(from the Slivers Diner Thread:
ryanov wrote:the problem is stagnating wages to the point where having a standard meal at a sit-down could be considered unaffordable.
Stagnating wages are very bad (I'm for a $15/hr min wage), but even so, what most "working folks" are eating these days is quick-service meals ("fast food") or casual-service ("Applebees") who pay low wages but whose real secret to affordability is high productivity (lots of table turns, limited menus, semi-prepared food).
But you know what? Of all the things working people don't have money for, food eaten out does not seem to be the problem:
Whether it is high(er)-wage Costco or low(er)-wage Wendy's, the real issue is that other food providers are free to optimize their menu and production processes to deliver prepared food that rivals groceries you prepare yourself. It is a trend, but a lot of it is driven by the continuous innovation that's happening at land-based food retailers. In fact, in 2015 they estimate that people are now spending more food eating out than on groceries.
Wages have stagnated, but what working people have *really* cut back on are discretionary (non-food) spending. Falling food costs have generally been a boon for lower-income workers.
Click image for a whole article in the Atlantic on falling food costs
Even if we raised the wages of "the competition" (on land), and raised the wages of "the customers" on board, we'd still have the problem of throughput--you just can't "capture" and serve enough people on a train to keep workers and equipment as busy/productive as they need to be to deliver food for about the same price as land. Wendy's has walk-up, drive-thru, and a whole parking lot (and then late-night drive thru) to make the whole thing work. Another trick is that for many, today's unsold Rotisserie chicken or hamburgers are tomorrow's chicken salad or (Wendy's) chili, but the quality and value (such as they are) that such land-based systems deliver cannot be matched once you're moving on a train (or airplane).
The airlines "solved" this problem by eliminating food. Travelers didn't stop eating and didn't stop traveling. They simply started buying their food at stores or airport restaurants that seem to have done a good-enough job (and deliver way more variety and arguably better quality than a rolling diner can). To the extent that there is food on planes, there's no kitchen and meals produced in high-productivity factory commissaries simply get reheated wholesale. That is what food looks like when it's included in a ticket price, not a sit down meal.
And as we've seen on the Silver Star, eliminating the diner (and lowering fares) caused the numbers of sleeper-class riders go up! It is very hard to argue that those customers "should" be able to afford a sit-down, table-service meal, when they are happier (or at least more numerous) procuring their food elsewhere and saving $100.