Actually, it compares pretty much perfectly.
Having read a few books on the history of dining cars on trains, *private railroads often just ran to a store the day of the train and loaded up on supplies*. They even did so mid-route, with chefs arranging to pick up fresh supplies at intermediate stations.
I don't think the difference in employee pay is fundamental. If what it takes to run a profitable dining car is to have non-unionized labor, fine, that works for me. I don't believe this, though; the difference in labor costs isn't enough to make sense.
Dinner trains may have one seating, but they have one kitchen car (possibly with pre-made food) serving *four or five table cars full of passengers*. That's your economy of scale right there. They may have one attendant delivering food per car... or they may have fewer! Again, economies of scale. I don't know of any which succeed with only a single table car, or even with two table cars come to think of it.
It is quite possible that a single car which is half kitchen and half tables is just too small to make a profit on one seating. It may be necessary to fill *two* (or even three!) cars full of tables per seating, in order to make a profit. And it may be necessary to have pretty high prices. And a pretty small selection of options. That is all stuff I'd believe, because I know something about the economics of restaurants.
It's quite possible that the scale necessary to have profitable dining cars is hard to come by. It may really require more than one table car. (That said, I'm pretty sure the Auto Train was at least close.)
.) So I always went to the earliest seating in the dining car.
