The Challenges of Airport Catering

1. Offering a Diversity of Restaurants

The passengers are from different countries all over the world, they have different requirements and tastes. Therefore, during the selection of food providers, the specific eating habits and tastes of different countries have to be taking in to consider so as providing a variety of choices for customers. Thus, this can maintain the satisfaction of the passengers by giving them a dining experience.

2. Restrictions on Storage Space and Delivery

As the space of the restaurant is very limited, this makes the storage space for the food ingredients becomes limited. In addition, the location of the airport usually is at the remote area, this further make the process of getting food in and out of the airport a logistical challenge compared to the street once the ingredients are out of stock. Therefore, it is a challenge for the operators to have a precise forecast of the demand of the dishes and carefully plan schedules of re-ordering the ingredients at the same time can offer fresh meals.

 The Trends of Airport Catering

1.   Locating Near the Gates

Airport restaurant operators are testing their latest gambit to sell more food and drink: getting their offerings within closer reach of passengers. They’re working with airports to get space closer to gates — or, in some cases, occupying entire holding rooms at gates — to cater to travelers who are reluctant to wander too far from where they board. However, the airports have to squeeze the size of gates, converting unused ones into food or snack areas and building smaller kitchens in gate restaurants that can function without a lot of equipment.

2. Offering Healthier Meals

Nowadays, travelers looking for healthy food should choose vegetarian options, which are naturally low in fat and high in fiber. A survey to be released today of 15 major U.S. airports finds that 83% of restaurants have at least one vegetarian item on the menu — low in fat, high in fiber an. That’s up from 57% a little more than a decade ago. Even in the lowest ranking airports, it’s easy to find a bean burrito or a veggie sandwich. For example, with passengers becoming more diet-conscious, South Florida’s airports now offer sandwiches and salads filled with hummus, sprouts, spinach, carrots and other healthy stuff.

3.    Offering Local Flavored Meals

More airports are adding local foodservice brands, forcing national companies to adapt to each location. Airports across the U.S. are adding a more local feel to their concourses in an attempt to offer travelers a better sense of what that city has to offer. While national restaurant brands still dominate airport terminals, the last 10 years have seen a rise in the percentage of local-dining options as airports have sought to cultivate a “sense of place” by favoring vendors based in the airport’s host city.

The Challenges of Airline Catering

1.    Taste and Flavor

Taking meal in the sky will affect taste buds, which are about 30 per cent less sensitive than on the ground. To counter passengers’ dulled palates, the airline need to adjust the seasoning, but the amount of reasoning is difficult to adjust.

2.     Customer Base

The cross-section of customers is huge. A global airline need to recognize the passenger profile on every route and need to have a huge diversity of dishes and also have to take in special meal requests. However, the space to stock 100 per cent of every choice is not enough. Therefore, a menu has to become up that will appeal to everybody and still stock just enough so everyone can have their choice.

3.    Reducing Meal Wastage and Managing Costs

Though growth in airline passengers over the past few years has positively impacted the airline catering business, the revenues declined steeply in the year 2009 due to global economic slowdown and hike in fuel costs. Also, the increasing competition due to the growth of low-cost carriers (LCCs), the airlines have to try every effort to reduce the cost and seek for margin in order to maintain its profits.

The Trends of Airport Catering

1.   More Diversity of Onboard Offer

Different ways of serving meals to passengers are experimenting in the Airlines throughout the world. These options include buy-on-board food products, buy-at-the gate options, giveaway-at-the-gate and offering a picnic bag rather than tray-set.

2.    Fewer Stakeholders in the Supply Chain

Suppliers have begun to eliminate some elements of the supply chain so that they can supply airlines from wherever their factories are located. This is often in direct competition with airline caterers and typically involves using disposable packaging that eliminates the need for tray assembly and even trolley assembly. For instance, Supplair’s products can be delivered directly to flight kitchens, reducing the role of the caterer to transportation and loading. Nestle Sky Tray’s. ‘Hot Pocket’ brand, are delivered straight to flight kitchens and then loaded directly onto aircraft without any assembly by the caterer.

On the aircraft, the trays can be also be used to serve the passengers directly and reducing the role of the traditional flight caterer. Finally with the use of logistics firms such as Kuehne and Nagel whose global warehousing and transportation capability offer significant economies of scale, elements of the supply chain can become totally removed from traditional stakeholders.

3.    Process Improvement in Flight Kitchens

With the external pressures from customers and competitors, all flight catering firms are seeking to reduce their costs by operating more efficiently. In order to achieve it they take the lessons from manufacturing and assembly plants – most especially the concepts of lean or agile manufacturing and just-in-time production. The approach being adopted varies from firm to firm, and from plant to plant, but some clear trends are evident. These are:

  • Average cycle time (i.e. total processing time) in the industry used to be about 24 hours –some plants have reduced this to 8 hours Reducing cycle time has been achieved by taking ‘waste’ out of the system –wasted time, wasted movement, too much stock, unnecessary transportation and etc.
  • An industry norm was that each aircraft need 3.5 sets of equipment (one set on the plane, one being cleaned at the point of departure, one ready for loading at the point of arrival, and a half set to cover losses and breakages). By reducing cycle time, global caterers have significantly reduced the total amount of equipment in the system. Less equipment frees up space in plants to enable revision to process layouts, simplify inventory control, and generally use space more efficiently.