Even food and drink derailing Amtrak

[Superliner Diner]

From Newark, NJ Star-Ledger, 6/10/05:

WASHINGTON -- Amtrak is not only losing huge sums of money operating its passenger trains, it's also running deep in the red on the food and drinks it sells to its passengers.
The General Accountability Office told Congress yesterday that Amtrak lost almost $245 million between fiscal 2002 and 2004 on its food and beverage service for passengers riding both long- and short-distance trains.

This story is here.

 

[battalion51]

Amtrak is definitely trying to pick up some of these loses, they have raised prices in the Dining Car already, and prices in the Lounge go up on the 15th by $.25-$.50. They will be discontinuing some items as well that have not sold very well like the Margaritas.

 

[Midland Valley]

If you purchase a can of pop for say .50, and sell it for $1.50, you should make money. It sounds to me like there are too many fingers in the till. These commisary companies could be like the vending comanies and run by, well let's say "family organizations". Of course I don't know that for sure. Maybe some hard nosed accounting and accountibility will help sort things out. Raising prices doesn't seem right in light of their already being high. Several years ago I had an Amtrak employee tell me they paid $30,000. per year to show movies on the Chief. They weren't allowed to just rent movies like the rest of us and play them, they were contracted.

It just sounds to me like there are too many archaic rules, regulations and union issues.

 

[MrFSS]

It just sounds to me like there are too many archaic rules, regulations and union issues.

I retired from a company with over 50,000 employees, nationwide, and I learned early on that most in management do one thing - make rules and regulations that will protect themselves from having their job eliminated at some point in time. And, the more rules there are, the more people it takes to enforce them and therefore more people making more rules, etc. It is never ending. The sad part was that ever once in a while someone with some authority would come along and try to change it to make it better and more efficient. Guess what happened to that person!!!

I can't imagine the federal government and its agencies are any different.

 

[Midland Valley]

Maybe Amtrak should get out of the food business and lease out the lounge, cafe, dinette, and dining cars to a business with certain expectations for quality and price and let them deal with it.

 

[cbender]

If you purchase a can of pop for say .50, and sell it for $1.50, you should make money.

I'm not sure about that. I oversee the operation of a small cafe on my university campus. We set our target Cost of Goods at 33% and are a subsidized non-profit (ie. we're shooting for zero, but often fall short). So a beverage that costs us $0.50 is priced at $1.50 and we're just breaking even after labor, rent, insurance, marketing, cleaning, etc. Granted, this example doesn't work very well with soda because it is very cheap to begin with. But stretch the analogy to alcoholic beverages or food and 33% is quite reasonable.

I'm sure that Amtrak has higher labor costs than we do (we're not using unionized labor), so the COG must be even lower for them to compensate.

 

[Midland Valley]

Well if I remember right, Fred Harvey did a pretty good job for the AT&SF and I think the Frisco also. That might be a way for Amtrak to get out from under some heavy restrictions or labor issues.

 

[battalion51]

One of the conversations I had with the LSA's and a TA yesterday was that Amtrak and its food and beverage service is a completely different animal than resturants. Most restruants don't even pay minimum wage to their waiters, they work off tips, and kitchen staff makes $7-$10/hour at a Friday's type of resturant. Amtrak however has to deal with union wages, hefty maintenance on their fleet, dormitory space, layover benefits, health, retirement, etc. all things resturants don't have to provide to their employees. So comparing Amtrak's food service to ANYONE else's is absolutely ludacrist.

 

[Midland Valley]

So why do they raise a fuss aout it? Do they not have a clue about these issues and just see dollars and cents? I say they should support it like everything else at Amtrak, understanding the situation the railroad is under. I'm not a union buster, so lets take the service for what it is and just support it period. But wherever there are sticky fingers, they should be whacked!

 

[AlanB]

B51 is quite correct, most resturant waiters rely considerably on tips for part of their wages. Except at the finest resturants, most waiters/waitresses are lucky if they are paid $3.00 an hour by their employer. The rest of their income comes from tips.

I've seen many people who leave no tip in the dining car, in part because they believe that the tip along with the meal was included in their sleeper reward. Lounge attendants probably do even worse.

Additionally, no waiter/waitress that I've ever seen or met, works three meals in one day. Some pull a double shift doing two meals, but I don't know of any who work all three meals. Then add in the fact that Amtrak's workers don't go home to go to bed, they are stuck in the dorm car during their journey or a hotel at the layover point.

Additionally, your average resturant worker doesn't have to bus the tables, there are busboy's for that job. Amtrak doesn't have any busboys. Finally, your average resturant worker doesn't have to deal with bad rail and switches that cause violent random motions while trying to carry trays full of drinks or food.

So I too would expect that Amtrak or any other third party would have to pay a premium to hire workers under those conditions. Now perhaps the union contracts are a bit too generous, it's possible. I can't speak to that since they haven't revealed the actual numbers. Especially since I don't know if they included tips in the average resturant worker's salary when they did the comparison, although I suspect that they didn't.

However any comparison to a normal resturant worker is, IMHO an unfair comparison.

 

[Amtrak Watcher]

Amtrak riders need to understand that there is a substantial cost to providing food and drinks –safely– on a moving vehicle. If the prices reflected the actual costs, nobody would by the goodies. Food service is going to be a looser; it’s just a matter of controlling the loss and pricing things to get the maximum benefit in attracting riders.

I clearly remember the prices of goodies on the pre-Amtrak railroads to be astronomical compared to Amtrak. The airlines are controlling their food prices, lately, by either eliminating them or charging $5 for a simple snack. An interstate train doesn’t have the option of eliminating food and snacks.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Amtrak riders need to understand that there is a substantial cost to providing food and drinks –safely– on a moving vehicle. If the prices reflected the actual costs, nobody would by the goodies. Food service is going to be a looser; it’s just a matter of controlling the loss and pricing things to get the maximum benefit in attracting riders.
I clearly remember the prices of goodies on the pre-Amtrak railroads to be astronomical compared to Amtrak. The airlines are controlling their food prices, lately, by either eliminating them or charging $5 for a simple snack. An interstate train doesn’t have the option of eliminating food and snacks.

Amtrak Watcher and I have very similar memories (only about a year's difference in age, no wonder). Food always operated at a great loss. And I, too, recall that it was quite a bit more expensive on the pre-Amtrak trains than much restaurant fare.

Further, on pre-Amtrak trains very often the lounge cars did not provide any significant food---many of them just sold booze, soft drinks, playing cards, aspirin, peanuts and cigarettes. And that no matter how "pretty" or indivdually decorated a particular lounge car might be.

When such lounge cars sold real food, they often had names like coffee shop lounge, lunch counter lounge, buffett lounge, cafe cars, etc, neither full diners or complete lounge cars either.......

But many trains had none of the above. It was either the dressy expensive full course dining car or nothing else And it was understood that they all operated at a loss. .

And, oh yes, they did not have bottled water (if it even existed back then),or coffee or juice or anything like that set up to be available for the taking in the sleeping cars. Again, usually just the diner or nothing.

 

[Guest]

An interstate train doesn’t have the option of eliminating food and snacks.

Sure they do. Just tell people if they want to eat on board they have to bring food themselves. A lot of people do that anyway.

 

[battalion51]

OK, so you're telling me you want a family of four to pack enough food for a 3 day cross country trip, with no ability to restock or buy food en route. BS. No one would accept that if it were thrust upon them. The only way I see them being able to eliminate food service all together is if we go back to Harvey Houses which eat up a lot of time when you're doing it three times a day.

 

[AmtrakWPK]

RIGHT ON! BS for sure! Add NONPERISHABLE to your requirements for those 3 days of food because there'd be no refrigeration available, either. Unless you're going to have contracts with fast food joints that are REAL flexible ("What do you mean, you can't deliver that food to the train now? Just because the timetable said we'd be there at 5 pm and it's now 3 in the morning?!?!?!?") - not to mention that the pax have been waiting for food for 8 hours...... Maybe Wendy's and McD's and KFC will construct a couple hundred REAL special drive-thru's...... You need HOW MANY Big Macs? Sure.... tell me another Whopper!!

 

[Amtrak OBS Gone Freight]

LOL....... :lol: OBS...