dakotafred I think we're playing Congress' game and losing sight of the big picture. It's as ridiculous to demand that the diner be a profit center as for a grocery store to require that everything in its inventory make money. I have no idea what grocers make on, say, dairy products. Maybe it's a lot, maybe not. (The latter, I think, if everybody is as picky about freshness dates as I am.) The point is, nobody would shop at the store if he couldn't pick up milk while he's at it. Similarly with the LD diner. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this has to be the most expensive form of food service going, and that if you charged what it cost nobody would pay. At the same time, the alternatives, including no food service at all, have all been tried and found wanting. If we're going to run the LD trains, everybody needs to grow up and accept the full-service diner as part of the cost. (Everything on the train loses money, starting with the locomotive engineer.)
I think we're playing Congress' game and losing sight of the big picture. It's as ridiculous to demand that the diner be a profit center as for a grocery store to require that everything in its inventory make money.
I have no idea what grocers make on, say, dairy products. Maybe it's a lot, maybe not. (The latter, I think, if everybody is as picky about freshness dates as I am.) The point is, nobody would shop at the store if he couldn't pick up milk while he's at it.
Similarly with the LD diner. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this has to be the most expensive form of food service going, and that if you charged what it cost nobody would pay. At the same time, the alternatives, including no food service at all, have all been tried and found wanting.
If we're going to run the LD trains, everybody needs to grow up and accept the full-service diner as part of the cost. (Everything on the train loses money, starting with the locomotive engineer.)
I think your right that unless we are talking a 26 to 30 car passenger train. I do not see how on Earth a Railroad Dining car can be profitable unless they raise the prices to a price point that most people will not pay. Folks here do not realize how price sensitive the public is when it comes to food.
I had people walk away from my Sub Sandwich place because they thought $6 for a Submarine made up of largely fresh and premium ingredients was too high to pay for a sandwich. What I found interesting is I increased the price of soda by 30 cents each...........nobody noticed / nobody complained. I tried it with a Sub and it was like I was price gouging and lots complained or would not pay it. Very interesting......I still cannot explain why the response was different between the two items.
Now some of a meals price increase can be offset by percieved value by the customer. You jazz up the presentation on the plate and people are willing to pay a little more for it (Rocky Mountaineer does this). You work on the packaging and folks can be fooled they are getting a larger food portion when actually it is less. Also, interesting.
gardendanceWhen you say half I hope you mean half of the passenger area. At least one quarter of the car's already devoted to the galley or kitchen.
I know.....but compare that space on a dining car galley compared to what is allocated on an airliner galley, I think they can shrink the amount of space dedicated to the galley on a railroad dining car for food prep.
I think they are stuck with food storage space though since most airliners only serve one meal and I believe the transatlantic or transpacific flights have elevators to the cargo space for additional food storage. Or maybe they can cope on one level.....not sure.
dakotafredIt's as ridiculous to demand that the diner be a profit center as for a grocery store to require that everything in its inventory make money.
Congress has only mandated the Amtrak food service to break even. And to clarify your analogy, you have a grocery store that loses so much money on one segment that it causes the whole store to be a loss, even though some product lines lose only a bit or even make money.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
To me, it isn't about turning a profit or even breaking even. It is about the wisest use of tax monies, based on the mission of Amtrak (transportation) and providing the greatest good for the most people (you can serve far more people with well-developed corridors than with sparse LD trains).
Specifically, full-service LD dining cars are a nice-to-have option, but only in the context of a segment that is growing in numbers of passengers served and having a ppm subsidy similar to that of the rest of Amtrak. The growth of the LD passenger ridership is flat (hence a declining percentage of Amtrak's growing total) and the ppm subsidy is the highest segment of Amtrak, by far. How can that be justified? How can the provision of highly-subsidized, old-fashioned, costly and relatively luxururious food services by a government agency be justified? Are the few patrons of Amtrak LD sleepers and dining cars some kind of elite who need a subsidized china and tablecloth food service?
Congress has mandated for years that Amtrak food services break even. The difference is that now they seem to mean it. And they could easily have the public on their side. I can easily imagine some pol running TV spots showing happy, laughing passengers in an Amtrak dining car eating their dinners with a word overlay showing the subsidy amount for each food item.
CMStPnP 1. Lowering the cost of the lease on the Diner, maybe only use half a car instead of a full car and use the other half of the car for coach passengers.
1. Lowering the cost of the lease on the Diner, maybe only use half a car instead of a full car and use the other half of the car for coach passengers.
When you say half I hope you mean half of the passenger area. At least one quarter of the car's already devoted to the galley or kitchen.
Patrick Boylan
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GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Amtrak refuses to adjust food charges to cover costs...simple as that, railroad food has always been cheap compared to what you find anywhere else. If they went back to the cooked on board food and priced it accordingly(to cover all costs, materials and wages), then they wouldn't have such huge loses in the food deparment, and people will pay for good food...no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
Amtrak refuses to adjust food charges to cover costs...simple as that, railroad food has always been cheap compared to what you find anywhere else. If they went back to the cooked on board food and priced it accordingly(to cover all costs, materials and wages), then they wouldn't have such huge loses in the food deparment, and people will pay for good food...no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
Preparing the food entirely onboard increases your food cost and it will take longer to serve a meal on a per passenger basis. Look at it as a fixed business.
Lets say a daily lease on a Dinning Car or Car dedicated to eating is approx $7,000.00. Now add on the onboard service people that you have to pay full time around the clock wether they are working or not. Add those two together and add 25-30% for food costs. Then divide by number of passengers on the train that will use the diner for a sitting (I would esitimate that on average Amtrak has three sittings per meal and they are not all 100% occupancy.....so count the seats in the Diner and figure about 70-80% occupancy.
That will give you how much in average check each diner will have to pay to at least break even.
The only way your going to fix part of this is:
2. Lowering the food prep time and costs allowing the dining car to serve the food quicker and perhaps do two to three more seatings per meal. This would also reduce labor requirements.
3. Reducing the staff on the diner.
So redo the above calculations and cut the lease per day by half to $3500, Reduce the food costs and labor both by 15-20%, with a smaller diner you might not serve the same amount of passengers so you might have to cut number of passengers served. But now you can add in revenue from half the car being coach seats. Even with all those changes your going to be hard pressed to break even and offer decent prices in the dining car. As even a half car of coach seats does not cover the fixed costs of running a dining car by itself.
Johnny
It's doubtful that many people would use the dining car you describe with passing on all the full costs to patrons.
Deggesty The Trains item says it is the Silver Star. Did the powers that be at Amtrak decide to take the diner off the Silver Meteor instead?
The Trains item says it is the Silver Star. Did the powers that be at Amtrak decide to take the diner off the Silver Meteor instead?
No I was going from memory so I probably got it wrong.
CMStPnP Experimenting with dropping a diner from a long distance train (Silver Meteor) and reducing sleeping car charges by the 10% for free meals surcharge. In this next issue of Trains. Don't want to spoil the article for anyone so lets wait another few days for everyone to get their mailed copy. The author in the article is complaining about the fairness of the test as Amtrak is not testing retaining the Dining Car and adding Premium meals but also dropping the sleeping car surcharge for free meals and making sleeping car passengers pay. I cannot believe that only 10% of a sleeper covers all the meals in the Diner. Heck the Texas Eagle it is $350 each way in a Economy Sleeper so thats $35 for Dinner, Breakfest and Lunch? No way are those three meals together only $35. Which is what I suspected when reading about the Dining Car deficits. The Sleeping Car Passengers are not paying the market costs of the meals consummed.......gesh!
Experimenting with dropping a diner from a long distance train (Silver Meteor) and reducing sleeping car charges by the 10% for free meals surcharge. In this next issue of Trains. Don't want to spoil the article for anyone so lets wait another few days for everyone to get their mailed copy.
The author in the article is complaining about the fairness of the test as Amtrak is not testing retaining the Dining Car and adding Premium meals but also dropping the sleeping car surcharge for free meals and making sleeping car passengers pay.
I cannot believe that only 10% of a sleeper covers all the meals in the Diner. Heck the Texas Eagle it is $350 each way in a Economy Sleeper so thats $35 for Dinner, Breakfest and Lunch? No way are those three meals together only $35. Which is what I suspected when reading about the Dining Car deficits. The Sleeping Car Passengers are not paying the market costs of the meals consummed.......gesh!
Presumably the food surcharge is on a cost basis, not retail. Even so, $35 cost for those three meals sounds low. But then, the diner food isn't worth it in the opinion of many who do not patronize the diner for all three meals, maybe none.
The 10% is illustrative. There was a fairly long section in the OIG food service report explaining that the transfer was based on the menu prices. For Acela they compare hotel provided meal prices.
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