Running Out of Café Food?

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VentureForth

Engineer
Joined
Jan 23, 2007
Messages
6,430
Location
West Melbourne, FL
I've heard plenty of horrors about café cars that run out of food on long trips - especially if they are delayed. The Palmetto doesn't get restocked in Savannah, so it has to carry enough food from NYP to SAV to NYP again. The attendant is responsible for loading, stocking, inventory, sales and accountability.

Have there been any recent improvements to this system? Has anyone here recently been on board a train that ran out of food?
 
Not the café car, but the Coast Starlight diner ran out of certain items on a recent southbound trip. And Aramark had people delivering to the train in Oakland (although I don't know if it was to the diner or the lounge, but it seems like it could have been both if the people were there for either one).

On the other hand, I would not want the thankless headache of trying to guess how much of each item to order.
 
Almost every train I've ever been on, both the diner and the cafe have run out of at least one thing. Ofen many things by the end of the trip.

Never been on a train that ran out of everything.
 
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While I've never done it for Amtrak... several years ago I used to stock the concessions car for a tourist railroad that ran all day excursions. I was given general amounts of items to stock with the instructions to "vary quantities based on expected # of passengers." This proved to be VERY challenging. If I ran out of food items, the Customer Service managers would complain that I didn't stock enough. If I returned too many items, the food & beverage manager would complain that I over-stocked and potentially would cause wasted food (which is wasted money from a set yearly f&b budget). Since my direct supervisor was F&B I found it best to under-stock rather than over-stock. While I always tried to guess right, there really is no way to know how much of each item will be ordered.

I'm not sure how amtrak works... but some of that food may not be able to returned to the commissary once it is set out.. if that is the case, it's better for the financials to under stock those items rather than over stock.

That being said... I've also been an amtrak customer and it can be quiet annoying to have so many diner and cafe items run out during a trip.
 
While I've never done it for Amtrak... several years ago I used to stock the concessions car for a tourist railroad that ran all day excursions. I was given general amounts of items to stock with the instructions to "vary quantities based on expected # of passengers." This proved to be VERY challenging. If I ran out of food items, the Customer Service managers would complain that I didn't stock enough. If I returned too many items, the food & beverage manager would complain that I over-stocked and potentially would cause wasted food (which is wasted money from a set yearly f&b budget). Since my direct supervisor was F&B I found it best to under-stock rather than over-stock. While I always tried to guess right, there really is no way to know how much of each item will be ordered.

I'm not sure how amtrak works... but some of that food may not be able to returned to the commissary once it is set out.. if that is the case, it's better for the financials to under stock those items rather than over stock.

That being said... I've also been an amtrak customer and it can be quiet annoying to have so many diner and cafe items run out during a trip.
This sums up the challenges quite well. In addition there is no explaining peoples whims...ie this week EVERYONE wants cheeseburgers and no one eats pizza, so you may order extra cheeseburgers next week and NO ONE eats cheeseburgers, but everyone wants pizza....
 
Why would cheeseburgers and pizza, items that to the best of my knowledge are precooked/cured and stored frozen, not be returnable to the commissary? I always assumed the primary limitation was on-board freezer/refrigerator/pantry space rather than issues with commissary returns.
 
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Why would cheeseburgers and pizza, items that to the best of my knowledge are precooked/cured and stored frozen, not be returnable to the commissary? I always assumed the primary limitation was on-board freezer/refrigerator/pantry space rather than issues with commissary returns.
I just chose those two at random, but sticking with the pizza, since it is a thawed previously frozen product, it has 3 day Amtrak shelf life once it is first issued to train.

The same example can be applied to sandwiches, etc. Your second sentence is entirely correct as they factor in as well....
 
Why would cheeseburgers and pizza, items that to the best of my knowledge are precooked/cured and stored frozen, not be returnable to the commissary? I always assumed the primary limitation was on-board freezer/refrigerator/pantry space rather than issues with commissary returns.
I just chose those two at random, but sticking with the pizza, since it is a thawed previously frozen product, it has 3 day Amtrak shelf life once it is first issued to train.

The same example can be applied to sandwiches, etc. Your second sentence is entirely correct as they factor in as well....
That was the case for our frozen items as well. They were stored frozen, but delivered to the train thawed so they would be cooked from a thawed refrigerated state.
 
Amtrak used to donate some things like sandwiches to a shelter in Chicago that I volunteered in. I wonder if they still do that.
 
Southwest Chief out of Los Angeles: small bottles of my preferred white wine was exhausted in the Diner when my late seating for dinner took place. Large bottles available: yes. I made do.
 
The Texas Eagle is stocked in Chicago and the Diner and Cafe often are "shorted" by the Commissary in Chicago according to LSAs and/or they run out of "Popular" items on the return trip to Chicago from San Antonio.
 
The TE many times is out of certain items in the DC on the return trip to Chicago. I have been on trips leaving the stocking city and been told that certain items on the menu were not stocked for the trip.
 
One of the reasons I usually eat in the diner shortly after they open for each meal is to ensure they haven't run out of something. This is especially true on 2nd night/day on western trains. I've also encountered times when the commissary presumably failed to stock/provide some item(s), according to the LSA.

As mentioned above, it's a real 'trick' to guess ahead of time what will not sell fast on a trip. Peak holiday travel days must be a nightmare to figure out what to stock in advance.
 
I'm sure it's a cost issue, but I would love to see more servicing stations across the country, particularly where there are "minor" terminations where there is also thru service, like San Antonio, Savannah, St. Louis, etc...

These would also be great additional places to dump the blackwater and service the potable.
 
What about the extra space in the baggage car, put in a small freezer/cooler to carry extra inventory, especially on the longer routes or the busier routes. Maybe something where the freezer container has coded seal to maintain integrity that shanties color of the temp rises too far. This way the inventory could be reused if not needed.
 
Part of my job in the charter world is to manage the supply and provisions so I feel I have some qualification to post useful info here. I used an advanced algorithm that factored out my supply. Many of my contracted trains I worked in were seating well in excess of 1,000 passengers.

For drinks I always estimated that each passenger would consume .75 of a drink in coach whereas first class where it's free would normally drink 2. The reason I never budgeted a full drink in coach is because a substantial amount of PAX on these all day trains would never go to the cafe. Especially if we were running two half day trains.

As far as food I like to have twenty percent more then what I actually need because there are always going to be misordered food, damages, crew, and people wanting extra.

Now when we were running two half day trips in a day that's when the factoring gets really difficult because one of my contracts thought we should serve people a full meal on their three hour trip in first class. Yet coach would almost not buy anything from the commissary. On the morning trips out of 500 coach passengers j sold 100 drinks total. The afternoon trips would sell 250.

The other part that made half day trips unpleasant was we didn't have time to service the train and restock it at the turn. And we have limited storage space because they opened a gift store in the cafe as well.

But the worst case we've ever had provisioning a train was a football special. It was all first class and contained unlimited alcohol. We filled 9 kitchens with a variety of drinks on the 400 seat train. We ran out in forty minutes. We restocked while the pax were at the game. We bought even more that time storing wherever we could find space. We ran out in twenty minutes.

Moral of the story is its a difficult thing to gauge how much will move on a given trip. No two trains are the same.
 
Part of my job in the charter world is to manage the supply and provisions so I feel I have some qualification to post useful info here. I used an advanced algorithm that factored out my supply. Many of my contracted trains I worked in were seating well in excess of 1,000 passengers.

For drinks I always estimated that each passenger would consume .75 of a drink in coach whereas first class where it's free would normally drink 2. The reason I never budgeted a full drink in coach is because a substantial amount of PAX on these all day trains would never go to the cafe. Especially if we were running two half day trains.

As far as food I like to have twenty percent more then what I actually need because there are always going to be misordered food, damages, crew, and people wanting extra.

Now when we were running two half day trips in a day that's when the factoring gets really difficult because one of my contracts thought we should serve people a full meal on their three hour trip in first class. Yet coach would almost not buy anything from the commissary. On the morning trips out of 500 coach passengers j sold 100 drinks total. The afternoon trips would sell 250.

The other part that made half day trips unpleasant was we didn't have time to service the train and restock it at the turn. And we have limited storage space because they opened a gift store in the cafe as well.

But the worst case we've ever had provisioning a train was a football special. It was all first class and contained unlimited alcohol. We filled 9 kitchens with a variety of drinks on the 400 seat train. We ran out in forty minutes. We restocked while the pax were at the game. We bought even more that time storing wherever we could find space. We ran out in twenty minutes.

Moral of the story is its a difficult thing to gauge how much will move on a given trip. No two trains are the same.
That football special must have been a wild ride.
 
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Oh the football special was a trip for the record books. Not a single one of them was sober from the minute we left the initial terminal. But surprisingly we didn't have any mechanical breakdowns, and they didn't break anything.

I remember going into the ABC during the game. And the staff was overtly surprised when we basically wiped out a good 20 percent of their remaining supply. Texas lost that game so they probably were drinking their sorrows away after it.
 
For drinks I always estimated that each passenger would consume .75 of a drink in coach whereas first class where it's free would normally drink 2. The reason I never budgeted a full drink in coach is because a substantial amount of PAX on these all day trains would never go to the cafe. Especially if we were running two half day trains.

Moral of the story is its a difficult thing to gauge how much will move on a given trip. No two trains are the same.
So how do you stock snacks? Not meals but candy and lite foods or is that something your business model does not use.
 
Generally with snacks I've gone to a SAMs club and bought two boxes of prepackaged snacks. And then I hope and pray I have enough. Generally we don't move a lot of snacks far less then drinks so usually two packages will do us. The only time I've ever underestimated was when we decided to provision doughnuts from Krispie Kreme and we sold out in twenty minutes. And I had 20 dozen doughnuts. Individual sales.
 
Seaboard... We have been in similar situations for sure! There was a particular brand of cinnamon roll (the big texas) at Sams that was like your Krispy kremes... If they started to sell... I sold every single one. But if they didn't sell they didn't sell at all. Ha.
 
Provisioning should be easier when certain food is included in the fare....you can bet that just about everyone will take theirs.
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One example is the annual Amtrak Autumn Express excursion's, where everyone gets a boxed lunch. They also have a couple of cafe's on that train, but stocking is not that critical in that situation.

Another example is the Auto Train...IIRC, everyone gets meals included, right? Or at least breakfast?

Even other long haul trains that offer first class service can be pretty sure those passenger's at least will take their included meals...as to the breakdown of entree's...that is still an 'educated guess'...
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I get the idea that it is difficult to gauge how to stock items and occasionally there might be a miscaculation. However wouldn't it be the case that it would be a once-in-awhile thing to run short? Not an almost everyday occurance toward the end of runs like it seems to be? With the reserved nature of most trains they have a pretty good idea how many people will be on board before departure. This leads me to believe the Amtrak managers and accountants who do not ride the trains are excessively demanding less food loss than is realistic. All so they can look good even if the passengers only have Hamburgers to eat. Amtrak cafe's and diners already don't have that much variety. Wouldn't it be better to overstock a little and have some loss than look like you don't care about the customers by running short all the time?
 
I get the idea that it is difficult to gauge how to stock items and occasionally there might be a miscaculation. However wouldn't it be the case that it would be a once-in-awhile thing to run short? Not an almost everyday occurance toward the end of runs like it seems to be? With the reserved nature of most trains they have a pretty good idea how many people will be on board before departure. This leads me to believe the Amtrak managers and accountants who do not ride the trains are excessively demanding less food loss than is realistic. All so they can look good even if the passengers only have Hamburgers to eat. Amtrak cafe's and diners already don't have that much variety. Wouldn't it be better to overstock a little and have some loss than look like you don't care about the customers by running short all the time?
Furthermore, do lost sales (from running out of stock, as well as from closing food service long before the train reaches the route's final stop) exceed the "savings" from understocking to avoid food loss?

I can understand conservative stocking of persishable items. But surely, if maximizing both revenue and customer satisfaction are at all important, shouldn't non-perishable items be stocked in abundance? Perhaps the limited space available for this could be increased by using some space in the baggage cars? Since Amtrak has been eliminating baggage service at more and more stations, it's a good guess that baggage cars typically have some space to spare.
 
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