Eastern LD trains, apparently, will still have flex dining. I have never understood why Amtrak insisted on box meal dining for LD trains east of the Mississippi. Amtrak claims they saved 2 million in the process. It doesn't seem like a lot. I wonder how much revenue they lost from passengers who wouldn't board a train with such unpalatable meals.
Oh well, it's a start. Even railroad french toast has returned!
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Interesting as how Sleepers are now referred to as Private Rooms.
Otherwise, I remain aghast (just as I am over the restoration of Daily frequencies). The Flex Meals could only result in cost savings needing only one FSS ("Cook"), one LSA ("Cashier/Server"), and one SA ("Server"), per Superliner Diner to now an additional FSS, and SA. The Flex meals were easily unit accountable. Fresh food supplies far less so, which expose unsupervised employees to "undue temptation".
So I must wonder who's running Amtrak? A cadre of Managers whose objective is to provide transportation while minimizing losses or a cadre of Long Distance "experiential" advocates.
…CHICAGO — Amtrak plans to again offer dining car meals to coach passengers, and to again offer meals prepared onboard on its eastern overnight rains, as part of coming enhancements to its long-distance operations.
Dates and details for the roll-out of those changes are still to come, says Robert Jordan, vice president operations and customer services, at.a Tuesday event at Chicago Union Station previewing the return of traditional dining and interior improvements to the Superliner car fleet.
The exact timing and nature will largely depend on reaction to the new dining-car menu, to be rolled out on western long-distance trains as of June 23.
“A lot of it is centered on two things,” he says. First will be passenger reaction to the menu. “Do we need to make any adjustments? What is the most popular, and how long each of those items takes to cook, because we imagine that whatever is popular with our [sleeping-car passengers] is going to be as popular with our coaches,
And, "the topper":
The menu, Jordan says, was developed with the input of both in-house and outside chefs. Cuisine Solutions — which, among other items, makes the sous vide egg bites served at Starbucks — was involved in several of the items; Aramark and other distributors are also represented on the menu.
“We also flew our own chefs in from Seattle, LA, and Chicago, once we were down to a near-final menu,” he says, “and they didn’t change a thing, which was a real ring of endorsement for us.”
The "Flex" meals were serving their purpose, and after a "learning curve", they were providing adequate food service. The cost savings of needing only 1 FSS, 1 LSA, and 1 SA per Superliner Diner serving Flex could not be ignored.
Now we're talking 2 FSS, 1 LSA, and 2 SA per Diner. Figure $100K annually for each position and "we're talking folding change".
Sooner or later, "the Son of Mica" will rise in the halls of Congress, and it will be time to repeat this whole cycle of "enhancing the product just to cut it" start all over again. But then Managers can make their "brownies" my means of saying "look how I enhanced the product".
Now time for a purge, and the new gang comes in saying "look at all this fat we cut; look at all the savings we uncovered".
And so goes the cycle.
yukon11 Member # 2997
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I look forward to seeing what the new dining car menu looks like on June 23. I have to think anything would be better than flex meals. However, I am a little leery of the input from Cuisine Solutions (Starbucks egg bites) and Aramark.
Why not "build up the fat" and let passengers pay for it? As a private room passenger, I would like to see what kind of meals would be served if the private folks paid for those meals.
And no Amtrak red generic and Amtrak white generic wines served in a cardboard container.
Richard
Gilbert B Norman Member # 1541
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Richard, the "Milk Carton" wine, and with a Waiter simply saying "Red or White; one glass only" simply "did it" with me and Auto Train. The NB run leaving the day Kobe Bryant was killed was simply a "meh" and I've decided that to save 400 miles of driving (excess of Fla-Chicago over Fla-AT-Chicago), and no time whatever, is simply not worth $900 instead of $385 (auto running @$.50/mi + Hotel $125, & Dinner $60).
Thank goodness, I had a bottle of an excellent Chilean Viognier keeping cool in my Bedroom's sink.
I went aboard Amtrak's new long-distance trains aiming to transform America's languishing rail network and now I want to take a cross-country train trip
Amtrak is spending $28 million to upgrade long-distance trains and make journeys more enjoyable.
Each class of service will see upgrades from coach to sleeper cars, as well as the dining car.
Train travel is still slower than air travel but the new upgrades make it more enticing.
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