Amenities Being Eliminated from Long Distance Routes

[seat38a]

Dining car losses 101

1. buying individually packed, vacuum sealed single serving entree portions instead of buying in bulk or by weight. The packaging cost significantly raises the price. It's the dumbest way to buy in quantity.

2. No POS

3. Menu prices too high to attract many coach passengers, see #1

4. Antiquated inventory management and accounting system. 1940s anyone?

5. Revenue protection spends $100 to recover $5 from LSAs on each and every trip.

These are just my top 5.

So it sounds like Number 2 and 4 goes back to the ticket picture I posted earlier.

 

[EB_OBS]

Can you explain "revenue protection spends $100 to recover $5 from LSAs on each and every trip?"

I don't think I understand. What is "revenue protection"?

Amtrak's OIG requires that all LSA paperwork is checked for discrepencies at a central processing center.

All LSA & chef paperwork packets are gone over at the end of trip by a well paid supervisor who checks for errors and compares the sales #s to the dollars remitted to Amtrak.

Then the packet is FedEx to finance who scan all the checks, double check all the paperwork and compare the scanners totals to the LSA totals. If there is any difference the checks are hand tallied. Any difference + or - is sent back to the crew base as a debit or a credit.

Now the same well paid supervisors who briefly checked the packets before they were FedEx go over them again, thoroughly, to ensure that the debit or credit is legit. Many many are revised after coming back from finance.

Now a credit or debit is given the LSA, more often a debit which they then have to pay. In most cases in my experience we're talking about $5-20, or 30 or $50 tops but they can be and are larger if the LSA or chef made a bad mistake like not accounting for NOT receiving a box of steaks or something and other reasons.

All the hours spent by Revenue Protection scouring over all the handwritten paperwork by LSAs & chefs is $100s of dollars, as I said, generally to say the LSA under-remitted a few dollars. More often than not, a simple mistake, not theft.

When I was an LSA on both bistro cars and the dining car on the EB, I had very few discrepencies either way. i had only 2-4 a year where many LSA have one every trip. I think the largest legitimate one for me was $32. The only one I ever had higher was when the next LSA after me stole $88 worth of coffee cups because I transcribed a # wrong from one column to the next. He was a known thief even the remit clerk investigating my debit told me. I was new at the time so I just paid the $88.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Outstanding Post EB_OBS!

I wonder if Amtrak's Executive Team and the Bean Counters have a plan to get Amtrak out of the 1940s and at least to the 20th Century let alone the 21st with POS and better Contracting practices and Accounting?(of course there are Union considerations but that's what Negotiations are for!)

This is nuts and speaks for itself, Mica and his henchmen will probably be all over this!

 

[seat38a]

On the California state supported trains, they have POS systems. This must be a state mandated thing then. I never bought anything on the Sunset Limited so I never paid attention if they had a POS or not.

 

[rusty spike]

It is amazing that Amtrak can bring their ticket/reservation system up to date with e-ticket, but leave F&B back where it was on A-day.

Can you imagine going into McDonald's and have them write you order down on a piece of paper? POS systems have been around since the 1970's --almost as old as Amtrak.

 

[yarrow]

Outstanding Post EB_OBS!

it certainly is. imho, the vast majority of amtrak's problems are not caused by the people who actually do the work but the suits who have little to do other than devise idiotic procedures in order to protect their jobs and have other suits tell them how clever they are

 

[EB_OBS]

The Cascades have POS too.

An Amtrak supervisor I know, who previously owned restaurants and a bar has proven to finance that they'd come out better if they allowed for a small variance or disrepency of .5% - 1% of sales instead of insisting that every single item and $ match 100% and the resulting administrative bureaucracy to do so.

Every restaurant or retail store I ever worked at had built into the P&L an expected and acceptable and manageable statistical loss McDonalds is .5% waste, .5% loss. Retail varies from 1% - 5% shrinkage depending upon the average value of products sold. You do your best to control it and keep those % in line with your P&L to earn your yearly bonus.

Amtrak's system is used by no organization I've ever heard of. Like I said they spend $100 to recover 5-10.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

The Cascades have POS too.

An Amtrak supervisor I know, who previously owned restaurants and a bar has proven to finance that they'd come out better if they allowed for a small variance or disrepency of .5% - 1% of sales instead of insisting that every single item and $ match 100% and the resulting administrative bureaucracy to do so.

Every restaurant or retail store I ever worked at had built into the P&L an expected and acceptable and manageable statistical loss McDonalds is .5% waste, .5% loss. Retail varies from 1% - 5% shrinkage depending upon the average value of products sold. You do your best to control it and keep those % in line with your P&L to earn your yearly bonus.

Amtrak's system is used by no organization I've ever heard of. Like I said they spend $100 to recover 5-10.

Wow, that is extremely outdated. With a modern POS system, any manager can track an overage/shortage with a laptop the day it happens. And requiring employees to pay for their shrink? That whole idea is out of date, by several decades.

 

[Paulus]

Wow, that is extremely outdated. With a modern POS system, any manager can track an overage/shortage with a laptop the day it happens. And requiring employees to pay for their shrink? That whole idea is out of date, by several decades.

Still fairly common in the retail and restaurant world from what I hear, even where it is illegal (like California).

 

[montana mike]

Well, here in the backwoods of MT just about every restaurant we go to has gone "electronic" and paperless--except for the CC bill that needs to be signed. Our orders are into the kitchen before the wait staff has left the table most of the time. I often wondered why Amtrak was sooooooooo out of date. Heck, if they had moved into the 21st century they may have been able to save a few of the amenities that were dropped!

 

[tonys96]

I am just guessing here, and feel free to tell me if I am mistaken, but I am guessing that Amtrak has not yet gone to a digital POS system is the cost of hardware and software. They would need to set up an intranet system of some sort, I think. I know very little about the digital world, but DO know it is not cheap to install systems in moving locations.........

 

[jis]

I am wondering what is the scope of the problem. Is it just the LD trains that do not have the new F&B POS system? Or are there other corridors that do not have it too? I genuinely don't know the answer and I am wondering if someone has a concise list of what routes and services have F&B POS system and which ones other than the LD network, don't. Thanks much.

I have been under the impression that on the NEC at least the Acelas and possibly the Regionals too, now have the F&B POS system. Am I mistaken?

 

[neroden]

Amtrak's system is used by no organization I've ever heard of. Like I said they spend $100 to recover 5-10.

And this is the sort of thing which Amtrak should change if management really cared about improving the profitability of the dining cars. Rather than cutting the menu.
Someone in management is attacking the long-distance trains with malice.

...anyway, Amtrak should implement point of sale and electronic inventory management in the dining cars immediately; the equipment should be integrated into the new Viewliner diners at delivery, and retrofitted into the Superliner diners ASAP. The payback from this would be massive and very quick.

This was already described as being on Amtrak's to-do list in the PIPs, which are years ago now. Apparently someone in management really doesn't want to improve the functioning of the dining cars.

 

[Ryan]

I am just guessing here, and feel free to tell me if I am mistaken, but I am guessing that Amtrak has not yet gone to a digital POS system is the cost of hardware and software. They would need to set up an intranet system of some sort, I think. I know very little about the digital world, but DO know it is not cheap to install systems in moving locations.........

There are also some human factors involved. From AU's expert in POS:

Sorry, "POS" has been my business for over thirty years, so the acronym is embedded into my brain. As many know, Amtrak has had "fits and starts" with POS systems for the last 15-20 years.

When I was working for a POS dealer in the DC area in the early 90's, I got wind of the fact they were looking, "again". (they had tried and failed with IBM in the NEC, and Amtrak California, at the time, was "doing it's thing" with POS)

Story on the NEC-IBM failure was legend in our small industry. They found IBM units strewn and smashed along the ROW, thrown off trains "at speed". I know, 'cause I saw some of these destroyed units in a storage room at DC's Ivy City comissarry, along with dozens and dozens of other POS terminals, that were just removed from service.

You have to remember, the reasons for any owner or company to install or upgrade a POS system are pretty simple:

• Reduce cosst (reduce theft, better inventory control, better reporting, less time to "do" reports..)
• Increase profit (make sure every item is sold at correct price, speed up service line)
• Improve customer service (customers are charged correct price, faster service, more trust in system)

POS systems "force" accountability. That is NOT something some LSA's wanted. They had been "gaming" the system for years.
So our dealership got wind Amtrak was looking again, well, "Intercity" was looking again. I meet with the right people, set up a demo at HQ, and blew them away. Why? I knew all the reasons that LSA's would try to reject the system. And I worked with two current LSA's/Train Managers. I had the reports coming out of the NCR system matching Amtrak's 896 report (multi-copy, hand entered, long-ass report filled out at end of every trip)

The LSA's still had to count the stock at the end of the trip, and, (this was one of our downfalls) and they had to take a floppy disc, and hand it to someone at the receiving commissary, who in turn put it into a PC.........This was before the era of EZ wireless, or USB drives.........

We also knew another major problem was theft of equipment left on board, while the trains were being serviced in either Chicago, or Sunnyside, NY.(VCR's TV's, Microwaves, Computers, coffee makers, anything that could be pried off the wall or counter, were routinely stolen)

As our project was only in the pilot stage, and not approved for all of Intercity yet, we had to devise an EZ way for LSA's to carry-on, and carry-off the the POS units. They were small, about the size of laptop, but still had to be plugged into power, and have the receipt printer attached.

We ran pilots on the Cap and LSL. All went pretty well, and Amtrak ordered about $250K worth of equipment from us. The rollout on those two trains was smooth, but then Amtrak had to take this to "open bid" to outfit the rest of Intercity. That's were politics got into the mix.

The CEO of another firm, I believe his POS product was called "Cache Box" was very experienced in the Washington and governmental procurement process, dealing with GSA RFI, RFP's, etc., etc.

Even though I was working for a major dealership, that carried both Micros POS and NCR POS (And NCR corporate staff assisted somewhat, they saw the opportunity) The principals at my dealership really didn't give the account as much attention (in the political portion of this) as they should have. In turn, the CEO at Cache Box got very involved in writing the RFP. Well, once that's done, everyone else might as well walk away. I knew we were dead.

Amtrak awarded the deal to Cache Box. I sat back and waited, knowing they would have to put out another RFP later, 'cause the product that Cache Box was installing was not a good fit in any way, shape, or form.

It did fail, miserably. Again they were pulled from the trains, and stored next to the IBM hardware.........More money down the drain.....

The VBU's were broken up, and "Amtrak Intercity" was no more. End of POS project. (Vertical Business Units)

They went back to the carry-out boxes being used as the "POS". What a shame. What a waste.

Amtrak did install cheap "banger" cash registers in a lot of the Cafe Cars, bolted down, to avoid theft. And that is better than nothing.......

I sincerely hope the new POS systems work, to bring more accountability to the system. Employees who bitch-and-moan about them, well, that raises my "trust/theft radar" REAL QUICK. Sure, the CC swipe may take longer, due to Cell or WiFi, but that problem will fix itself over time. Most people just don't like change, of any kind. So it's natural to resist new technology, even if it will actually help you do your job better and faster.

We always say in our business, "Go back 6 months after it's installed, and tell them you are gonna take their POS system away from them....watch them raise holy hell then.........."

At least that's my version of Amtrak's POS history. What say you?

 

[rrdude]

Amtrak's system is used by no organization I've ever heard of. Like I said they spend $100 to recover 5-10.

And this is the sort of thing which Amtrak should change if management really cared about improving the profitability of the dining cars. Rather than cutting the menu.
Someone in management is attacking the long-distance trains with malice.

...anyway, Amtrak should implement point of sale and electronic inventory management in the dining cars immediately; the equipment should be integrated into the new Viewliner diners at delivery, and retrofitted into the Superliner diners ASAP. The payback from this would be massive and very quick.

This was already described as being on Amtrak's to-do list in the PIPs, which are years ago now. Apparently someone in management really doesn't want to improve the functioning of the dining cars.

As Ryan noted, "it's been tried, and has failed........, in the diners and lounge cars, but that by no means it shouldn't BE implemented. The technology is here, NOW, to make it work. For both operations, (taking orders in the Diner) and for reporting. (Sending End-Of-Trip reports wirelessly to the cloud)

Amtrak Cali is the exception, and has good POS hardware, software, and mounting infrastructure, it should be, (and I think, is) being rolled out to the Regionals, at least the mounting hardware is installed on every FS car I've been on..

The Diner needs to take a leap from the 19th century, directly to the 21st century..... FAST.

It won't "solve all problems", but it will give management sales information much quicker, even REAL TIME,, (if they do anything with that info is up for debate, but's it's 100% feasible that the POS could be programmed with PAR levels, and send an alert to any commissary, that "train # 3 has just run out of Signature Steak", and that the next commissary down the line that stocks that item, if any, should be prepared to re-stock)

A POS will make closing the day, and trip, much quicker, as the paperwork, other than counting the remaining ON-HAND stock, will be automatically calculated. Once the on-hand stock is entered, the POS will calculate the variance, or "over-short" for product, based on what was sold.

The POS will (or "can") also track sales by server, and tips by server, and if set up right, could report on "Total dining experience time", or, "how long did it take from start to finish for each patron..... invaluable, but some entities don't, like this info...........

With table-side ordering, the servers will be able to "turn the diner" faster, without customers "feeling" rushed, Their food just get's ordered and delivered quicker....... PERFECT. And perhaps they could use a feature found on most POS systems, and incent the servers to sell more alcohol, or sides, or anything, (product they have too much of) by use of "Server Contest" reporting, Heck, at the end of each trip, the server who "sold the most beer" might be offered a $10 bonus, or whatever.

Receipts would/could be easily emailed to passengers, both meal-included sleeper pax, and cash-paying coach.

Obviously, as has been stated by several, the real reporting on the back end is what is selling, and what is not. And WHO is upselling, and who is NOT.

Again, what, if anything, management does with that info, is up for debate. But it would allow operations to focus MORE on customer service, and less on tallying checks, and running to the middle of the diner, to drop their tickets,

Table-side ordering devices, (tablets, hand-helds, or customer-facing units) is expected to be implemented by 1/3 of all restaurant responding to a survey, this year. The ROI is just off the charts.....

Good luck Amtrak, I'm available for consulting if you like! I've been on BOTH sides of the table.

 

[jimhudson]

You'll never get hired dude, you have common sense, real world experience and you actually would recommend things that work instead of giving management what they wanted in boiler plate reports! Sigh

 

[Anderson]

POS equipment is one thing that is desperately needed. They might want to keep some physical receipts on hand for when a computer inevitably runs out of batteries at the wrong time or the wifi dies, but there's no reason they couldn't make do pretty well with something like what Cinebistro does (where the staff enters your order on a small handheld system and you get a receipt issued immediately). The main issue is whether you actually add any revenue with it...I'm not sure how many folks get turned away from the diner, for example, except on perhaps the Builder.

The one place that quicker turning would help? If Amtrak wants to start lengthening trains substantially, quicker turns could allow an additional sleeper on top of what can currently be accommodated.

 

[neroden]

Thanks for your insight, rrdude. I'm not surprised that the procurement process got politicized and ended up buying lemons. But at this point, point-of-sale is practically a commodity product. The wireless problems solved by Amtrak for e-ticketing were harder. Even with political interference it really should be possible to get a competent implementation now.

The real savings would be eliminating all that back-end paperwork and speeding things up.

If it's done *well*, it could do wonders. I've seen POS systems in restaurants which are quite capable of handling "Complimentary extra ingredient X for passenger Y", or "X without cheese", which can give very valuable feedback to the menu designers when they find out what the common request items are.

 

[jimhudson]

Its obvious that I don't know much about High Tech but since e-ticketing seems to be working well for Amtrak with the Conductors using their I-phone scanners, is it feasible for the LSAs to utilize the same technology for sales and associated record keeping???

I see this all the time @ Farmers Markets and Flea Markets and the vendors tell me it is easy to set up and not that expensive!

 

[jis]

Indeed the POS that I saw used in the Food Service car on the Cape Flyer was a hand held iPhone.

 

[Dog Rancher]

Obviously, I do not know what all the airlines use, but, my old airline, Continental/United, has the flight attendants use POS handheld machines to sell meals and drinks in coach. They have an integrated receipt printer and the whole thing is slightly larger than an iPhone.

Back in the day (People Express Airlines) when flight attendants would actually do ticketing on board the airplane, there were many flight attendants who drove brand-new Porsche's.

Sent from my iPad Air using Amtrak Forum

 

[jis]

Yes, but they are just selling fixed set of items with no variation. Actually they seem use a device that looks surprisingly similar to the one that they use (and have used for quite a while) on international flights flights for selling duty free, from the looks of it. This would be quite different and relatively restricted in functionality compared to what one would need in a properly functioning Restaurant/Dining Car, unless of course the Dining Car is run merely as a car full of tables for eating from a completely fixed set of boxed items with no variations allowed.

Maybe that is the reason that POS's have managed to get deployed on Acelas and other Corridor Service and not in Diners.

 

[rrdude]

Indeed the POS that I saw used in the Food Service car on the Cape Flyer was a hand held iPhone.

Probably like THIS JIS, which is what the company I work for, has been doing for about ten years...........

I've installed table-side, or hand-held ordering systems on dinner boats, NFL stadiums, dinner theaters, fast-casual restaurant, sit-down restaurants, theme parks, amphitheaters, sandwich shops, and even in the drive-thru lane at McDonald's, to "bust the line", and casino's. The ROI is huge and fast, provided the situation warrants hand-helds. (It the restaurant doesn't care about table turn, why bother installing?)

It would work like a champ for the dining cars. And now Amtrak has a choice of dozens of off-the-shelf POS companies to choose from, when ten years ago, we were almost the only one offering it. (Stateside)

Sales of our Hand-Held units skyrocketed when we ported our s/w over to the iOS (iPad Touch and iPhone) and now, with the advent of "cheap" tablets, the market is set to explode again, estimates are by 1/3, domestically.

At first we thought this would put a "dent" in the sales of our dealers who sell our product.

SURPRISE!

Reverse is true.

Now restaurants, instead of buying 3 "fixed" POS stations, for all the servers to share, placed around the restaurant at $1,500 a pop, (h/w only), now they buy 7, 8, 9 or however many servers they have on the floor at one time, so it's a 1:1 ratio. 1 POS unit (albeit iPad) per server. So it's win for us, as we only do the s/w. Now a restaurant will buy 7,8, or 9 server-licenses from us (and in turn, our dealers) instead of 3 or 4.

Oh, btw, even though mgmt can "mandate" the use of POS, if the rank-and-file don't "buy-in" (less work, more accuracy, more tips, more accountability-opps, the don't like the accountability benefit!) then the actual deployment of the POS s/w in the field (train or land-based restaurant, I've seen it happen with chain restaurants.) will really cannibalize the ROI......

 

[rrdude]

Yes, but they are just selling fixed set of items with no variation. Actually they seem use a device that looks surprisingly similar to the one that they use (and have used for quite a while) on international flights flights for selling duty free, from the looks of it. This would be quite different and relatively restricted in functionality compared to what one would need in a properly functioning Restaurant/Dining Car, unless of course the Dining Car is run merely as a car full of tables for eating from a completely fixed set of boxed items with no variations allowed.

Maybe that is the reason that POS's have managed to get deployed on Acelas and other Corridor Service and not in Diners.

JIS, the flexibility and modifications needed are a no brainer, check out this old video from Action Systems, makers of Restaurant Manager. (my employer)

Sorry about the music, we make sucky videos....

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Yes, but they are just selling fixed set of items with no variation. Actually they seem use a device that looks surprisingly similar to the one that they use (and have used for quite a while) on international flights flights for selling duty free, from the looks of it. This would be quite different and relatively restricted in functionality compared to what one would need in a properly functioning Restaurant/Dining Car, unless of course the Dining Car is run merely as a car full of tables for eating from a completely fixed set of boxed items with no variations allowed. Maybe that is the reason that POS's have managed to get deployed on Acelas and other Corridor Service and not in Diners.

What kind of "varitions" are you talking about? Amtrak diners are just about the most variation-free sit down restaurant I've ever seen.