As a 25-year-veteren of the food and beverage/hospitality industry, I always take special interest in Amtrak’s ongoing trials and tribulations in the food service business.
First and foremost, there is NO WAY Amtrak will ever make money or even approach breaking even on it’s food service, due to it’s high labor-agreement based staffing costs. NO restaurant outside of say New York City or Los Angeles could operate at a profit and pay the wages that Amtrak pays.
While I’m as big a fan of traditional dining car service as anyone, I do agree that continuing to loss over $100 million a year on Food and Beverage Service is no longer justifiable. If we want Amtrak to survive at all, we should all agree that something had to change.
Thus, Amtrak has devised a two-step process to significantly reduce costs, while still providing (hopefully) at least some level of acceptable service. The current roll-out of ‘simplified’ dining is the first step. Here are the facts as I undertand them:
Dining Car staff is reduced from 5 (1 steward, 2 servers, 2 kitchen staff) to 3 (1 steward, 1 server, 1 kitchen staff). This staffing will allow service of up to 96 persons per meal period. If a higher load (up to 142 persons is expected), an additional staff member is to be added. Above 142 to be served, a fifth person is added.
How is this reduction in staff accomplished you ask? If it works right (yes, I agree a BIG if), it should work well.
Food wise, the main entrees are brought on-board already cooked. This is truly NO change for most of the items served in recent years. Other then the eggs and pancakes at breakfast and the steak at dinner, virtually everything else has been pre-cooked for sometime. After initial problems, the Chef is again preparing starch and vegetable on board. And now, reportedly, some egg items are back to being done on board too. Given the staggered seating times, one Chef should be able to handle everything without a problem.
With the new disposable kitchen and service ware, (which apparently is quite nice) the dish/pot washing task which was the primarily job of the second kitchen person is no longer required.
Now to the service side…How many of us in recent years have had to wait 15-20-25-even 30 minutes after being seated to even be approached? I know I have! The new reservation system, which does limit seating to 8 persons per 15 minutes, should eliminate this problem. I would much rather be served promptly after being seated. As noted above, the plan is to serve 96 persons over a four meal period with the base staffing (16 people every 30 minutes, with a 15 minutes gap with no seating before the next groups start). I know the Chef would much rather be preparing/plating just 8 meals at a time and I can assure you that if I could run my restaurant with seating staggered like this, the service would be world class.
The second phase of the proposed changes, the new "diner-light" cars are still at least a year away from service. I don't undertand enough of this concept (of a combined single diner-lounge car) to know how this will work. I do think the plan to offer continuous sit-down full meal service all day long will be a plus however.
How will all this really work? Only time will tell, but I for one applaud Amtrak for trying to devise a system that just may actually improve the quality of the dining experience and save money too.
