Food and Beverage Working Group

From the Rail Passengers Association, a working group that will improve Amtrak Café and Dining Service: https://www.railpassengers.org/happenin ... k-service/

F&B WORKING GROUP SETS THE TABLE FOR BETTER AMTRAK SERVICE

As many of you know, I have spent the past few years fighting to improve onboard service for Amtrak. Since day one of “Flexible Dining” replacing real meal service, Association supporters have written to me asking for an amenity that isn’t contained in black plastic bowls, and it has been my pleasure to champion a better solution. The opportunity to advocate for real improvement presented itself as Jim Mathews and I began drafting language for the Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs Act. We were able to effectively secure Sec. 22208:

Passenger Experience Enhancement: Eliminates requirement that food and beverage services on trains may only be provided if their revenues break even during a fiscal year. This section also directs Amtrak to establish a working group—including nonprofit organizations representing Amtrak passengers—to develop recommendations to improve Amtrak’s onboard food and beverage services.


Thus, the Food and Beverage Working Group came into existence. Over the last year, I have worked with a team of 15 members spanning from Cafe Car Attendants and onboard chefs to international transit experts and Amtrak management as well as state partners to effectively analyze the state of Onboard Service. We have collaborated in research, case studies, surveying, and channeling public response to create over 30 recommendations to improve all Amtrak service models across the United States. Now that the report is filed, Amtrak has 180 days to respond. The hope is that by exemplifying how other passenger rail providers have improved their service, we can get Amtrak into a position where they are truly prepared for the coming rail renaissance and FRA backed corridor expansions over the next five years.
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It will be interesting to find the full 30 page report.

I also look forward to the report. There's not much food that I won't eat, but on a recent sleeper on the Silver Meteor, the flexible dining options were so bad that neither I nor my 15 year old son (aka human food disposal unit) were able to eat some of it, especially the breakfast options. For the return trip, we didn't even bother with the dining car and got breakfast sandwiches in the cafe instead. For lunch, we also skipped that and went out for food in NYC during out 60 minute layover.

Working groups are just a smoke screen to pretend that you're listening to what people want, with no real obligation to do anything about it.

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Just back from my first long trip on the Carolinian since the pandemic. I was somewhat impressed with Cafe menu revisions (grilled cheese, bbq sandwich and a few other new (for me) lunch entrees. I will say that, while the grilled cheese looked OK, it suffers the same fate as most foods after their visit to the industrial microwave. Regardless the details, I was pleased to see a much improved menu of options from the Cafe car.

The downside was the Carolinian lacked a business car attendant yesterday so the BC fare bought little more than access to a 2x2 leather seat (which was not that comfortable).

I’ve been in working groups in other fields. Trust me, management has no obligation to even read the report.

“Thank you for your input, we will continue on the current operations path.”

I've learned of this development today;
https://www.amtrak.com/onboard/meals-di ... starr.html

Just think,the more of these goodies they can sneak in through the back door, the more they have available to cut when that dictum comes xown.

This, along with the apparent restoration of full-service traditional dining - apparently now System Wide - just gives them more "fodder" when the dictum comes down from on high to "cut".