Recently a friend of mine, who is not a railfan, rode Nos. 30/29 to and from Rockville, MD from Cleveland, OH over a weekend. On the return Sunday evening #29, originating in DC, they found that there was no food for either the diner or lounge (not sure if the Cap is operating with separate diners and lounges currently) all the way to Cleveland. My question for anyone on here is: Does anyone know of any other recent similar failures of Amtrak to provision the Capitol Ltd., or any other long-distance train, and if so is this an accidental failure, or a new policy change? I'm also hearing rumors that vending machines have turned up in lieu of regular food service on at least one other Amtrak train. Shades of SP and PennCentral in the bad old days of trying to kill passenger service, pre-Amtrak! Please say it isn't so.
I don't know anything about the vending machines, but I can give some info regarding The Capitol Limited.
http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/64359-cl-29-food-service-cuts-may-17/
Will
Thanks for the link.
This could tie into the promotion of a certain fast-food restaurant.
The scene is of a mob of irate, unfed, sweaty Amtrak passengers in raggedly casual clothes. A nervous Amtrak employee dials a cell phone to hear, "Hello, Jimmy John's!"
Cue the sound man for a screech of tires.
The fast food delivery truck meets the stopped train at a crossing, and the next scene shows the suddenly well-groomed, well-contented, and polite passengers wearing well-tailored suits and gowns, munching on sandwiches.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul Milenkovic This could tie into the promotion of a certain fast-food restaurant. The scene is of a mob of irate, unfed, sweaty Amtrak passengers in raggedly casual clothes. A nervous Amtrak employee dials a cell phone to hear, "Hello, Jimmy John's!" Cue the sound man for a screech of tires. The fast food delivery truck meets the stopped train at a crossing, and the next scene shows the suddenly well-groomed, well-contented, and polite passengers wearing well-tailored suits and gowns, munching on sandwiches.
Did you know that Jimmy Johns expects a Franchisee to put in 80 hours a week into the business and they state up front if your not willing to work those hours they are not interested in doing a deal with you. What is strange is I have been to a lot of Jimmy Johns and you know what? Never see the franchisor there on duty......makes me wonder about that requirement.
The link from the parent post mentions the efforts of Amtrak on-train personnel to deal with long train trips where circumstances out of their control leads to an absence of food service. It discusses ways the Amtrak train people have improvised to supply food "short staffed" or to place an impromptu large order with a restaurant to supply food to the passengers.
I have no idea what Jimmy Johns expects of its franchise operators by way of hours, financial stake, or fluency in English, French, Spanish, Esperanto, and Tagolog. I watch television and see their commercials. I think I have only eaten their food on two occasions -- one is when they passed free samples on campus and another is when a student engineering society bringing in an outside speaker ordered their sandwiches of persons attending that evening talk. The sandwich tasted pretty good, although if you put together fresh bread, some meat, and a thin slice of lettuce with enough mayonaise, I guess what you have will taste OK.
Their commercials depict obvious fantasies. One is where a "geek" is arrested on some unspecified offense and placed in a jail cell with some "tough" cellmates looking him over. He makes his one phone call to Jimmy Johns to offer sandwiches to everyone in the cell, and in the next scene they are all his friends. Another depicts a harried mom with a minivan filled with screaming kids. She pulls into the Jimmy Johns drive up and then the kids instantly become well behaved, and not only that, they are instantly wearing their Sunday clothes.
The thread is about the unpleasantness of being an Amtrak passenger when the train crew is unable to offer food for a long trip. One post linked to a discussion of where some Amtrak crew supervisors were able to order food from a fast-food restaurant to deal with this unhappy situation.
If being a passenger in this situation is unpleasant, think of how an Amtrak crew member must feel with a trainload of hungry, unhappy passengers. Hunger can make people unhappy, even irate. Think of what it is like to be faced with a crowd of unhappy people who hold you reponsible for their condition. I offered the fantasy vignette in the Jimmy Johns commercial as offering some insight into this situation faced by an Amtrak worker.
I regret that someone found my "storyboarding" a fantasy vignette about a trainload of unhappy Amtrak passengers into the contented, gentille patrons of a train in a Lucius Beebe account of yesteryear to be offensive.
Yes, substituting food service provided by Amtrak under their labor agreements with service from a fast food restaurant that exploits franchisee and workers alike is a sensitive subject. But it seems people are under such a hair-trigger of social justice concerns around here that a person cannot offer anything whimsical in the comments. People are just so serious, I guess.
CMStPnP Paul Milenkovic This could tie into the promotion of a certain fast-food restaurant. The scene is of a mob of irate, unfed, sweaty Amtrak passengers in raggedly casual clothes. A nervous Amtrak employee dials a cell phone to hear, "Hello, Jimmy John's!" Cue the sound man for a screech of tires. The fast food delivery truck meets the stopped train at a crossing, and the next scene shows the suddenly well-groomed, well-contented, and polite passengers wearing well-tailored suits and gowns, munching on sandwiches. Did you know that Jimmy Johns expects a Franchisee to put in 80 hours a week into the business and they state up front if your not willing to work those hours they are not interested in doing a deal with you. What is strange is I have been to a lot of Jimmy Johns and you know what? Never see the franchisor there on duty......makes me wonder about that requirement.
And if you would ask Donald Trump how many hours he puts into his businesses I am certain he would respond 168 a week - yet you never see him at one of his businesses.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
^^^ Read this Months issue of Trains Magazine or see my other thread on Amtrak dropping a Dining Car from the Silver Meteor. Ironic timing they are doing it now as we are dicussing it....
BaltACDAnd if you would ask Donald Trump how many hours he puts into his businesses I am certain he would respond 168 a week - yet you never see him at one of his businesses.
Yeah I don't want to get too far off topic. Where Jimmy Johns is different from other Sub Franchises is they have no deep fat fryer and they do not heat sandwiches. Both on average do not amount to a hill of beans in food costs so I don't get the concept. I like JJ's because they use premium toppings.....well almost their bacon sucks and they should use a thicker slice of applewood smoked bacon. Their sandwiches are short for what they are charging.
Franchisors lie their butts off to look impressive.
I used to own and run a Charley's Philly Steaks franchise and most of the ingredients were locally sourced myself at a fresh produce market, followed my own advice on the bacon and I had a line out the door during peak times when the small dining room filled up. So the theory that the public wants good freshly made food is correct.....big demand for that but also large labor cost for prepping the ingredients.
Of course the problem is that sub restaurants only earn 40% of their income at most from walk-ins the other 60% is catering and/or delivery. If you have a large amount of money with a Premium Sub Franchise you can buy one for cheap and turn it around in about the period of 1-2 years and probably just break even unless you market the heck out of delivery and catering. I just did not have the patience plus the mall I was in was asking a Manhattan, NY lease payment for suburban Dallas (ridiculous)....so I told them I would sell it to them for $1 if they thought it would be profitable at their lease payment (nothing doing they said). I did 3 catering engagements before I closed and each brought in more in net profit than 1-2 days operation of walk-ins to the restaurant (catering is very profitable) The trick there is to charge per head not per sandwich. Jimmy Johns I like their subs but their bread is not kept fresh and usually part of it is stale. Ingredient consistency also varies depending on if the person making your sandwich is trained well but hats off to them for using Guldens Mustard and Heilmans mayo, neither are cheap to buy.
The most humorous part of running a Charleys Philly Steaks is walking into Corporate HQ and looking around and seeing everyone is Korean. Who knew and I did get a snicker out of seeing that. Very little food waste if you learn how to forecast which amazed me.....thought I would be throwing out food left and right but nope....95-98% of it was consumed while it was just a day or two old. Except for the Frozen Meat, Bread and Fries of course. Those would usually last about a week each at the most.
Anyways enough of the sub tangent.
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