"At-seat service" on CS

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CHamilton

CHamilton

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The dining car steward has made several announcements on today's train 11, encouraging coach passengers to have a meal at their seats. Tonight's dinner sounds pretty good: salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, veggies, a bottle of water, and a "huge" chocolate chip cookie for $12. Only one selection, but I imagine that they'll get a fair number of takers.
 
At last, a good idea concerning on board service on Amtrak LD Trains.

I too hope this a success, if Amtrak ever returns to the old way of a la carte meals for everyone, this would be a bargain compared to the $17-$27 meals served in the Diner and the Hi-Priced Junk Food in the Cafe.
 
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That's a comparable price to most restaurants and sounds much better than $12 worth of snack car items. I'd definitely order that if I were in coach.
 
SarahZ said:
That's a comparable price to most restaurants and sounds much better than $12 worth of snack car items. I'd definitely order that if I were in coach.
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I'd order it in Sleeper! Nothing like a good Salisbury Steak and Mashed Spuds covered in Brown Gravy! I wonder if the Cookie is real or one of those machine made plastic wrapped jobs.
 
What sounds really good to me is the boxed dinner coming out of PDX on 28. I don't see why they couldn't just buy those wholesale from the caterer & sell them to coach passengers too, and actually make a profit on their meal services. They could probably try that sort of arrangement on a lot of routes - I'm sure most big cities have catering companies that would jump at the chance for regular business like that.
 
If the boxed dinners -- or the Salisbury steak, for that matter -- had ingredients lists on them which I could read to check for my allergies, I'd be all over that, too. :)
 
Does this mean they're sanitizing the back of seat fold down dinner trays, which are understood to harbor all kinds of bacteria, and that passengers often use to place their feet upon for stretching out while sleeping?
 
NorthShore said:
Does this mean they're sanitizing the back of seat fold down dinner trays, which are understood to harbor all kinds of bacteria, and that passengers often use to place their feet upon for stretching out while sleeping?
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They don't do it on airplanes and no one seems to drop dead. People change their kids diaper on the trays on airplanes.
 
D.P. Roberts said:
What sounds really good to me is the boxed dinner coming out of PDX on 28. I don't see why they couldn't just buy those wholesale from the caterer & sell them to coach passengers too, and actually make a profit on their meal services. They could probably try that sort of arrangement on a lot of routes - I'm sure most big cities have catering companies that would jump at the chance for regular business like that.
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Caterers would like to make money too. Why discount Amtrak? Why wholesale? The galleys are in place on the train. Amount of meals can be controlled. Then there is the delivery issue, wow, that can be a massive issue. Hot foods hot, cold food cold.
 
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seat38a said:
They already do this on the Empire Builder out of Havre Montana. Not sure how profitable it is for Amtrak. We bought two boxes to try on our trip in May.

DSC01142 by B H, on Flickr
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That looks delicious! I've never had that on the Builder but hear good things about it! Maybe the 60 Mass Bean Counters and Marketing Wizards could learn from this and try it on all LD Routes?
 
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