Amtrak Concession Losses Staggering

According to this (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/us/po ... .html?_r=0) there are about 1,200 food service employees. Total labor costs come to $65,000 per employee, based on the $78 million figure cited in a previous message. That's decent money, even when you factor in that amount includes benefits and other non-salary costs, but no one's getting rich working the trains.

According to this: (http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/374/876/Lon ... Trains.pdf), sleeper passengers accounted for 36% of the LD trains' total revenue of $454 million, or roughly $163 million. Any changes to food service must take this into account or the situation would only be made worse.

Given that food service losses amount to about 5% of Amtrak's subsidy, is this much ado about nothing?

FatNoah wrote:According to this (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/us/po ... .html?_r=0) there are about 1,200 food service employees. Total labor costs come to $65,000 per employee, based on the $78 million figure cited in a previous message. That's decent money, even when you factor in that amount includes benefits and other non-salary costs, but no one's getting rich working the trains.

According to this: (http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/374/876/Lon ... Trains.pdf), sleeper passengers accounted for 36% of the LD trains' total revenue of $454 million, or roughly $163 million. Any changes to food service must take this into account or the situation would only be made worse.

Given that food service losses amount to about 5% of Amtrak's subsidy, is this much ado about nothing?

I would argue that even once you take politics, election season, et cetera out of the picture, an average $83.4 million a year in losses on food is more than something you can easily just 'write off.'

That having been said, I don't think the goal for Amtrak is or should be profit by "ancillary revenue." I think the goal is to break even on food service, whether that's a straight 100% cost recovery or, say, 80% cost recovery plus revenue from sleeper/first class passenger tickets to make up the other 20% - and that's eminently doable.

I'd go as far as to say that it can be done with only minor changes.

Has anyone explored the potential of offering dinner service (at a premium) to coach class passengers aboard long distance services as well? Charge them whatever sleeper passengers 'pay' for dinner, plus a minor (5%~10%) 'furnishing' charge. I'm sure plenty of people would go for that.

Giving Amtrak the capacity to prepare meals 'off-train,' even if the diner cars continue to see use en route, would also open up the option of providing at-seat dinner service options to business class passengers aboard a Regional, or first-class Acela passengers.

Commuting Boston Student wrote: Has anyone explored the potential of offering dinner service (at a premium) to coach class passengers aboard long distance services as well? Charge them whatever sleeper passengers 'pay' for dinner, plus a minor (5%~10%) 'furnishing' charge. I'm sure plenty of people would go for that.

Umm, Coach passengers can already use the dinner. I'm not really sure what you're suggesting that's new other than raising the current price?

The one thing I think they could be more consistent about is making sure coach passengers hear the dining car announcements. On the Crescent I've seen everything from one garbled announcement over the speakers when leaving WAS to a dining car attendant going through taking reservations. I have to guess I expect the latter does generate a bit more business.

Greg Moore wrote: Umm, Coach passengers can already use the dinner. I'm not really sure what you're suggesting that's new other than raising the current price?

The one thing I think they could be more consistent about is making sure coach passengers hear the dining car announcements. On the Crescent I've seen everything from one garbled announcement over the speakers when leaving WAS to a dining car attendant going through taking reservations. I have to guess I expect the latter does generate a bit more business.

although I haven't ridden coach in some time (on a long distance trip) I do understand that it's only open after sleeping car passengers get their seatings. that's secondhand though. they should probably charge sleeping car passengers for food separately and see how many of them want it and how many eat it because it's included.
fat noah-next time you ride watch them do inventory then tell me it's run efficiently. (no slight to the obs employees who just work in a 19th c system)

Suburban Station wrote:

Greg Moore wrote: Umm, Coach passengers can already use the dinner. I'm not really sure what you're suggesting that's new other than raising the current price?

The one thing I think they could be more consistent about is making sure coach passengers hear the dining car announcements. On the Crescent I've seen everything from one garbled announcement over the speakers when leaving WAS to a dining car attendant going through taking reservations. I have to guess I expect the latter does generate a bit more business.

although I haven't ridden coach in some time (on a long distance trip) I do understand that it's only open after sleeping car passengers get their seatings. that's secondhand though. they should probably charge sleeping car passengers for food separately and see how many of them want it and how many eat it because it's included.
fat noah-next time you ride watch them do inventory then tell me it's run efficiently. (no slight to the obs employees who just work in a 19th c system)

Sleeping car passengers are already being charged for dinner if they dine in the diner or not. Making it optional means less will, resulting with the diner making even less money.

Suburban Station wrote:

Greg Moore wrote: Umm, Coach passengers can already use the dinner. I'm not really sure what you're suggesting that's new other than raising the current price?

The one thing I think they could be more consistent about is making sure coach passengers hear the dining car announcements. On the Crescent I've seen everything from one garbled announcement over the speakers when leaving WAS to a dining car attendant going through taking reservations. I have to guess I expect the latter does generate a bit more business.

although I haven't ridden coach in some time (on a long distance trip) I do understand that it's only open after sleeping car passengers get their seatings. that's secondhand though. they should probably charge sleeping car passengers for food separately and see how many of them want it and how many eat it because it's included.
fat noah-next time you ride watch them do inventory then tell me it's run efficiently. (no slight to the obs employees who just work in a 19th c system)

I've never had a problem getting dinner in the diner riding coach. On the other hand, if they are really selling out the diner to sleeping passengers, that's fine. But unlikely.

Consider something like the Crescent with 2 sleepers, for a max of 30 adult passengers each for a total of 60 adults. Typical diner will have 48 seats and at least 2 if not 3 "seatings" (some are less formal about this than others). So, you can seat 144 passengers for dinner. That means 84 coach passengers or about 1/3 of the train could eat in the diner if they wanted to.

FatNoah wrote:According to this (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/us/po ... .html?_r=0) there are about 1,200 food service employees. Total labor costs come to $65,000 per employee, based on the $78 million figure cited in a previous message. That's decent money, even when you factor in that amount includes benefits and other non-salary costs, but no one's getting rich working the trains.

I'm not comfortable with those calculations. There may be 1200 OBS employees, but the last time I checked they didn't maintain the cars. There are mechanical employees that should be included in these figures. Marketing also plans and executes the various menus. No on has mentioned the condemned food. The food is time sensitive and think about how much is teetering on the brink during this.disruption. I suggest the money per person figure is too high.
Someone has to supply the ice and repair those giant ovens.

The times I've ridden an LD train, the Lake Shore coming from Boston, getting a diner seating as a coach passenger was a matter of persistence. In both instances a DCA was supposed to come through coach looking for passengers who wanted a reservation; I can't say whether that was done prior to the 449/49 linkup, but I never saw it happen after the connection was made. I wound up making my way to the DC myself at least twice each time to get seated (the second time something must have been wrong as the DC was chaos).

markhb wrote:The times I've ridden an LD train, the Lake Shore coming from Boston, getting a diner seating as a coach passenger was a matter of persistence. In both instances a DCA was supposed to come through coach looking for passengers who wanted a reservation; I can't say whether that was done prior to the 449/49 linkup, but I never saw it happen after the connection was made. I wound up making my way to the DC myself at least twice each time to get seated (the second time something must have been wrong as the DC was chaos).

Yeah, never count on the DCA to actually come through. Always go up yourself to be sure.

electricron wrote: Sleeping car passengers are already being charged for dinner if they dine in the diner or not. Making it optional means less will, resulting with the diner making even less money.

I think this is a backwards way of looking at it. Today Amtrak forces sleepers to buy their meals on the dining car and loses a lot of money doing this. If Sleeping car passengers are not willing to buy the meals but still pay for the berths (nobody books a sleeper for free meals) then the dining car will either have to improve, sell more meals to coach passengers, or close up shop. either way, you will see what passengers actually want and potentially save money if it's better run or if people don't want it and it shuts down. there are two groups of long hauls, the western multiday trains and the eastern overnights. it's entirely possible that the outcome would be different for these two.

greg-it would appear form other comments that getting in the diner isn't as easy as it should be. and again, the inventory method is archaic and it's highly unlikely amtrak can manage it's comdemned food or its costs accurately using it...and if they are, they'd have to have a lot of extra backend work (read, employees or contract expenses). given amtrak's services are mostly in large cities, particularly in the east, it seems unlikely there is a real need to import food into ny commissaries from other cities (lest someone actually argue ny has bad food)

No on has mentioned the condemned food

The money figure I quoted referred to labor costs, so condemned food wouldn't be in that total. In any case, adding additional personnel to the calculation would only lower the per-person cost. It seems like the food service is a cost of doing business that should be minimized, if possible, but it's okay if it runs at a loss.

The times I've ridden coach I typically just eat the microwaved food in the lounge car. There's even been times when I'm in a sleeper and am just not hungry during meal time and I've skipped on meals that were included in my ticket in favor of a microwaved hot dog or mini pizza when I am hungry later on. I think that if they just did away with the diner car service entirely and expanded the snack bar to serve actual to-go meals on demand, they would not just save a lot of money but maybe even profit off it. In the downstairs of the Superliner II lounge cars there's that whole big booth area that takes up a quarter of the car, that could become a small kitchen with a grill where full satisfying meals could be made any time of the day. The booths are nice, but you could swap some of the upstairs lounge seating for the same effect.

RedLantern wrote:The times I've ridden coach I typically just eat the microwaved food in the lounge car. There's even been times when I'm in a sleeper and am just not hungry during meal time and I've skipped on meals that were included in my ticket in favor of a microwaved hot dog or mini pizza when I am hungry later on. I think that if they just did away with the diner car service entirely and expanded the snack bar to serve actual to-go meals on demand, they would not just save a lot of money but maybe even profit off it. In the downstairs of the Superliner II lounge cars there's that whole big booth area that takes up a quarter of the car, that could become a small kitchen with a grill where full satisfying meals could be made any time of the day. The booths are nice, but you could swap some of the upstairs lounge seating for the same effect.

I'm not sure that the Amfleet Café Cars or any future Viewliner Lounge Cars would have enough room to do something like this, which means this doesn't help any Long-Distance trains east of Chicago.

Wouldn't it be much simpler to just do away with the dinner seatings instead - opening up the diner car to meals 'on-demand' for several hour stretches?

Alternatively, supplement the dinner services by allowing for 'take-out' to be ordered in the Lounge Car.

Commuting Boston Student wrote:

RedLantern wrote:The times I've ridden coach I typically just eat the microwaved food in the lounge car. There's even been times when I'm in a sleeper and am just not hungry during meal time and I've skipped on meals that were included in my ticket in favor of a microwaved hot dog or mini pizza when I am hungry later on. I think that if they just did away with the diner car service entirely and expanded the snack bar to serve actual to-go meals on demand, they would not just save a lot of money but maybe even profit off it. In the downstairs of the Superliner II lounge cars there's that whole big booth area that takes up a quarter of the car, that could become a small kitchen with a grill where full satisfying meals could be made any time of the day. The booths are nice, but you could swap some of the upstairs lounge seating for the same effect.

I'm not sure that the Amfleet Café Cars or any future Viewliner Lounge Cars would have enough room to do something like this, which means this doesn't help any Long-Distance trains east of Chicago.

Wouldn't it be much simpler to just do away with the dinner seatings instead - opening up the diner car to meals 'on-demand' for several hour stretches?

Alternatively, supplement the dinner services by allowing for 'take-out' to be ordered in the Lounge Car.

Despite ostensibly having "seatings" rarely have I found myself having to wait more than 5-10 minutes for a table in the dining car.

"take-out" is not a bad idea, but again, not sure how feasible it really is.

RedLantern wrote:The times I've ridden coach I typically just eat the microwaved food in the lounge car. There's even been times when I'm in a sleeper and am just not hungry during meal time and I've skipped on meals that were included in my ticket in favor of a microwaved hot dog or mini pizza when I am hungry later on. I think that if they just did away with the diner car service entirely and expanded the snack bar to serve actual to-go meals on demand, they would not just save a lot of money but maybe even profit off it. In the downstairs of the Superliner II lounge cars there's that whole big booth area that takes up a quarter of the car, that could become a small kitchen with a grill where full satisfying meals could be made any time of the day. The booths are nice, but you could swap some of the upstairs lounge seating for the same effect.

this is perhaps a more practical idea than amtrak's dead diner-lounge concept. especially in the superliners where one can have a grill downstairs and a bartender upstairs. in today's world bars serve good food and planty of families feel comfortable eating there..gastropub on wheels might be a bit of a stretch but it's a similar idea. the extra labor in the cafe car would be more than offset by less labor in the dining car. grills are extremely versatile allowing everything from fresh burgers to toast to be cooked.