I guess I’ll give this another shot - until Amtrak correctly accounts for costs and revenue, there will be no correct analysis of the food service. In simple terms, the costs include the cost of the food, the salaries of the food service employees and the
fixed costs of the cafe and dining cars. How one apportions the fixed costs is too complex a question to deal with here. In any event, against the costs, one applies the revenue to determine whether the food service bottom line is positive or negative. So let’s now look at revenue and tackle the coach passengers first. This is relatively simple, you just total up what they actually pay for the food they purchase.The sleeper passengers revenue is different. It has been asserted ( I have never seen the accounting from Amtrak) that they count as revenue the menu listed price of the food ordered by the sleeper passenger. As I have stated before, this is an incorrect accounting. While that is a fine measure for coach passengers as indicated above, it doesn’t reflect properly revenue from the sleeper passenger. In fact, the sleeper passenger has paid for the meals when the ticket was purchased. One can calculate the number of potential meals that the sleeper passenger will have during any particular trip. The question then, what is the proper apportionment of the revenue received (cost of the ticket) which is attributed to the meals provided. That apportioned revenue, then needs to be added to that received from the coach passengers (plus any actual purchases in the cafe car by sleeper passengers) to determine total revenue. To account for sleeper car food revenue as it is apparently being done by Amtrak results in absurd results. Note that if a sleeper passenger decides not to eat a meal or meals, though the passenger has paid for all meals, Amtrak will show no revenue from the food service while it’s actual cost for the food will be lower (I didn’t say 0 since there is some potential cost of spoilage for food bought but not ordered. This cost of spoilage is part of accounting in all food service operation on board a train or not). The question of the proper amount of the ticket to attribute to the meals is an accounting issue but one that clearly affects any analysis of whether or not the food service is profitable or how much it is losing money as the case may be. To only post as revenue an amount for meals eaten by sleeper passengers causes a ridiculous situation where Amtrak appears to be losing more money when a passenger doesn’t eat a meal (no revenue posted) than when a passenger actually consumes food.
