ABC News reported in World News Tonight with Charles Gibson at 6:30-7:00pm EST on January 8, 2007, that all Amtrak overnight luxury trains with dining rooms except for the Empire Builder have converted to paper plates and table cloths, and microwave food. This happened apparently because of required budget cuts. (a.k.a. Amtrak didn’t want to make this change)
How do you all feel about this?
I think it sucks but then again that’s my own oppion. Also I think amtrak has been talkin to the airlines cause they all serve mircowaved food. But oh well then again it was going to happen sooner or later.
I guess the problem is that Amtrak, the people who operate, support, and fund it, are not quite sure what kind of operation they want it to be. While Amtrak is not the government, it is its own kind of organizational thing, it gets considerable funding from the government and hence is subject to governmental kind of thinking.
It is not so much that Amtrak loses money operating trains with white-linen tablecloth dining cars or will continue to lose pretty much the same amount of money with paper plates and foam cups food service, the question is whether the government should be subsidizing some higher level of service beyond some utilitarian function. Government money finds its ways in some measure to the arts – an activity which is thought of for the betterment of the society as a whole but one which appeals largely to a cultural and in some measures socio-economic elite - and there is criticism of that kind of funding in that it only services elites.
I can see the government supporting long-distance trains as a kind of national heritage matter, much like the National Parks, especially the Western long-distance trains which cover such broad sweeps of parts of the country that are scenic for their low population density and mountains – mountains are very scenic but not much use for practical real-estate development although they try in California to some bad effect on people losing everything to wildfires.
I am told Canada went through a meltdown in funding for Via, and they are down to one long distance train, but some friends who have taken it said it is rather expensive but quite nice and a worthwhile experience. I believe Canada runs the one long-distance train that covers the vast expanse of the Western part of Canada. As to complaining about the shortage of Superliner cars, that train is all “Heritage” cars – I imagine bought for cheap from Amtrak in many cases - and F40’s. The train is also very long – if you are going to operate the one t
…And after 36 years no one has been able to decide what and how we should be running these trains…In fact, no one has been able to fund them properly yet to run decent full service trains…Too bad.
The trend line as it is running now with equipment damage and breakdowns and refurbishing going undone it’s only a matter of time until they run out of equipment and will have to continue to downsize and then literally stop…
OK by me. As long as they take the china and silver flatware off the Beech Grove.
Maybe the White House and the Congressional Dining Rooms should also go to paper plates and plastic forks. Now we’re taking big money.
By the way, Alex Kummant’s salary is $100,000 a year more than Dave Gunn’s.
…Don’t forget to install the microwaves in both places in place of all the prepare kitchens too…
You mean to say that with the hefty prices that they were charging for food, that they were losing money on it? Unbelievable!![banghead]
But now the hefty prices will be for TV dinners.
Cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Not the first time someone has taken one portion of an operation out of context with the rest of the operation. People need to eat on a long-distance train. People might be attracted to take the train by good food. But good food doesn’t make as much money as (or loses more than) the rest of the operation, so we’ll cut that out. Now we lose the business of the people for whom the food may have been part of the appeal.
They’ll kill Amtrak yet.
Is this the long-planned conversion to pre-plated meals? If so, my understanding was that the quality was to be pretty good and menu variety was to be equivalent. It’s just that grilling would be discontinued and dining car crew reduced from 5 to 3.
It’s not like the food cooked on board was always the best, anyway. I had a rather lukewarm “hot” breakfast on the Cal. Zephyr out of Denver last Spring.
Hardly the end of the world.
I don’t think that dining cars ever made money in and of themselves and this includes the so-called Golden Era of heavyweight equipment. That being said, most passenger departments viewed dining cars as an amenity that helped bring customers to their service and were willing to eat the operating loss on dining cars. Dining car service also had its quirks, one of which was “verbal orders not accepted”, the patron had to write out his order on the check. Northern Pacific was one of the few roads that accepted verbal orders.
There is a general rule of thumb for the restaurant business. The revenue/cost ratio are 1/3 for food and beverage costs, 1/3 for labor and 1/3 for spoilage, rent, utilities, miscellaneous expenses and, out of that slice, profit. Keeping the labor cost at 1/3 of revenue is accomplished by having the service staff at the “wage plus tips” wage rates, which, last I knew, was at $2.35 an hour.
Amtrak is faced with different cost ratios. The biggest difference is in the labor cost. I don’t have exact numbers, Amtrak dining car personnel are paid somewhere around the wage rates of the other non-operating on board personnel, somewhere around $15 per hour. In addition, Amtrak covers the lay-over expenses, covers the cost of a very good benefit package and pays the rates for Railroad Retirement coverage that are higher than Social Security. I don’t know how the numbers work out for the cost of the dining"facility", but it isn’t hard to imagine that the “rent” and other facility costs for a rail car are much higher than those for land based restaurant of comparable seating capacity and style.
The numbers I have seen indicate that the labor costs for Amtrak’s dining operation take most of the dining revenue. The obvious obstacle to reducing the wage rates is that they are the result of a collective bargaining agreement. (Darn unions!) But even absent that constraint, how far down could the rates go before Amtrak would have to deal with the kind of labor turnover experience of the restaurant business.
I suspect that the efficiency or cost savings of using plastic comes from the elimination of the labor for dishwashing. The dining cars are equiped with dishwashing machines, but there is still labor involved.
My bottom line is that I could accept a hard plastic plate, but plastic knives and forks suck. Beyond that, if I want to eat on the cheap, I’ll stop at the local fast food place.<
FWIW, I think that is the most practical answer anyone has offered.
Makes perfect sense
Paper plates and plastic flatware to you, too![dinner][|(][(-D]
It would make sense if it actually reduced the business deficit. Ponder this. Would you pay $10 to $20 for a meal served to you on plastic? More than once??
Well, IMO, moving to plastic/paper tableware is an environmentally irresponsible decision.
LMAO!!
As a taxpayer, I have misgivings about paying for someone else’s white tablecloth moment.
The Amtrak travel packages I’ve always encountered state meals are included in the fare . Those would be the meals the govt need only provide a basic food service for.
As for ala carte food service, pay as you go, well, I think the customers deserve whatever they are willing to pay for.
If they want chez ritz, then they should have that opportunity.
Maybe leasing a kitchen/diner to some operator such as Shoney’s would be a solution.
My bet is that Shoney’s would either balk outright, or exit soon
I still think they should contract out the food service, or bid it out to franchises. Maybe a Starbucks or McDonalds right on the train. They could run food out the way they do for large events (I remember when there were 300 of us and a McDonalds in the Austin area brought out 600 egg mcmuffins and orange juices in a small insulated trailer). You would probably get the same groups that go in airports, but I know there are California Pizza Kitchens, TGIFridays, and others there too.
People pay MORE than that for a burger, pretzel and a beer at a ball game, served at a walk-up window on a cardboard tray!
My last Amtrak trip was on the Cardinal - one of the first trains to convert to plastic. The food was not bad but definately better than airline food (when they served anything). However, I was most impressed, when a tragic delay caused us to be 5+ hours behind schedule. The dining car reopened and served an unplanned meal because we would not get into Chicago until late afternoon. The staff was very accomodating - even though they did not have sufficient for their full menu - they were able to offer several choices. That trick would be hard to do with pre-plated food.
dd
[quote user=“jeaton”]
There is a general rule of thumb for the restaurant business. The revenue/cost ratio are 1/3 for food and beverage costs, 1/3 for labor and 1/3 for spoilage, rent, utilities, miscellaneous expenses and, out of that slice, profit. Keeping the labor cost at 1/3 of revenue is accomplished by having the service staff at the “wage plus tips” wage rates, which, last I knew, was at $2.35 an hour.
Amtrak is faced with different cost ratios. The biggest difference is in the labor cost. I don’t have exact numbers, Amtrak dining car personnel are paid somewhere around the wage rates of the other non-operating on board personnel, somewhere around $15 per hour. In addition, Amtrak covers the lay-over expenses, covers the cost of a very good benefit package and pays the rates for Railroad Retirement coverage that are higher than Social Security. I don’t know how the numbers work out for the cost of the dining"facility", but it isn’t hard to imagine that the “rent” and other facility costs for a rail car are much higher than those for land based restaurant of comparable seating capacity and style.
The numbers I have seen indicate that the labor costs for Amtrak’s dining operation take most of the dining revenue. The obvious obstacle to reducing the wage rates is that they are the result of a collective bargaining agreement. (Darn unions!) But even absent that constraint, how far down could the rates go before Amtrak would have to deal with the kind of labor turnover experience of the restaurant business.
I suspect that the efficiency or cost savings of using plastic comes from the elimination of the labor for dishwashing. The dining cars are equiped with dishwashing machines, but there is still labor involved.
My bottom line is that I could accept a hard plastic plate, but plastic knives and forks suck. Beyond that, if I want to eat on the cheap, I’ll stop at the l