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| Re: Amtrak changes-LD Trains (1521307) | |||
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Re: Amtrak changes-LD Trains |
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Posted by Nilet on Thu Aug 15 19:07:23 2019, in response to Re: Amtrak changes-LD Trains, posted by orange blossom special on Thu Aug 15 15:03:15 2019. The reason dining cars always lose money has nothing to do with the type of food or the tastes of the populace and everything to do with the practicalities of the situation.A superliner coach has a capacity of ~75, per Wikipedia. A superliner sleeper has a capacity of ~30, assuming single occupancy for a roomette and accessible bedroom, double occupancy for a full bedroom and 4 people in the family bedroom. Assuming a typical California Zephyr has 5 coaches (filled to 80% capacity at any given meal time) and 3 sleepers (at full occupancy as stated above at every mealtime) and that about 30% of coach passengers opt to skip the diner (a rough estimate, but a generous one; I've almost never seen a coach passenger in the diner) then you're talking 300 people for each meal. Those 300 people represent a captive audience, but they also represent an exclusive audience— they have nowhere else to go, but the dining car has no one else to serve. A bad restaurant will go out of business through lack of patronage, but a good restaurant can serve as many people as choose to visit, which can easily be more than 300 daily. Now imagine that there is a restaurant of similar patronage - one that serves the same 300 customers per meal per day as a railroad dining car - but which chooses not to open for breakfast. Over the course of 48 hours, that restaurant will serve 600 lunches and 600 dinners, and will pay a set of staff for two 10-hour shifts. Meanwhile, the railroad dining car will serve 600 breakfasts, 600 lunches, and 600 dinners, but it will have to pay a set of staff for a single 48-hour shift, at a substantial premium due to overtime and the difficulty of convincing people to work such a demanding job. So restaurants may spring up on every block, but railroad dining cars will still lose money due to their naturally restricted audience and their need to pay staff for round-the-clock shifts not because more work is required but because you can't easily change shifts when the "restaurant" is moving at 79 MPH. |
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