Anderson defunded it.
The cafe car is nothing to write home about right nowadays. All the fresh sandwich and salad options have been removed due to Covid. It’s mostly microwaved and sweet stuff.
I have yet to see someone do this. I get it a lot of members here don’t like the flex dining but I really don’t understand the praise here for the cafe car. They have cut it down to bare bones - I guess if you want the microwave burger or hot dog you are good to go, but in the morning it is basically all the same stuff you can get for free. All the cafe car salads and sandwiches have been cut due to Covid. It’s all microwave packaged stuff and sweets. As I have said a million times it seems all the conversation here is focused on flexible dining but Amtrak has cut across the board in all aspects of f&b just as airlines have. Everyone is just trying to survive right now and frankly I don’t think they care about variety or any of that. There just aren’t that many people riding to really care about food quality. Cases and hospitalizations are sky high. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with complaining and brainstorming ideas - but if anything thinks Amtrak is going to change anything before the pandemic is behind us is naive.
I’d take the cafe car veggie burger, a bag of chips, and a pack of peanut m&ms over any of the flex meals personally.
Don’t get me wrong I’m done with Covid just as much as anyone I just think we are spinning our wheels here until the pandemic is over - Amtrak is not going to change anything at least until then. Just trying to be a realist. I personally think they will bring back traditional dining out west. I’m in full agreement flex dining in the east needs improvement I just think while ridership is still bleeding it’s going to be a hard sell to change anything - and I think the important thing is to prioritize the advocacy on restoring the frequencies to daily ASAP and then the conversation can move to things like food.
all I know is Amtrak is heavily promoting its services on social media... either this has greatly increased, or it has been like that for a while and I am just now noticing....
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I’ve been noticing this as well.
Careful what you wish for...generally when companies do that they don’t lower the price enough to make it worthwhile. Also, those types of things work best when prices are fixed. A la carte pricing is a hard sell when there are fare buckets with dynamic pricing based in demand...otherwise it comes across as nickel and diming because some people will pay more without food than they did pre-change with food included.
My wife did it after seeing some millennials do it on our train. She said she had enough of the same meal as only one entree on the menu could she stomach. She had tried my meals as well as her own of which she threw away half. And my wife is much more open to different foods than I am!
I would not want to be forced to buy from the cafe car right now - as I’ve stated before it’s also been cut. This is not the cafe car that was avaiable on the silver star when they removed dining entirely - on a long trip the few items they have from there would also get old - and while you can bring your own stuff it is tricky to heat stuff. The exception to this is the auto train which still has a full cafe car for the coach passengers and of course better meals for sleepers. It would be one thing to do this on a one night train but to have nothing but microwave burgers and hot dogs and noodle cups and frozen pizzas on the two nighters wouldn’t really cut it. Plus knowing Amtrak they would never have enough stock. The corridor cafes are actually rather embarrassing at the moment - literally the menu board is littered with sold out stickers over all the stuff they cut from the menu.
Well and the cafe cars would normally offer more choices to give you more of an alternative to the flex meals.
