Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
Without access to Amtrak's books, including its pricing and costing models for food service, it is impossible to know for certain how much money the company loses on its food service program. Moreover, without access to the Marketing Department's objectives for food service, it is difficult to compare Amtrak's food service strategies with other like kind providers. The next best thing to access to the books would be an Audit Report on Food Service. Coming right up! How would you like it cooked? Report No. OIG-A-2012-020 | September 7, 2012 contains a wealth of information regarding Amtrak's food and beverage program.  Here are some of the key findings that struck me: "As noted, two departments share responsibility for food and beverage service, but neither is accountable for improving service and/or reducing direct operating losses — let alone eliminating them. Moreover, initiatives to improve cost‐recovery are not well coordinated." "According to Marketing and Product Development’s Chief of Food and Beverage Service, cost‐recovery is the most important metric for measuring food and beverage results. However, no cost‐recovery goal has been established for this metric in Amtrak’s five‐year financial plan." "A key management best practice for helping reduce food and beverage service losses is a program‐wide plan for improving cost‐recovery while maintaining service levels. However, such a plan does not exist at this time." For the six years prior to 2012, Amtrak lost $526 million on food service or an average of $87.6 million per year.  In FY11 the loss was $84.6 million, of which $73.9 million or 87 per cent was incurred by the long distance trains.  In the same year the short corridor trains recovered 95 per cent of their food service costs, compared to 78 per cent on the NEC and 44 per cent for the long distance trains. A major culprit appears to be the lack of coordination and accountability between operations and marketing for on-board food services.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag