Petition to bring back the buffet on GWR

[ashkeba]

Simple? Travelling Chef was hardly complicated fare to produce.[…]
So what, pray tell, are "simple hearty and profitable lines", exactly? Maybe you could inform the rest of us, and the catering departments at the train operators, as you seem to know better than them.

One of the places that uses awful trolleys is Austria, presumably because they had identified that some of their passengers would quite like an at-seat service of some sort, rather than trotting off along the train to a bistro car.

I don't know exactly what would be most profitable, but I'd be expecting simple sauces on pasta, rice and so on, along with salads. Stuff you can cook in batches, keep warm and serve lots of it fast. Omelettes may not be complicated but they are difficult to cook in batches and keep without them degrading. They're a good chef demo but easy to see how they might not be profitable.

I've not seen trollies on Austrian Rail Jet. At seat deliveries were ordered on the WiFi or by paper slip handed to catering staff and brought by tray. They seem to have far more staff than DB so I wonder if that's also run as a public service rather than for profit.

 

[JonathanH]

I don't know exactly what would be most profitable, but I'd be expecting simple sauces on pasta, rice and so on, along with salads. Stuff you can cook in batches, keep warm and serve lots of it fast.

I can't see a service like that ever working - you are kind of reliant on loads of people wanting food all at once and have no idea about the demand on any given service. There hasn't been catering of that kind on trains for well over 40 years other than perhaps on niche operations. It has all been 'ready meals' and prepackaged sandwiches for some time on mainstream services.

 

[R G NOW.]

Would a vending machine in each coach be an alterative. It would mean people could get crisps, drinks and chocolates from it. Don't know if a trains power supply is sufficient to power them though.

If Corbyn had been elected, and he nationalised, what would we have then, I wonder.

 

[Energy]

Would a vending machine in each coach be an alterative. It would mean people could get crisps, drinks and chocolates from it. Don't know if a trains power supply is sufficient to power them though.

If Corbyn had been elected, and he nationalised, what would we have then, I wonder.

Interesting idea

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't know exactly what would be most profitable, but I'd be expecting simple sauces on pasta, rice and so on

This kind of thing works well as microwaved meals which are probably easier than keeping them warm. But yes, this sort of thing is most suitable for on-train catering. VTWC did do some chilli pots and similar which were quite nice.

For breakfast look at ideas like the EAT poached egg pots and similar.

 

[Amlag]

This kind of thing works well as microwaved meals which are probably easier than keeping them warm. But yes, this sort of thing is most suitable for on-train catering. VTWC did do some chilli pots and similar which were quite nice.

For breakfast look at ideas like the EAT poached egg pots and similar.

The Trolley 'service' if it can be called that on the present GW Inter City services, for generally other than First class passengers, is far from satisfactory and more and more passengers are now realising this.
As an example, on the not particularly full 0834 Exeter to Paddington 9 coach IET on Sun 15 Dec, it was TWO hours after leaving St D before the trolley reached coach G and it then took half an hour
for the trolley to work through this coach. No wonder the trolley attendant after serving this coach finally decided to become 'static' .
Passengers who before this 'static service' had made their own way to find him ( in desperation for refreshments) were unable to purchase hot drinks due to him ( foolishly?) having no paper carrier bags required under H&S . It was not until the Green tabard wearing on train 'general factotum' come luggage stowage person ferried beakers and these bags (from the large underused kitchen next to the first class on these new trains) that people were able to obtain hot drinks from the then 'Static' trolley.

 

[HowardGWR]

The Trolley 'service' if it can be called that on the present GW Inter City services, for generally other than First class passengers, is far from satisfactory and more and more passengers are now realising this.
As an example, on the not particularly full 0834 Exeter to Paddington 9 coach IET on Sun 15 Dec, it was TWO hours after leaving St D before the trolley reached coach G and it then took half an hour
for the trolley to work through this coach. No wonder the trolley attendant after serving this coach finally decided to become 'static' .
Passengers who before this 'static service' had made their own way to find him ( in desperation for refreshments) were unable to purchase hot drinks due to him ( foolishly?) having no paper carrier bags required under H&S . It was not until the Green tabard wearing on train 'general factotum' come luggage stowage person ferried beakers and these bags (from the large underused kitchen next to the first class on these new trains) that people were able to obtain hot drinks from the then 'Static' trolley.

I am trying to puzzle how much more efficient a small buffet would be on a 9 car, as opposed to the trolley, to satisfy the immense demand you witnessed on this train. I assume the time of departure had something to do with it, yet, apparently, pax were satisfied with the small assortment in quality and quantity of what was available from a trolley. What if it had been a double 5 car?

 

[JonathanH]

Would a vending machine in each coach be an alterative. It would mean people could get crisps, drinks and chocolates from it. Don't know if a trains power supply is sufficient to power them though.

Someone still has to fill a vending machine - you need to pay the cost of a supply chain and for someone to fill it.

If Corbyn had been elected, and he nationalised, what would we have then, I wonder.

The railway would still need to justify its costs if it was nationalised. The policy espoused by the Labour party was I suspect more about not letting public money go to private profit than improving on board catering. I doubt they had given any thought to the jssue of fitting buffets on GWR IETs in forming their policies.

 

[Amlag]

I am trying to puzzle how much more efficient a small buffet would be on a 9 car, as opposed to the trolley, to satisfy the immense demand you witnessed on this train. I assume the time of departure had something to do with it, yet, apparently, pax were satisfied with the small assortment in quality and quantity of what was available from a trolley. What if it had been a double 5 car?

The average passenger seems to suffer in silence on the very hard seats and with the far smaller choice of refreshments (with no such goodies as hot bacon rolls etc ) now available on a trolley compared to the Buffet car of the HSTs.
The new Azuma units ( almost identical to GW IETS ) on the LNER East Coast services do have Buffets.

I would not describe the demand I witnessed as immense...just fairly typical.
The trolley system of dispensing refreshments seems slower per passenger/transaction than at a Buffet car counter ..the hot water on the trolley, for example, runs VERY slowly.

If I was a First Group Director and Shareholder I would be wanting to know why we are loosing our passengers' refreshments business formerly conducted on our trains to our commercial advantage, to the likes of Sainsburys and M&S at Paddington and at other Organization's station buffets.

I will make no comment on the 5 Car IET units, other than to say they are ( as predicted by 'wide industry' experienced Railwaymen ) far too often proving an Operational Nightmare .

 

[irish_rail]

The average passenger seems to suffer in silence on the very hard seats and with the far smaller choice of refreshments (with no such goodies as hot bacon rolls etc ) now available on a trolley compared to the Buffet car of the HSTs.
The new Azuma units ( almost identical to GW IETS ) on the LNER East Coast services do have Buffets.

I would not describe the demand I witnessed as immense...just fairly typical.
The trolley system of dispensing refreshments seems slower per passenger/transaction than at a Buffet car counter ..the hot water on the trolley, for example, runs VERY slowly.

If I was a First Group Director and Shareholder I would be wanting to know why we are loosing our passengers' refreshments business formerly conducted on our trains to our commercial advantage, to the likes of Sainsburys and M&S at Paddington and at other Organization's station buffets.

I will make no comment on the 5 Car IET units, other than to say they are ( as predicted by 'wide industry' experienced Railwaymen ) far too often proving an Operational Nightmare .

And I would argue it is the prevalence of 5 car sets that will mean we will probably never get buffets back on GWR. On Lner , most trains are 9 car sets and so justifying a buffet is easier, but adding buffets to 5 car sets I would imagine is less cost effective. This despite the fact on certain routes (in theory at least) the trains are operating as 10 car formations.

 

[JonathanH]

If I was a First Group Director and Shareholder I would be wanting to know why we are loosing our passengers' refreshments business formerly conducted on our trains to our commercial advantage, to the likes of Sainsburys and M&S at Paddington and at other Organization's station buffets.

Isn't the point that refreshments on trains aren't necessarily in the commercial advantage of train operators? The shareholders might be quite happy not to be losing money paying to cover the cost of providing refreshments from a buffet counter.

 

[Ashley Hill]

FGW introduced some small buffets on the HSTs in their later years. Despite their size they sold hot food,various coffees made with ground beans and a good selection of other products. They were well used. On a 10 car IET you would still need 2 stewards (one on each) wether it be a trolley or proper buffet.

 

[Bletchleyite]

FGW introduced some small buffets on the HSTs in their later years. Despite their size they sold hot food,various coffees made with ground beans and a good selection of other products. They were well used. On a 10 car IET you would still need 2 stewards (one on each) wether it be a trolley or proper buffet.

Espresso based premium coffee (which is a highly popular product with a significant mark-up possible without annoying people) is probably only really doable with a counter, yes.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Amlag, you are assuming that the catering takings are going down. I think FG directors are quite pleased at the moment.

It isn’t an unknown phenomenon that when you replace a static buffet with a trolley, your takings go up as you tend to reach more punters.

What irks me is that, with a bit more thought, it could be a lot more.

 

[Energy]

Deleted, off topic

 

[Fast Track]

GWR are in a customer service sector and can be distinguished from other businesses by taking their customers experience downwards.

A 2 and a half hour Paddington to Exeter journey without any catering is a real low. Even on journeys where the trolley makes some progress along the train the cupboard is frequently bare by the time it arrives.

Bolt-ons and enhancements such as a modern well stocked, well run and properly marketed smart buffet car would provide value to the experience.

Not everyone has time or the inclination to make sandwiches at home and unwrap them on board - this is 2020 after all. Nor do people necessarily want to do so, or be seen to. Arriving early at the station to buy food or drinks for the journey - and have no ice is not practicable or undesirable for a great many.

Look at hotels and how they have modernised and the Costa Coffee, Cafe Nero takeover of the high streets cafes from greasy spoons to smartly dressed barista service. There surely is a market for a modern buffet with both contemporary and traditional stock. Make the train fashionable with a hint of glamour and not just a cattle truck service.

Tickets to the West Country are not cheap and ppeople deserve better than no catering and ironing board hard seats.

If the petition is being ignored by those who decide these things and to avoid being defeatist I wonder what the best way forward is?

 

[JN114]

If the petition is being ignored by those who decide these things and to avoid being defeatist I wonder what the best way forward is?

Vote with your feet for a mode of travel that provides the services you expect. Either, enough people will do the same and the powers that be will sit up, take notice and make improvements; or you'll be on your preferred method of transport with the facilities you desire and there will be one more space on the train for those who don't consider on-train catering a deal-breaker. Either way it's a win-win.

I don't see a middle of the road option as achievable in the current climate. It's been stated, by those with first-hand knowledge of such things, that the DfT aren't countenancing any changes on the on-train catering offer. And I really don't think there is a business case for GWR to just throw more staff at it - things can be improved a little in that regard; but not to the levels I would suggest are necessary to make a step-change in whole-train trolley availability and offering - (between 5 and 10 catering staff per train, multiple trolleys and runners getting freshly prepared food from kitchen(s) is what I'd do to make the most of the catering situation within the bounds of the existing contractual arrangements with DfT).

 

[Deafdoggie]

The average passenger seems to suffer in silence on the very hard seats and with the far smaller choice of refreshments (with no such goodies as hot bacon rolls etc ) now available on a trolley compared to the Buffet car of the HSTs.
The new Azuma units ( almost identical to GW IETS ) on the LNER East Coast services do have Buffets.

I would not describe the demand I witnessed as immense...just fairly typical.
The trolley system of dispensing refreshments seems slower per passenger/transaction than at a Buffet car counter ..the hot water on the trolley, for example, runs VERY slowly.

If I was a First Group Director and Shareholder I would be wanting to know why we are loosing our passengers' refreshments business formerly conducted on our trains to our commercial advantage, to the likes of Sainsburys and M&S at Paddington and at other Organization's station buffets.

I will make no comment on the 5 Car IET units, other than to say they are ( as predicted by 'wide industry' experienced Railwaymen ) far too often proving an Operational Nightmare .

I am a first group share holder. The losses on catering are now much less as there is less overheads involved with a trolley than a buffet (mainly due to less stock, concentrating on best-selling lines, greater sales and less waste of unsold products)
However, the service isn’t perfect. It really needs to be better organised. XC manage their trolley service much better. No one waits hours on a XC train, even a 7 coach HST. I suspect this is due to XC catering staff being paid a lot more and having targets. And XC are not known for having empty trains. But XC will always come down the train if they can, and announce they are at the end of coach F if they can’t. GWR really need to learn lessons from XC on trolley operation

 

[RichT54]

If the petition is being ignored by those who decide these things and to avoid being defeatist I wonder what the best way forward is?

Are GWR even aware of this petition? Do companies bother checking sites like 38 Degrees? As of today, it has 2,947 votes, is that enough to grab their attention?

 

[Deafdoggie]

Are GWR even aware of this petition? Do companies bother checking sites like 38 Degrees? As of today, it has 2,947 votes, is that enough to grab their attention?

In short, No.
less than 3,000 people wanting a buffet implies it was the correct thing to remove it.

 

[Goldfish62]

In short, No.
less than 3,000 people wanting a buffet implies it was the correct thing to remove it.

Or only 3000 people were aware of the petition's existence.

 

[Goldfish62]

Vote with your feet for a mode of travel that provides the services you expect. Either, enough people will do the same and the powers that be will sit up, take notice and make improvements; or you'll be on your preferred method of transport with the facilities you desire and there will be one more space on the train for those who don't consider on-train catering a deal-breaker. Either way it's a win-win.

.

While you're not wrong it's a dreadful indictment of the contempt our railways hold their customers in. Part of me wishes that the railways could get their comeuppance in a truely competitive commercial environment where they have to fight for every single passenger. They wouldn't have a clue what to do.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Or only 3000 people were aware of the petition's existence.

If people were bothered, they’d find the petition

 

[pt_mad]

The numbers, quite simply, do not add up - especially if you're expecting a standard level of service on every train.

If you analyse the number of heads you'd need to provide a chef on every train (2 heads in the case of a 2 x 5 car), multiply that up to cover holidays and sickness and then work out annual wages, nobody will sell enough omelettes or bacon rolls to come near to covering it.

Given it'll be the same DfT overseeing the next and future franchises, chefs and buffets are likely to be far down the agenda. Although a favourite topic on here, it really is a minority who partake on on board catering.

Thing is though, can't a single person buffet counter like I believe LNER has sell say a handful of heated up snacks such as hot panini? They do this on the LNER 91 sets so I am guessing Azumas too? I had a nice chicken tikka panini type thing a few weeks ago with s hot drink and crisps in the meal deal. And there was only one member of staff at the café cafe bar when I was there. There was also a ham and cheese hot flatbread type thing or a hot chilli snack.

What would be inefficient about an arrangement like that on GWR?

 

[Goldfish62]

If people were bothered, they’d find the petition

Oh come on! People have many things to worry about in their busy lives. "I'm sure there must be a petition on buffets on GWR for me to sign somewhere" is probably not uppermost in their thoughts. It doesn't mean they're not bothered about it when they find they're stuck in a train with no catering for four hours.

 

[RichT54]

Oh come on! People have many things to worry about in their busy lives. "I'm sure there must be a petition on buffets on GWR for me to sign somewhere" is probably not uppermost in their thoughts. It doesn't mean they're not bothered about it when they find they're stuck in a train with no catering for four hours.

What action should those people take in order to get GWR to change their decision? Is just discussing it in this thread going to make any difference?

 

[Goldfish62]

What action should those people take in order to get GWR to change their decision? Is just discussing it in this thread going to make any difference?

Now you've lost me, I'm afraid.

 

[FGW_DID]

What action should those people take in order to get GWR to change their decision? Is just discussing it in this thread going to make any difference?

It’s not about how to get GWR to change their minds, it should be how to get the DfT to change their minds!

 

[jimm]

I don't know exactly what would be most profitable, but I'd be expecting simple sauces on pasta, rice and so on, along with salads. Stuff you can cook in batches, keep warm and serve lots of it fast. Omelettes may not be complicated but they are difficult to cook in batches and keep without them degrading. They're a good chef demo but easy to see how they might not be profitable.

I've not seen trollies on Austrian Rail Jet. At seat deliveries were ordered on the WiFi or by paper slip handed to catering staff and brought by tray. They seem to have far more staff than DB so I wonder if that's also run as a public service rather than for profit.

Most profitable?

The lack of profitability of onboard catering, even with inflated prices, is the entire point of what I am saying. Travelling Chef was a very long way from profitable.

The name of the game is minimising losses or breaking even if you are very lucky - because, guess what, most people use trains to get from A to B, not as some mobile culinary experience. All these passengers you seem to think are going to buy lots of hot food fast do not exist. Whereas lots of people do exist who are travelling around these days with expensive electronic devices of all shapes and sizes that they are not keen to leave unattended while they go off in search of a buffet car.

The catering services that DB and OBB provide that send some posters here into raptures are not profitable. Try finding a restaurant or bistro car on a train in France, the home of fine dining. SNCF wasn't willing to shoulder the losses. There isn't even complimentary food in first class on most TGV services, except where it went down the road of an airline-type offer for the international Eurostar and TGV Lyria (services to Switzerland that take a while, as most of the route is not on an LGV high-speed line).

In part, their approach was influenced by the impact of reduced journey times thanks to TGVs - an effect that was seen in this country a long time ago, in the late 1970s when HSTs supplanted loco-hauled trains and the lavish over-provision of catering on early HSTs was rapidly reined back, due to low demand for restaurant car meals.

Even Amtrak, with interminably long journeys across the US, has been cutting back to basic pre-packed airline-type food on a number of services in recent months, due to heavy losses.

If I was a First Group Director and Shareholder I would be wanting to know why we are loosing our passengers' refreshments business formerly conducted on our trains to our commercial advantage, to the likes of Sainsburys and M&S at Paddington and at other Organization's station buffets.

For crying out loud, there is no commercial advantage to it - it would probably be more commercially advantageous to First Group, and other operators, just to forget about any type of on-train catering. Which is just what Chiltern Railways did to its morning peak offering not very long ago, even on London-Birmingham runs taking a couple of hours.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Tickets to the West Country are not cheap and ppeople deserve better than no catering and ironing board hard seats.

I completely agree. In the end GWR should have been allowed to order a different spec of IET for these services - with a large buffet, perhaps even a sit-down restaurant car DB-style, different seats and more luggage space (e.g. for surfboards). It was the DfT that insisted they had to be the same as the others. The Cornish services are different from basically everything else in the UK other than the Caledonian Sleeper, the Highland Chieftain and the Aberdeen one - a very long distance IC taking well over 4 hours where most people actually take the through journey. They need a totally different service model to a semifast to Bristol which really isn't that much different from a Chiltern service, or TPE or something.

(The long-distance XCs don't really count as people don't tend to do the whole journey on them, whereas a significant number of users of the Cornish services, Chieftain/Aberdeen and Caledonian Sleeper do).

FWIW I was very displeased that I was not even offered a cup of tea all the way from Paddington to Penzance. And I've done that twice. On a journey like that I would like 3-4 cups.