to price it
Salary of an Amtrak Chef:
How does CareerBliss get its information? How do they verify it? Unless they have an Amtrak employee pump them the information, presumably they are relying on self-reporting or the union contacts.
The numbers square with what I have heard from another source. In both cases, i.e. salary for Amtrak chefs and average Amtrak salaries; however, the stand alone salary numbers overlook the benefits portion of the employee’s compensation packages, which can add as much as 30 to 40 per cent more to compensation costs.
I ride the Texas Eagle to Dallas or San Antonio at least once a month. As a result I have gotten to know two of the dinning car waiters, not to mention the conductors, reasonably well. All of them have told me that the benefits are a critical part of their decision to work for Amtrak. They have excellent health insurance, as well as retirement and other benefits. Presumably the chefs enjoy similar benefits.
I kind of agree with you. Amtraks issue is not being able to think outside of the box and relying on the way they always have done it in the past. Pretty much a railroad industry issue. Railroad Industry has always been slow to innovate and reluctant to change. Amtrak just inherited the attitude, IMO.
One reason why I was a fan of the Milwaukee Road, they seemed to innovate more than other Midwestern roads. In the end it did not help them to survive BUT look at where we would be without the Milwaukee Road Chief Engineer helping the CP build West or where we would be without the Milwaukee Roads pioneering use of Formica on the Hiawatha (with wood grain patterns no less). Or for that matter their pioneering use of regenerative braking on lines West.
Darden just sold off Red Lobster.
But railroads have long been in the dining car business. Unless all who ever worked in the service are dead or otherwise not available. To say Amtrak doesn’t know about dining cars is a wrong statement to say the least.
There are a great many restaurants and a great many styles of operating them. I don’t know that any one is correct. While I am not inclined to tell any restauranteur how to run his business neither will I come back to a restaurant where I am hustled out the door.
That statement only exists in your head, I never made it.
Boy are you touchy. If you look at the whole posting I quoted it was who you quoted that inferred that and you agreed. I quoted the whole post for what it said over all. Or
Which raises another interesting albeit not controversial point!
If the charter is to provide public rail transport, does the charter include high priced business class travel that most of the taxpayers cannot afford and is paid for frequently if not mostly by people traveling on expense accounts? Or in private rooms that only an average of 14.6 per cent of long distance passengers or 2.2 per cent of system passengers choose? Presumably their choice is driven in part by several variables, including the ability to pay. Numbers are from the 2009 - 2013 Amtrak Monthly Operating Reports.
According to a Wall Street Journal article that appeared last week, I believe, Darden has put Red Lobster up for sale.
The charter has nothing to do with it, marketing does. Is the train a slouch all stops coach only train or a limited with sleepers for businessmen or whatever. Design your dining car and menu to fit the clientele you are selling the train to. The problem is that Amtrak has to market to Congress and not riders, customers. But some trains can serve subs and potato chips or hamburgers on plastic plates and sloshed down with a Bu
[quote user=“henry6”]
The charter has nothing to do with it, marketing does. Is the train a slouch all stops coach only train or a limited with sleepers for businessmen or whatever. Design your dining car and menu to fit the clientele you are selling the train to. The problem is that Amtrak has to market to Congress and not riders, customers. But some trains can serve subs and potato chips or hamburgers on plastic plates and sl
henry: What century is this? The first principle of marketing is reality. Businessmen have not been riding LD trains in any numbers for 50 years. They do ride Acela, which is doing just fine, for transportation, not “dinner in the diner.”
tAren’t long distance trains primarily used for liesure travel? But still, what works for Acela mealwise should work nationally. Why not?
That’s right. If you don’t have businessmen riding you don’t have to offer a higher menu fare…but ACELA and other trains in various corridors have a heavy businessman’s business thus the menu has to be better than the all stops clunker of non business clientele. A NE Corridor train, even non Corridor operations in the east have to offer a different menu than in the south, mid and north west and west. The Auto train has to be different than any of them but won’t be too different than other east coast Boston-NY Florida trains, etc. We are talking Amtrak and not McAmtrak. Marketing is all important matching itself to the service and service area of the charter. That’s the reality.