Amtrak dining and cafe service

[hermit]

I agree, but as I remember passengers did purchase lots of the Wines and the Cheeses that were served on the Starlight (from California,Oregon and Washington State) after attending the tastings in the Parlour Car.( another Sadly missed Enhancement!)

I miss the Parlour Car on The Coast Starlight! The wine tastings were always a fun time!

 

[crescent-zephyr]

I agree, but as I remember passengers did purchase lots of the Wines and the Cheeses that were served on the Starlight (from California,Oregon and Washington State) after attending the tastings in the Parlour Car.( another Sadly missed Enhancement!)

Yes indeed! Towards the later days I even remember a Parlour Car attendant encouraging wine sales to help motivate Amtrak to keep the PPC.

I would regularly order a glass of wine at dinner in the PPC - I did my part!

 

[user 14106]

Maybe if Amtrak management would have acted to improve their woeful F&B, Congress would not have had to step in with a directive.

That's two levels of failure before it gets to Congress. Amtrak executive management and Amtrak's Board.

I don't think it is too much to ask that Amtrak management actually make decisions within a timeframe of years without Congressional directives. But it seems like it is.

As @jis said, "potted plants".

As to the "committee deliverables", to quote Robert Heinlein, "A committee is the only known form of life with 10 stomachs and no brain."

Committees, congressionally directed or no, are no substitute for competent, knowledgeable, and decisive management. They are wonderful for poor management to hide behind, though.

Fair enough but congress itself kind of created this mess in the first place (namely John Mica.) Amtrak certainly can be dysfunctional in more ways than one but the food service mess firmly started in DC. And in fairness Amtrak has made some moves on the food service front - traditional dining out west is much improved over what it was when it came back. And even in flexible dining they have tried to respond and update to some customer complaints (lack of breakfast items for instance) yes it’s still flex dining but I think they’ve tried to make it more tolerable and I think the cafe adjustments are also substantive. Those things were all done on Amtrak’s own initiative. And again the silver service dining improvements was also made before the committee. Clearly there’s certain routes Amtrak management doesn’t seem to know what to do with and I’m not really defending them per se but I really blame this mostly on the Mica nonsense.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I agree, but as I remember passengers did purchase lots of the Wines and the Cheeses that were served on the Starlight (from California,Oregon and Washington State) after attending the tastings in the Parlour Car.( another Sadly missed Enhancement!)

I'm not a wine fan but I bought some because it was enjoyable. I have not bought anything since the end of local wines on PPC.

 

[zephyr17]

I’m not really defending them per se but I really blame this mostly on the Mica nonsense.

Well, I agree that the Mica Amendment was what caused the mess in food service in the first place. But Mica lost his seat in the 2016 election and the Mica Amendment was repealed in like 2019 or 2020.

I don't like Congressional micromanagement and it has mostly been bad for Amtrak until very recently. I find it galling has been necessary for Congress to stop or reverse Amtrak's own management's actions like the SW Chief bus bridge, removal of agents, less than daily operation. And now decent food in the east.

I still maintain what is necessary is a clean sweep of the Board, especially Coscia. President Biden had an opportunity to do that and unfortunately punted it, but I concede he had bigger things to attend to than the makeup of the Amtrak board. I do, however, hold Buttigieg responsible, as DOT probably had the largest role in finding and vetting nominees, and they renominate Coscia?! Was the criteria "well, he managed not to destroy Amtrak entirely?"

A new board would then ideally clean out Amtrak's C suite. My opinion being the CEO/COO positions should be held by someone from the hospitality industry, not the airlines, considering that folks with actual railroad passenger management experience are pretty much no longer with us.

 

[user 14106]

Well, I agree that the Mica Amendment was what caused the mess in food service in the first place. But Mica lost his seat in the 2016 amendment and the Mica Amendment was repealed in like 2019 or 2020.

The Mica Amendment was repealed in the infrastructure and jobs act. It was de-teethed somewhat in an earlier CR bill at the very end of FY20 if I recall in fact right before they went to tri weekly (the Mica amendment was amended to remove the enforcement mechanism on funds being used on F&B losses) but the underlying directive on reducing F&B costs remained until the IIJA. Both were well after Amtrak was in pandemic hell so the timeframe on doing anything can easily be blamed on that.

 

[zephyr17]

The Mica Amendment was repealed in the infrastructure and jobs act. It was de-teethed somewhat in an earlier CR bill at the very end of FY20 if I recall in fact right before they went to tri weekly (the Mica amendment was amended to remove the enforcement mechanism on funds being used on F&B losses) but the underlying directive on reducing F&B costs remained until the IIJA. Both were well after Amtrak was in pandemic hell so the timeframe on doing anything can easily be blamed on that.

Well, you do have a point on the Mica Amendment didn't fully go away until September 2020. I also concede that the return (and improvement) of traditional dining on the western trains likely would not have happened had it not been repealed. But traditional dining returned to the western trains pretty much with daily service in late spring/early summer 2021. This 18 month and counting delay in implementing something in the east, especially waiting for the congressionally directed committee, still strikes me as dithering.

 

[user 14106]

Well, you do have a point on the Mica Amendment didn't fully go away until September 2020. I also concede that the return (and improvement) of traditional dining on the western trains likely would not have happened had it not been repealed. But traditional dining returned to the western trains pretty much with daily service in late spring/early summer 2021. This 18 month and counting delay in implementing something in the east, especially waiting for the congressionally directed committee, still strikes me as dithering.

It didn't fully go away until November 15, 2021. It was amended in September 2020.

 

[zephyr17]

It didn't fully go away until November 15, 2021. It was amended in September 2020.

Still, once the legislation passed, they could start planning.

 

[user 14106]

Still, once the legislation passed, they could start planning.

Given they started hiring for the Silvers as early as Spring 2022 they seemed to have made that decision fairly early possibly even before the IIJA. In the east that's really the logical place to start given the dining cars are running on the train and the Meteor is probably the place where flex dining had the most negative effect on customer satisfaction. For the rest of the routes I'm not sure they've even decided what they want to do yet - probably letting the committee weigh in given the IIJA simultaneously removed Mica and also put in the F&B committee requirement.

Unfortunately also given the realities of stored cars and how they are having difficulty even keeping up with revenue cars that factors in as well. It may be that what the other routes get is not the same as what the Silvers get.

 

[west point]

It didn't fully go away until November 15, 2021. It was amended in September 2020.

So why did Amtrak not start hiring for OBS until fFeb - Mar 2022?

 

[JRR]

I think the reason some of us have lost confidence is that Amtrak's leaders of 2018-19 had the gall to claim that their "contemporary" and "flexible" food programs were actually an improvement, that this is what surveys showed customers wanted, that millennials would flock to trains because of this change, and so on.

If they had just said, "We're going to serve you slop from now on because the Mica amendment requires us to spend less on food service," that would at least have seemed plausible. Now, here we are nearly five years later, the Mica amendment has been gone for awhile, but we still have some variation of the Anderson food program on all but a handful of LD trains and only vague talk of some future improvement on anything other than the Florida trains.

It never ever had anything to do with MICA. If they had wanted to do anything, all they had to do was make a proper accounting.

Who knows what they really think or want to do. Results are all that count!

 

[fdaley]

It never ever had anything to do with MICA. If they had wanted to do anything, all they had to do was make a proper accounting.

Who knows what they really think or want to do. Results are all that count!

Well, certainly my feeling at the time was that the Mica amendment provided cover for gutting a service that Anderson and his team didn't really see the value of. I mean, I think they really would have tried replacing the Chief with buses between Kansas City and Albuquerque if Congress hadn't stopped them.

And as an accounting matter, figuring out the cost-recovery of dining service always seemed like an arbitrary exercise given a system in which most of the revenue came from accommodation charges for sleeper rooms that were sold at wildly varying prices.

 

[jis]

And as an accounting matter, figuring out the cost-recovery of dining service always seemed like an arbitrary exercise given a system in which most of the revenue came from accommodation charges for sleeper rooms that were sold at wildly varying prices.

I know people here have ahd difficulty believing the fact that the amount of money transferred from the transport account to the revenue account was computed based on the sales receipts in the Diner and Lounge and not using some arbitrary algorithm. The higher buckets of ticket price did not proportionately contribute to the bottom line of the F&B account. What was less based on something concrete by item on a train was the allocated cost of staff, and still is AFAIK.

Yes, they could have transferred some convenient arbitrary proportion of each Sleeper ticket sold to the F&B account, but that is not how it was done. But if someone still wants to believe otherwise and argue about it, ...... All that including the food cost for Sleeper passengers was to hopefully get more of them to actually use the Diner. When it was instituted that apparently was a problem since even people like me did not use the diner for many of the big and expensive meals, opting for cheaper cafe fare instead. I stuck with the Slumbercoaches and avoided full Sleepers for this reason for as long as I could.

 

[user 14106]

It never ever had anything to do with MICA. If they had wanted to do anything, all they had to do was make a proper accounting.

Who knows what they really think or want to do. Results are all that count!

Amtrak clearly is aware and maneuvers itself with the politics. Whether it was Mica specifically or the administration that was in power at the time that every year of its budget (all of Trump’s president’s budgets were essentially written by anti Amtrak think tank the Heritage Foundation) proposed cutting Amtrak subsidies - who knows. I personally believe Anderson was brought in specifically because of the administration in power. I suspect Gardner as CEO was the long term plan but they didn’t want to move on that until there was a Democratic administration. I think the reason for the airline guys was because of who was in the White House and wanting to have an image of balancing the books.

 

[fdaley]

I know people here have ahd difficulty believing the fact that the amount of money transferred from the transport account to the revenue account was computed based on the sales receipts in the Diner and Lounge and not using some arbitrary algorithm. The higher buckets of ticket price did not proportionately contribute to the bottom line of the F&B account. What was less based on something concrete by item on a train was the allocated cost of staff, and still is AFAIK.

Yes, they could have transferred some convenient arbitrary proportion of each Sleeper ticket sold to the F&B account, but that is not how it was done. But if someone still wants to believe otherwise and argue about it, ...... All that including the food cost for Sleeper passengers was to hopefully get more of them to actually use the Diner. When it was instituted that apparently was a problem since even people like me did not use the diner for many of the big and expensive meals, opting for cheaper cafe fare instead. I stuck with the Slumbercoaches and avoided full Sleepers for this reason for as long as I could.

I wasn't intending to argue about Amtrak's accounting method so much as to point out that from the average sleeper passenger's perspective, that process may seem arbitrary and mysterious given that most of us have not paid a menu price for dining car meals for well over 30 years. The meals became part of a service package included in the cost of our rooms, and on many trains it was by far the most significant service provided beyond our beds and bedding. But for the past few years, the meal service on most trains has been severely degraded while the prices of sleeper rooms have remained the same or even gone up. It seems odd that Amtrak would not anticipate that this would alienate a chunk of their customers.

 

[dcipjr]

I recently traveled PHL - LAS via the Capitol Limited and Southwest Chief. The difference in quality between Flex Dining and Traditional Dining was staggering.

The Flex food wasn't awful, but it was pretty rough, below my standards at least. Flex Dining is so wasteful, too, with tons of single-use plastics. The attendant microwaved our meals in front of us, and the entire experience felt really, really cheap—worse than it did in 2021 when I made the same journey.

By contrast, the Traditional Dining was wonderful, with great attendants (shout out to Nacho on the Chief!) and good food. The experience was so much better that it might has well have been a different class of service.

All excuses aside, Amtrak needs to get Traditional Dining back on the eastern routes as soon as possible.

The Superliner IIs are also in desperate need of refurbishment. They are looking really, really shabby. Carpet on the walls—I'm looking at you.

It still was a great trip, aside from a 6 hour delay out of Chicago because of a busted pipe in the transdorm.

 

[zephyr17]

It seems odd that Amtrak would not anticipate that this would alienate a chunk of their customers.

I am pretty sure they do not care.

Amtrak management has been focused entirely on cost containment for many years. They don't consider revenue enhancement opportunities (aside from letting limited supply allow them to become ever more aggressive in yield management which costs pretty much nothing). They'll pass up a dollar to save a dime.

They also would clearly prefer not to run long distance trains at all. Why be concerned about customers you really don't want anyway?

 

[jis]

I wasn't intending to argue about Amtrak's accounting method so much as to point out that from the average sleeper passenger's perspective, that process may seem arbitrary and mysterious given that most of us have not paid a menu price for dining car meals for well over 30 years. The meals became part of a service package included in the cost of our rooms, and on many trains it was by far the most significant service provided beyond our beds and bedding. But for the past few years, the meal service on most trains has been severely degraded while the prices of sleeper rooms have remained the same or even gone up. It seems odd that Amtrak would not anticipate that this would alienate a chunk of their customers.

That is not a surprise since that was the entire purpose of the Mica Amendment which led to this degradation. It has little to do with any new accounting trickery. It is the old Congress and Volpe inspired accounting all along.

 

[finleyd]

I recently traveled on the Silver Star from Phil to Orlando. Our SCA announced over the speaker that Traditional Dining was returning soon. I sure hope he was right

 

[NYP2NFL01]

I’ll be onboard Silver Star NYP to KIS on 4/30. If traditional dining has returned by then, I promise to post pictures and document the experience!

 

[Rasputin]

Has any date, including the year, been announced by anyone in senior management at Amtrak concerning when traditional dining will be returning to the Florida trains?

 

[joelkfla]

Has any date, including the year, been announced by anyone in senior management at Amtrak concerning when traditional dining will be returning to the Florida trains?

IIRC "early 2023" was stated at the RPA webinar in November.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

I talked myself into a splurge and changed from a regional to a roomette on today’s Silver Star, traveling from TRE to ALX, so I got lunch.

I absolutely cannot believe I’m saying this, but lunch was delicious.

I had the salmon/shrimp dish and it came properly heated, a tender piece of salmon and as large as ones I’ve had when going out to lunch, plus about 4 decent-sized shrimp, all in a delicious sauce, and with the brown rice and veggies cooked just right.

There was a warm roll and butter, and even though you needed a microscope to see the salad, the lettuce was fresh and crisp and the one lonely tiny tomato was fine.

But I wasn’t that interested in the salad, anyway. I was more interested in the butter cake that was a dessert choice. Absolutely delicious. But extremely rich—I ate a third of it and took the rest with me for the next couple of days.

By the way, John, my SCA, was wonderful. I’ve had him before. And the SCA in the other sleeper saw me when I was getting off at ALX (they jointly helped me down the steps and onto the platform), and he remembered me (and I remembered him)—he also was wonderful.

I mention that because I really believe a good crew makes each other better, and it may be that more care was taken in this kitchen because of that.

 

[user 14106]

Glad to hear you had a great trip. TBH some of the flex items especially the current ones are halfway decent when prepared properly. I’d still prefer traditional dining and hope it returns but on a shorter trip like the lake shore a couple of the options aren’t horrendous. I could see though how a departure from proper prep could totally screw them up though.