On train catering, Should Steam railways be doing it more ?

Having experienced the catering on both the Swanage & IOWSR in the last week, surely s 'horses for courses' and the important thing is that railways have a catering offer that is both profitable and meets customers needs.

While I cant comment on profitability, I can confirm that what was on offer did what we wanted and looking at the crowded tea room at Havenstreet today did the same for others.

 

One thing which doesn't seem to have been brought up in the discussion about providing on-train dining is the need to cater for dietary requirements. Even if you ignore dietary requirement by preference (e.g. vegetarian, vegan etc) which I think you do at your peril, there many are people who cannot eat certain food for allergy or intolerance reasons. I cannot digest cows' milk and my wife is a coeliac. Even away from a railway context that significantly limits where we can eat, because gluten and dairy are so prevalent in so many meals commonly served in restaurants (often unnecessarily so in my opinion). How do you accommodate these needs? Do you design your menu so that it is completely free from common allergens or ingredients which people avoid by preference (which is not nearly as difficult as many catering providers seem to think, but may still limit the options you can offer, e.g. no cream sauces, no pasta), do you offer a vegetarian / gluten free / dairy free alternative to each menu item (which may mean Mr Smith who likes his meat still gets his Chilli with mince rather than having to have a veggie chilli with beans and veg, but increases complexity within the kitchen and risk of accidental contamination), or do you just not provide for these (which may in some ways increase the variety of meals you can offer, meaning it may be more attractive to repeat customers who don't want to eat the same thing every time, but also excludes other customers completely). All of these are decisions which need to be made when setting up or developing a dining offering, but I suspect many people setting these operations up, especially if they are volunteers and are not necessarily from a catering background, simply will not think of them until after the service starts running and I ring up saying "Hi, what can you offer for my wife and I with our dietary needs?"

Also, I have mentioned this on this forum before, but in July 2021 my wife and I went on a dining train on the Strathspey Railway. Despite our dietary restrictions, they were able to provide a very delicious 3 course meal which we could eat, without having an overly complicated menu. Which certainly proves the art of the possible!

 

On train dining has always looked a bit the Charlie Brooker bit about tv news in the modern age (building flatpack furniture with the instructions written on a belly dancers belly while a psycho plays a trumpet) but Strathspey Railway partnered with the Cairngorm Hotel for a while meant a lot can be done offsite and its mostly serving on the train instead of all the prep work being in a metal lined cupboard that gets flung around at 25pmh. And with advance notice, an allergen friendly meal can be prepped.

 

For the most part, on-train dining services require advanced booking and so there is the opportunity to ask whether or not the customer has special dietary requirements and decide whether it is able to meet them or not. Provided the question is asked, answered and acted upon, I'm not sure where the problem lies?

 

Having such an establishment in Strathspey with which to work is fortunate. Kidderminster, for example, might be more challenging.

I'd be vaguely interested in the comparative economics of it too

 

Strathspey have run their own catering in house for several years now I believe; since before Covid at any rate.

 

I missed that change, updated the post. I remember waiting for the trolley for the evening diner and lunch services coming up the ramp after going a decent distance down the street to go under the railway and up the other side.

 

Is there anywhere local you could get your executive chef to pick the brains of Patrick? Not necessarily Glyn Purnell maybe but Birmingham, Worcester, Hereford and Shrewsbury are all not far away, would they not have contacts in at least one of those local areas?

As someone who works in the wet sales side of hospitality, I’ve got a list of chefs in my phone book all the way from casual dining to Michelin Starred.
More than happy to have a chat with you about the economics. But basically labour is the most significant cost.

 

The problem, which may be me just being pessimistic based on experience, is that there are many established restaurants which simply do not cater for people with dietary needs. I reckon there are a significant minority of restaurants that do not have a single gluten free item on the menu (or, if they do, it's just a side, meaning my wife cannot have a main course there). Given that very successful individuals / organisations within the hospitality industry can be completely oblivious to the need to provide options for those with dietary needs, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there are catering outfits on predominantly volunteer-run railways that fall into the same trap

 

Oh mine's only a passing interest and I wouldn't want to (or, rightly, be allowed to) be anywhere near the sorts of positions to get the executive head chef to do anything. I'm delighted it's someone else's bag!

The suggestion upthread was Strathspey Railway partnering with the Cairngorm Hotel in Aviemore. I'd have thought Birmingham, Worcester, Hereford and Shrewsbury based establishments would be too far to make it work for Kidderminster.

Whether the economics are better for the Railway preparing the food itself I don't know. It just idly seemed to me that if you're charging £50 for a meal and are paying a hotel to produce it, then using paid labour to serve it, there's not much in the pot to pay for the cost of the rolling stock, loco and profit.

 

Yeah I wouldn't let volunteers near a knife or food safety and hygiene these days. But then thats consistent with my uneasiness at what volunteers should be expected to do. There has been an uptick in gluten and dairy intolerances and people cutting back on meat so anywhere ignoring that is heading down the wrong path. In bar management, I've seen a raise in quality and numbers of gluten free and alcohol free lines. I don't know if gluten free bread has quite caught up though but I haven't actively looked at that section.

 

From my experience gluten free bread and Dough is the only area where you should notice a difference. Sadly a lot of GF cakes in supermarkets are still relatively quite poor, even though making them at home just substituting GF flour in it tastes just as good as the original. But GF Pasta, GF Pastry, GF Gravy, all taste just as good as their glutenous equivalents and I think you might be hard pressed to find a difference

 

The Strathspey railway partnership with the Cairngorm hotel ended during the winter 2014/15. The dining train was introduced at the start of the 2015 season, which for the first two years was operated using external contractors. The catering operation was taken in house from the start of 2017, this operated a daily service train, with a dining train on one evening and a Sunday lunch train. All the food preparation and cooking for both trains was done on board, there is no external catering facility. In the last couple of years an off-train facility for washing up and laundry has been created. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, lack of staff both footplate and catering, probably profitability as well, the dining train has not operated since the end of 2019.

 

I had some GF muffins recently and they were, not great. Just real stodgy. I worked in a hotel about 10 years back where a guest brought GF bread and even she said it was like cardboard.

 

Thanks Keith, like I said, missed the changeover.

Catering staff (both BOH and FOH) is a complete nightmare to get these days especially if its on a low hours contract. Which isn't a complaint on any evening dining service, its just the nature of the work. People in hospitality got used to week nights and weekends off (I know I did) which are pretty much peak work hours. One of the advantages when Cairngorm Hotel were running the catering service was they had a pool of staff dedicated to the service but still had hours in the hotel. I'm fortunate to have built in my own time off in my current bar management role as my partner is a Monday to Friday 9-5 (ish) warrior so almost all my time with her was lost to working in my last bar job. Add in the multiplier of Aviemore being a small place and in the countryside, finding staff is even harder. Pretty sure Landmark was struggling to find staff. Thats where a whole bunch of teenagers got their first job and it paid better than anyone else in the area while also generally leaving evenings free for them. And like you say, footplate staff are also hard to get a hold of.

 

You do have a valid point there regarding location Patrick, as I say labour is the most expensive commodity, maybe not necessarily a with a hotel but just a thought, as the SVR has a tie up with a college in Telford could there not be a tie up with a local college regarding catering?
Do Dudley or Stourbridge do anything regarding hospitality?
Certainly where we are, there’s a local College that once a month opens as a restaurant and you can have a decent meal at a reasonable price, the students get experience, everyone’s a winner as Del Boy would say.
Not wanting to make this just about the SVR but it’s possibly something for other heritage lines to maybe think about.

 

What is the reason behind no fridges on the SVR? Many railways have on train fridges in their buffets.

The SVR ran the Limited and Venturer dining services for many years prior to 2020. What has changed in the meantime?

 

Correct, I did this earlier in the year, and it was only £45 each, so an extra £15, which included an bottle of beer on the outward and two rounds of the tea on the return.

 

I must give a correction; the dining train ran nine Friday evening services during July and August in 2021. Staffing problems put an end to it, the catering staff are all paid staff, however there would be very short notice resignations, sometimes just not turning up for a shift. This meant that staff that started at 09.00 for the day shift would end up having to cover the evening diner and not finish until 22.00 in the evening.

 

Having to pull an AFD is part of the job. I have lost countless evenings, days off, birthdays, boxing days, Christmas days. I was regularly rotared AFDs starting at 10am and finishing at gone midnight.