Waffle House is in the Fast Food Segment which differs from Fast Casual which is a higher price range and fresher food. I ate in a Waffle House only once, I do not know how they pass Health Department inspections as the floor was sticky and the counter had not been washed in a while. Most McDonalds and Burger Kings I see numerous health department violations because their traffic is so heavy and they are so leanly staffed they cannot keep up with keeping things clean.
Certainly want Amtrak to be above average in cleanliness and they should staff for that. My observation of the servers in the Dining Car is they are not trained well at all or if they were at one time they have long since forgotten the training. I would not hire an Amtrak Dining Car Server for any for profit restaurant. They are too slow moving and few of them are intelligent when it comes to performing simple work tasks..........and given those two items, yes, they are overpaid to boot.
Only way your going to fix that is to fire the current Dining Car Service crews and start from scratch. Amtrak will never take that dramatic of a step.
On another food service note, it really amazed me that Food Service when it existed on the Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor lost over $350,000 a year but then I learned the staffing was several $35-40,000 a year persons pushing a cart selling .75 cent to $1 candy bars mostly. Really you have to be brain dead to set something like that up for a 90 minute train ride...........that was a license to loose money and screw Wisconsin Taxpayers.
RMERME wrote the following post 3 hours ago: schlimm 2. Amtrak's entire culture seems antithetical to good food service. Best to outsource to folks in that business. As you know, I wholeheartedly agree with that idea. But how do you get around the operational questions involving unionization, railroad service, and required hours and 'away time' for the outsourced employees?
I generally support unions and living wages. But the wages you mentioned really seem out of line. ACY Tom was surely an exception, as was/is the Auto-Train, but in my limited experience, Amtrak food service employees were neither fast nor efficient and worse, they seemed to be graduates of the Penn Central College of Surliness.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
RMEYou're insulting an Atlanta institution... the politically correct term is 'Woeful House' (unless you had one of the 'steak expert' meals; then it's Offal House...)
When I lived in Atlanta in the 80s, it was Awful House, though I suppose locals pronounced Offal as awful? Not only was food bad, the service and ambience left a lot to be desired as well. Patrons often seemed involved with the crystal meth trade.
schlimm2. Amtrak's entire culture seems antithetical to good food service. Best to outsource to folks in that business.
As you know, I wholeheartedly agree with that idea. But how do you get around the operational questions involving unionization, railroad service, and required hours and 'away time' for the outsourced employees?
I do still wonder whether the whole supposedly Mica-driven 'experiment' about getting rid of the diner service is intended as a way to ease the union out, after which outsourcing can be tried 'more openly' without a grand legal foofaraw...
schlimm1. Citing the "Awful House" in reference to positive food servce is a contradiction in terms.
You're insulting an Atlanta institution... the politically correct term is 'Woeful House' (unless you had one of the 'steak expert' meals; then it's Offal House...)
I mentioned them specifically because they value the twenty-minute metric so highly, and have such a carefully-evolved set of operating systems, procedures, and priorities for accomplishing it. Do other restaurants have a similar defined policy for client dwell with good perceived satisfaction?
Keep in mind that I am NOT discussing the actual quality of the food (or lack of same) or the cleanliness of the facilities (or lack of same); it's the operation and execution and management concentration on quick turn in all respects. Waffle House is notable for being a restaurant that runs high-volume sit-down operations with a diverse fresh-cooked menu (I use the term technically, as opposed to microwaved, buffet, cold-only, etc., and NOT the build quality) in a comparatively small building with low fixed costs -- an interesting parallel to what is required in a passenger-railroad application with different clienteles and required high throughput (with restricted client access) at certain times. That's the real reason I brought them up; you can laugh, but their operational analysis and training are surprisingly well-thought-out...
RME CMStPnP dakotafred In the fast casual sub shop I owned and managed, 90 seconds from point of order to delivery of food was the standard. And we are talking making the sub. filling the soft drink and cooking the fries in that time.....very aggressive considering the cook time of fries. Still it was the standard we tried to meet. During busy times it would stretch to 3-5 min. Any longer than that and you need to start threatening to fire people. If I had a 3-5 min wait time and the line was not at least out the door, I would be on the line threatening people to move faster or get replaced and........it really was not a sweat shop it's just that the 18-22 year old crowd likes to move at a slower pace and chit chat more than they should. Amtrak as a manager, well......they not only would tolerate a 6-12 min wait time.........they would think that was fast. There is some more associated with this. The Waffle House prides itself on the 'magic twenty' - their execution is to reduce the entire dwell time of a customer to a minimum. [Note that this good execution does not necessarily imply hustling the customer to eat fast and get out as soon as their food has arrived, as the Waffle House often tries to do... ] Just as higher-speed equipment with quicker turnaround gives better equipment utilization, eliminating any possible source of delay -- whether in the 'downsized' meal-ready-to-eat Star experiments or in a full diner -- is a key source of efficiency. The 'fun' thing, where the Amtrak management needs to actually perform more management, is to keep all the crew on their toes with 'smiles free' even when it isn't a rush. It has always been interesting to me to see how traditional 'adversarial' seniority-based union "labor" can be inspired into that level of performance; you will assuredly not do it by castigating them for failing to perform to Stakhanovite level. I think you are clearly 'onto something' in taking as much slack out of actual execution as possible. I am less sanguine that Amtrak knows where to go, and what to develop, to get to a proper 'culture of service in the hospitality industry' in its training, its motivation, and its potential merit-based perks. And I have little doubt that few of the 'organizational stakeholders' that influence the fate of Amtrak are prioritizing customer service instead of what they perceive as "bottom line cost cutting", or understand the Neiman-Marcus approach that good service pays for itself in any perceived expensive-market context. And even coach passengers partaking of the food offerings -- diner style or cafe -- have paid a considerable amount to be where they are, and are entitled to a positive memorable experience, rather than surly gatekeepers making them wait in line for plastic cutlery and even more plastic comestibles... Perhaps the saddest thing is that I already hear the screams that would come from places like Capitol Hill were Amtrak to embrace the (eminently sensible!) policy that CMStP&P set out regarding comps for perceived service problems. In traditional Goliath Government-sense, any sort of giveaway is a loss of money that could have been used for tax reduction, or redirection to vote-getting pork, or whatever, and to hear that money-losing Amtrak actually ... gave away food because people asked ... is to have the managers disciplined for waste and more cutbacks made. I'd be much more sympathetic to the keep-the-traditional-diner-experience argument if I didn't think it was such political suicide to bring it up in a budget of 'scarce resources'.
CMStPnP dakotafred In the fast casual sub shop I owned and managed, 90 seconds from point of order to delivery of food was the standard. And we are talking making the sub. filling the soft drink and cooking the fries in that time.....very aggressive considering the cook time of fries. Still it was the standard we tried to meet. During busy times it would stretch to 3-5 min. Any longer than that and you need to start threatening to fire people. If I had a 3-5 min wait time and the line was not at least out the door, I would be on the line threatening people to move faster or get replaced and........it really was not a sweat shop it's just that the 18-22 year old crowd likes to move at a slower pace and chit chat more than they should. Amtrak as a manager, well......they not only would tolerate a 6-12 min wait time.........they would think that was fast.
dakotafred
In the fast casual sub shop I owned and managed, 90 seconds from point of order to delivery of food was the standard. And we are talking making the sub. filling the soft drink and cooking the fries in that time.....very aggressive considering the cook time of fries. Still it was the standard we tried to meet. During busy times it would stretch to 3-5 min. Any longer than that and you need to start threatening to fire people. If I had a 3-5 min wait time and the line was not at least out the door, I would be on the line threatening people to move faster or get replaced and........it really was not a sweat shop it's just that the 18-22 year old crowd likes to move at a slower pace and chit chat more than they should. Amtrak as a manager, well......they not only would tolerate a 6-12 min wait time.........they would think that was fast.
There is some more associated with this. The Waffle House prides itself on the 'magic twenty' - their execution is to reduce the entire dwell time of a customer to a minimum. [Note that this good execution does not necessarily imply hustling the customer to eat fast and get out as soon as their food has arrived, as the Waffle House often tries to do... ] Just as higher-speed equipment with quicker turnaround gives better equipment utilization, eliminating any possible source of delay -- whether in the 'downsized' meal-ready-to-eat Star experiments or in a full diner -- is a key source of efficiency. The 'fun' thing, where the Amtrak management needs to actually perform more management, is to keep all the crew on their toes with 'smiles free' even when it isn't a rush. It has always been interesting to me to see how traditional 'adversarial' seniority-based union "labor" can be inspired into that level of performance; you will assuredly not do it by castigating them for failing to perform to Stakhanovite level.
I think you are clearly 'onto something' in taking as much slack out of actual execution as possible. I am less sanguine that Amtrak knows where to go, and what to develop, to get to a proper 'culture of service in the hospitality industry' in its training, its motivation, and its potential merit-based perks. And I have little doubt that few of the 'organizational stakeholders' that influence the fate of Amtrak are prioritizing customer service instead of what they perceive as "bottom line cost cutting", or understand the Neiman-Marcus approach that good service pays for itself in any perceived expensive-market context. And even coach passengers partaking of the food offerings -- diner style or cafe -- have paid a considerable amount to be where they are, and are entitled to a positive memorable experience, rather than surly gatekeepers making them wait in line for plastic cutlery and even more plastic comestibles...
Perhaps the saddest thing is that I already hear the screams that would come from places like Capitol Hill were Amtrak to embrace the (eminently sensible!) policy that CMStP&P set out regarding comps for perceived service problems. In traditional Goliath Government-sense, any sort of giveaway is a loss of money that could have been used for tax reduction, or redirection to vote-getting pork, or whatever, and to hear that money-losing Amtrak actually ... gave away food because people asked ... is to have the managers disciplined for waste and more cutbacks made. I'd be much more sympathetic to the keep-the-traditional-diner-experience argument if I didn't think it was such political suicide to bring it up in a budget of 'scarce resources'.
1. Citing the "Awful House" in reference to positive food servce is a contradiction in terms.
2. Amtrak's entire culture seems antithetical to good food service. Best to outsource to folks in that business.
JPS1, using passenger miles as the proportion, sleeper passengers are 25% of meal requirements on LD trains. If the other 75% of potential meals are the coach passengers, and only 1 in 5 of the coach passengers meals are in the diner, then that adds up to 40% total of all meals are served in the diner. While this is still not a majority of the meals, it is a much more significant number than the 15% you keep going back to.
Yes the 5% shift in bookings to the Silver Star no frills train is noted, as people try this new thing. If next year that keeps up, then you will have something. If next year the passengers go back to the Silver Meteor, then we can say they tried. If those people decide that Amtrak has hit bottom and never comes back, then we have a problem.
Railvt I would have no problem at all with trying a "Pay As You Go" approach as an experiment on a ong haul train--with full-service and think it a very good idea. Carl Fowler
I would have no problem at all with trying a "Pay As You Go" approach as an experiment on a ong haul train--with full-service and think it a very good idea.
Carl Fowler
Several minutes after departure the food service attendent announces the dinning car menu and prices.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
dakotafredStanding in line for an hour for a sandwich or a drink -- not on my list of passenger-train pleasures!
V.Payne It is interesting to note the difference in meal prices between the silver cafe and the other trains where it is assumed table service of a type still exists. There seems to be a $10 additional price, which would cover labor for a single server for about 50-70 people a meal and then some. The entree itself better not cost more than $12 including the supply chain or therein lies the problem. I am not sure I would want to pay the cost difference with no fresh food preparation and a long wait between ordering and arrival. However, cutting volume through the food service car is not the way to go. Why couldn't there be a goal to serve say 200 meals a meal period? It costs about $3/carmile (+/- $1 due to varying conditions) to field a car on an existing train, which is why sleepers as incremental additions to an otherwise coach only train make sense. It takes just a few $0.5/mile rooms to recover costs and contribute to the train. Even the old ICC knew that passenger trains were suited to volume carriage, aka they have a declining average cost curve (wrt) passenger volume. There are several sources to back this up or one can figure it out with an engineering economics study. My concern is Amtrak has no way as far as I can tell to understand or express variable costs to Congress and even when requested to provide variable costs in PRIIA could not do so after a half decade, therefore their accounting system is ill suited to its purpose and quite in doubt. Honestly, why don't we lobby for contracted food service as the next experiment on the two western pairs mentioned, with locally based labor and locally sourced food being added in route at various points.
It is interesting to note the difference in meal prices between the silver cafe and the other trains where it is assumed table service of a type still exists. There seems to be a $10 additional price, which would cover labor for a single server for about 50-70 people a meal and then some. The entree itself better not cost more than $12 including the supply chain or therein lies the problem. I am not sure I would want to pay the cost difference with no fresh food preparation and a long wait between ordering and arrival.
However, cutting volume through the food service car is not the way to go. Why couldn't there be a goal to serve say 200 meals a meal period?
It costs about $3/carmile (+/- $1 due to varying conditions) to field a car on an existing train, which is why sleepers as incremental additions to an otherwise coach only train make sense. It takes just a few $0.5/mile rooms to recover costs and contribute to the train. Even the old ICC knew that passenger trains were suited to volume carriage, aka they have a declining average cost curve (wrt) passenger volume. There are several sources to back this up or one can figure it out with an engineering economics study.
My concern is Amtrak has no way as far as I can tell to understand or express variable costs to Congress and even when requested to provide variable costs in PRIIA could not do so after a half decade, therefore their accounting system is ill suited to its purpose and quite in doubt. Honestly, why don't we lobby for contracted food service as the next experiment on the two western pairs mentioned, with locally based labor and locally sourced food being added in route at various points.
As a whole in the restaurant business the cost of producing the food item you sell needs to be 30% or less of the retail price, a good % is 22%. Otherwise you are losing money. Now some folks on here use local grocery store prices as input to cost. You cannot do that because restaurants do not buy from grocery stores. When I was in the fast casual reataurant business a head of lceberg lettuce was $1 or slighly less than $1. I could buy a whole case of lemons or limes from Mexico for about $10. Your local food store is not going to meet those prices, you have to buy wholesale.
Anyways back to the fast casual sub shop I used to run. Most of the subs cost $1.50 or less to produce but sold for well over $5. Folks would wonder how I could comp 10 people in line in a single serving time. Easy decision........at most it was only costing me $15-20 to comp vs the loss of future revenue of much more if I didn't and folks got ticked off on a service issue. People remember a comp and will tend to forget or downplay a service issue if they get comp'd.
No matter what kind of food it serves, or in whatever car, Amtrak has got to do better than those "multi-car lines" on the Star waiting for a crack at a single attendant, as described by Railvet in his OP.
Standing in line for an hour for a sandwich or a drink -- not on my list of passenger-train pleasures!
Surely Amtrak can come up with some variation of the reservation system it uses on the trains I have ridden. So that maybe the line goes back only one car!
And NKPGuy above says it all on the necessity of us standing up for what makes a passenger train, rather than letting yahoos like Mica decide the operation.
One can be a railfan, a senior, pro-passenger rail and anti-Mica and his cronies without supporting nostalgia rail. I do not care for suggesting hewing to the NARP "party line" on this is the only position. In fact, I believe supporting an out-of-date position on passenger rail only: 1. Gives Mica more ammo to sink most of Amtrak as a boondoggle or pork, and 2. hinders efforts to get a 21st century rail service for the US.
MidlandMikeTo think that saving some Amtrak subsidy would make their Congressional detractors go easy on them is dreaming. Those Congressmen will not be happy until Amtrak is no longer a government entity.
Although one would think we've typed ourselves hoarse, as it were, on this topic, perhaps that's not the case.
I find myself in complete agreement with two previous comments: those of MidlandMike (above) and dakotafred. Nothing will satisfy Amtrak critics such as John Mica. Nothing. Let's not decieve ourselves into thinking some kind of dining car reforms will change such ignoramuses into champions of passenger trains; nothing short of the abolition of Amtrak is what they want.
(D)akotafred makes the point that the few million dollars at stake (no pun intended) is tolerable in such an enormous federal budget; every one of us could think of a way for the Feds to stop wasting similar amounts of money.
Shouldn't railfans be friends and advocates of Amtrak and its historically and pathetically underfunded services, instead of apologists for those who would hack away at Amtrak until there is nothing left, or nothing worth saving? Isn't that appeasement of tin-horn dictators such as Mica? We ought to be advocating for better dining cars, not ever-cheaper ways of providing some kind of food.
And yes: Raise my taxes to pay for better dining cars and a better Amtrak. I'd rather pay for that than ___________________ (fill in the blank).
JPS1Without access to Amtrak's books, it is impossible to know the inner workings of the company's cost accounting system and, therefore, how it determines its variable and fixed costs.
Not to be excessively paranoid, we also might want to keep in mind that other factors, or some aspect of the reporting, may be manipulated in order to produce the effect - here, the 'reasonable man' conclusion that eliminating the classic dining-car service on the Star might not only have saved money but increased patronage on the train... apparently at the expense of the 'other' train that retained its diner. I find it interesting in context that they're re-introducing a higher level of meal service, perhaps in an attempt to find a 'sweet spot' between Congressionally-agitated cost-effectiveness and customer howls...
Without access to Amtrak's books, it is impossible to know the inner workings of the company's cost accounting system and, therefore, how it determines its variable and fixed costs.
Rio Grande Valley, CFI,CFII
Midland Mike:
Passengers need meals. A sleeping car passenger, on average, will eat one or two more meals on the train than a coach passenger. But there are a lot more coach passengers on the long distance trains. It is hard to believe that the incremental meal(s) consumed by the sleeping car passengers are proportionally greater than the meal needs of the coach passengers who make up 85 per cent of the load.
I don't have access to Amtrak's books, so I don't know the per cent of coach passengers that eat in the dining car. Neither does anyone outside of Amtrak unless they have access to the books, i.e. GAO, DOT IG, etc.
Most of my trips are in coach. I have a rough feel for what the coach passengers want and what they do. But it is only an impression.
If the dining car has wide appeal for all passengers, how come Amtrak has to bake the meals into the sleeper fares, thereby guaranting a captive audience for it?
As noted above removing the dining car from the Silver Star does not seem to have had a negative impact on its sleeping car bookings. Sleeping car passengers on the Star increased by 5.6 per cent during the first five months of FY16, but they decreased 6.5 per cent on the Silver Meteor.
JPS1 According to Amtrak, passengers on the long distance trains ride an average of 600 miles. Sleeping car passengers ride an average of 1,000 miles. Passengers need on-board food services; passenger miles are a measure for determining distance traveled, load factor, efficiency, etc. The majority of long distance passengers - 85 per cent - are in the coaches. Some of them eat in the diner. But most of them, at least based on my limited experience, eat in the lounge car. Or they bring their own. Or they buy food off the train when they can. Amtrak knows how many of the passengers eating in the dining cars are coach vs. sleeper. But it has not released them, at least as far as I know. The issue is not whether there should be food service on the long distance trains. The question is what kind? If nearly 85 per cent of the passengers are happy with the food service or would be happy with an enhanced food service in the lounge car and, furthermore, if doing away with the dining cars would help reduce Amtrak's food and beverage losses, which give Amtrak's detractors a target, why incur the higher losses associated with the full service dining cars that serve a minority of the passengers.
According to Amtrak, passengers on the long distance trains ride an average of 600 miles. Sleeping car passengers ride an average of 1,000 miles.
Passengers need on-board food services; passenger miles are a measure for determining distance traveled, load factor, efficiency, etc.
The majority of long distance passengers - 85 per cent - are in the coaches. Some of them eat in the diner. But most of them, at least based on my limited experience, eat in the lounge car. Or they bring their own. Or they buy food off the train when they can.
Amtrak knows how many of the passengers eating in the dining cars are coach vs. sleeper. But it has not released them, at least as far as I know.
The issue is not whether there should be food service on the long distance trains. The question is what kind?
If nearly 85 per cent of the passengers are happy with the food service or would be happy with an enhanced food service in the lounge car and, furthermore, if doing away with the dining cars would help reduce Amtrak's food and beverage losses, which give Amtrak's detractors a target, why incur the higher losses associated with the full service dining cars that serve a minority of the passengers.
Passengers need on board food services while they are on board. Sleeper passengers being on board those extra 400 miles will need more meals. That's why passenger miles are the accurate measure of food service need.
As you say, ATK has not released the meals-served data, so your low-ball assumptions are not supported.
To think that saving some Amtrak subsidy would make their Congressional detractors go easy on them is dreaming. Those Congressmen will not be happy until Amtrak is no longer a government entity. Sleeper passengers account for about 1/3rd the fare collection on LD trains. Shrinking it that much, makes it an easier target.
Both JPS1 (new handle but familiar content) and Carl presented a treasure trove of data and thoughts. Much appreciation for the thought and effort. My question still remains for Carl the following. Forgetting about NEC costs (NEC track conditions and the private freight RoWs are apples and oranges) for now, why not attempt yet another pairwise comparison experiment, as on the Silvers?
Try comparing the CZ with the EB. Provide a full-service dining car with all the trimmings as in the 1950s on one, Cardinal-type service on the other. Require patrons to pay for the full labor cost only for both (no overhead) if they choose to use.
The data in the NARP push-back to the IG report is not properly supported. The footnotes explain how NARP re-worked the numbers. NARP does not provide an audit trail to the primary accounting documents, probably because it did not have access to them.
NARP has a dog in the hunt. It is an advocacy group with its own agenda. The IG, on the other-hand, is an relatively indpendent, objective appraisal organization within DOT. It does not have a dog in the hunt. The IG was not vested in the outcome.
There is no indication that NARP had or has any access to Amtrak's books, which would be essential to draw any conclusions regarding the propriety of Amtrak's cost accounting methodologies.
When I see an independent study similar to that perform by the IG, with verifable numbers, stating that Amtrak's sleeping car passengers cover their costs, I will accept it.
The average load factor for the Acelas from 2010 through 2015 ranged from 60 per cent in 2010 to 63 per cent in 2015. It is hard to believe that the first class section had a higher load factor than the train as a whole.
The Star show an increase in sleeping car passengers, while the Meteor showed a decrease in the same class of passengers. This is the relevant point in response to the ascertion that people will not pay for sleeper class unless they have a classic dining car experience. The absence of a dining car did not seem to impact ridership in the Star's sleepers, although five months is not long enough to reach any solid conclusions.
Amtrak's cost-allocations are an eternal debate item. The FAST Act specifically directs a new look at Amtrak's cost allocation methodologies. With respect to sleepers the DOT IG report was highly challenged by NARP and the advocacy community, for among other things its cost-allocations. For an alternate view you might find this interesting. http://www.narprail.org/site/assets/files/1036/whitepaper_sleepers_06.pdf
The situation on 91/92 (SILVER STAR) vs the SILVER METEOR is mixed. Overall STAR ridership indeed went up in sleepers, but on the METEOR the return per passenger is greater.
I agree that cruise fares include an allowance for food. I spent 33 years working full-time as a surface transport specialist travel agent and sold thousands of cruise and rail berths. Amtrak sleeper fares also include a generous allowance for meals. Part of the current problem was John Mica's attempt to refuse to recognize this cross-over revenue. The FAST Act does allow that after Amtrak exhausts every other effort to cut food costs this could ultimately be a way to show "no loss" compliance.
Premium fare services are always the cash cows of transportation. The small First and Business Class areas of international flights typically take in nearly as much revenue as the entire Economy section. The one First Class car on the ACELA sets is invariably full, with a typical return per seat of $125-150 over the base fare--compensated for by a "free" meal and some drinks.
I support reasonable efforts to constrain food costs--even extending to potentially privitizing the First Class and meal services, but my clients showed me again and again that even coach riders wanted more than a microwaved burger on a cross-country trip. Faced with at best Subway level meals ridership simply will not be sustained on longer journeys and Amtrak can not live long without customers willing (as they are on every long-haul train) to typically pay 150-300% of the coach fare to ride with a berth--even if they get "free" meals.
Thanks everyone for a very interesting series of responses. As usual I find myself in disagreement with Schlimm and others regarding the claim that Amtrak sleepers lose money, but we've beaten that around before and neither side is going to agree on this.
But perhaps surprisingly I need to acknowledge that if the possibility of breaking-even is central to the continuation of Amtrak's food services, the problem may be insoluable for a reason we haven't hashed over as much before. At the NARP spring Board/Council meeting in Washington (Silver Spring, MD) earlier this month an Amtrak spokesman confirmed a figure I've been trying to get for many years--indeed all the way back to my participation as an adviser to the Vermont Congressional delegation during the 1994 negotiations over starting the VERMONTER with or without food-service north of New Haven--eg. what is the average wage of an Amtrak food-service employee?
The figure (dropped almost in passing at the meeting) is sobering. Amtrak averages for salary/fringe benefits $45 an hour for these on-board service food delivery positions. This translates into an annual average cost (based on a 40 hour work week) of $93,600 per year, per staffer (and of course many OBS workers serve more than 40 hours per week). I do not mean this next observation as an attack on the calliber or quality of Amtrak food-service employees. But it is hard to imagine how any restaurant could expect to show a profit with such an average cost (fringes included) per worker. Even the base salary of such an employee at about 2/3rds of the $45 total would be almost $30 per hour. Coldly it is not generally necessary to pay anything like this for restaurant work in this country. I know Amtrak workers play essential on-board safety roles, work far longer and more demanding shifts than most food workers and deserve to be well-paid. I know all this. I just don't know how the company can possibly expect to recoup this sort of cost factor except by eliminating it.
Amtrak now must issue a monthly report to Congress on the performance in actual terms and compared to budget of certain of its various product lines. Sleeper/vs/coach performance is not one of these metrics, but overall Food Service revenue/vs expense is. While I continue to question the accuracy of Amtrak's figures applied to the national network trains, because of my conviction that Amtrak over-allocates NEC costs to its natoional network, these figures are still useful within the context of Amtrak's overall needs.
For FYI 2015 (October 1, 2014-September 30, 2015) Amtrak's cost recovery for food service reached 56.1%, compared to a target of 50.4%. In FY 2014 this recovery ratio had been 52.4%. Good news as far as it goes.
But for September 2015 alone the recovery ratio had improved to 67.5%. September is--however--based on past experience, a good month for Amtrak food service, as the FY14 September figure was 66.1%.
Amtrak claims that the NEC food service now at least breaks even, so its total claimed loss on food in FY 15 of $138,614,000 as reported in the September 2015 "Monthly Performance Report" derives from the national network. Amtrak hopes to shave much more of this in FY16, but how it can possibly vanish given the underlying cost stricture eludes me.
Footnote: Hereafter under the just passed FAST Act (which reauthorized Amtrak for the next 5 years at targeted--but not yet appropriated--funding levels) the National Network consists of both the long-haul trains AND all under 750 mile non-NEC state-supported trains. This has had one positive impact. While Amtrak now can funnel NEC out of pocket "profits" solely to the corridor, but it must also disclose that the NEC's real expenses include needed capital investment far above those day to day short-term positive flows. Yesterday the FY16 Senate Amtrak appropriation included over $340,000,000 above out of pocket revenue in direct support for the NEC alone. With respect to food-service this is consequential only to the degree we still need a true understanding of Amtrak's real cost structure. The company allocates many NEC costs and most central office costs nationally. One of the reforms required in the FAST law will be a much closer scrutiny of the real costs of the national network services.
Back to food--in the end my view is that decent food service is simply essential to attracting ridership. The new SILVER STAR, CITY OF NEW ORLEANS and CARDINAL entrees are unquestionably better than only the snack items on the usual Amtrak cafe car menu. The consensus of the NARP tasters was that they were fine for a cycle of up to three meals--if properly prepared and served and that their taste was not bad at all.
I've experienced similar food service on VIA's OCEAN LIMITED and on many European trains and I agree that if done properly this sort of meal is much better than nothing. Indeed VIA's menu on the Halifax service is honestly quite good--served in a real diner setting on china, with table clothes and stainless cutlery, but also with adequate numbers of servers. None of the NARP tasters thought these meals would work on a journey of two or more days as the only choices and all experienced them served hot and properly plated--something that very well may not prevail if only one employee is available to staff the food service.
But this still begs the question of what's best for attracting ridership and retaining it. Here is where I so deeply disapprove of Boardman's five year no food losses promise. He had to know it was impossible to attain within his underlying cost structure. Even if Amtrak were somehow to implement something like the new vacuum packed items nationwide, how would it properly staff and serve them while incurring such high wage/fringe costs? But in the absense of a decent meal option, we know from the history of the private services in the late 1960s that ridership will quickly collapse.
The cruise lines certainly do not "make money" on food--at least not in their main and all-passenger buffet restaurants (the many surcharged dining areas now common on cruise ships may be profitable). I suspect that only a system-wide privitization of on-board food service could ever come close to a real profit for food service on Amtrak and that only by paying substantially lower wages and by the contrctor not being squeezed by Amtrak the way it did to drive away Ed Ellis' Pullman Rail service on the CITY OF NEW ORLEANS.
In any event I soberly accept that this will be a hard nut to crack and I most appreeciate the very interesting postings to this stream, even the fairly many with which I respectfully disagree. For my part I believe food service is supposed to lose a sane amount of money in order to bring in other revenue--especially highly profitable patrons like ACELA Firs Class and sleeper riders. But if it must break even then indeed whether I like it or not we will see major reorganization and restructuring and these new entres (far better than nothing, but not as good as they could be) are probably only the begining.
schlimm, my point about comparing massive amounts of national wealth spent on "strong defense" budgets while spending relatively small amounts on "common good" programs such as passenger rail systems which provide viable alternative transportation for just everyday people doing everyday things such as visiting family, etc., is my attempt to point out that our nation's federal spending can afford to accomplish huge things, we just have to muster the collective will to have input into the decision making. The "strong defense" (Eisenhower's 'military-industrial complex') has succeded while public transportation has not.
As far as "cruise ship" passengers being subsidized via having sleeper/diner service sold below cost that is heavily driven, in my opinion, by really poor management by Amtrak. There is no way in hell that a good business person cannot make food service pay for itself when they have 2-300 potential customers locked up for hours with no alternative food service other than what said customers hauled with them. The marketing of sleeper/diner service on long distance Amtrak trains would make an marketing MBA blush with shame. The great Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham, once said, "Make no small plans." Unfortunately, Amtrak has absolutely no ability to make anything but small plans or, in fact, no plans at all when it comes to a market driven national passenger rail system. Perhaps it all adds up to need to rebuild the Amtrak model from composition of the Board, to its "glide path to profitablity" mission, to its management structure: diddling around with the price of a hamburger is not going to solve the Amtrak problem.
There seems to be a train of thought here [pun intended] that suggests seniors are entitled in some way to LD train services that provide heavily subsidized sleepers and full-service (semi-deluxe) dining, aka, land cruises. While riding a train 24-40 hours may appeal to some, I would suggest that most seniors probably prefer to get to their destination much more quickly or if really strapped for cash, would drive. And the folks on here who clamor for that "golden era" seem unwilling to cover the full cost.
JPS1If nearly 85 per cent of the passengers are happy with the food service or would be happy with an enhanced food service in the lounge car and, furthermore, if doing away with the dining cars would help reduce Amtrak's food and beverage losses, which give Amtrak's detractors a target, why incur the higher losses associated with the full service dining cars that serve a minority of the passengers.
Great point!!
northeaster Gerald R. Ford–class aircraft carrier Builders: Newport News Shipbuilding Operators: United States Navy Preceded by: Nimitz class Cost: Program cost: $36.30 billion[1](FY15) times 3 scheduled to be built within next several years. Plus support ships and planes. But, even if not exact numbers the relative size tells of the effectiveness of a "strong defense" lobby vs public transportation.
Your point is? That now you got the numbers right? It's apples and oranges, guns vs butter.
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