Delivering the right food and beverage portions to every traveller across an airline is a huge undertaking. Bernie Baldwin discovers how providers are standing up to the test.
In the TV show “MasterChef”, where amateur chefs compete to see who is the best among them, there is often a round where the contestants work in groups to deliver a meal for a group of workers at, say, a small factory. Perhaps there are about 120-150 people to be fed at lunchtime and the contestants have to devise a menu, prepare it and serve it within an allotted time.
Now imagine feeding that amount of people on an aircraft which does six sectors a day. Then, say the airline has 250 aircraft doing such rotations, so pulling together the food and drink to cater for all that – with as little waste as possible – is an immense challenge running to millions of portions.
For a start, the catering organisation needs to know what flights the airline is doing each day and where to load and unload, especially as not every route has a daily service. Therefore it needs to be closely connected to an airline’s systems in order to ensure the right amount of food and beverage gets to the right places at the right time.
The ‘right amount/little waste’ criterion goes beyond satisfying the refreshment demands of passengers. Every extra piece of weight mean more fuel used and a greater amount of emissions produced, so reduced weight means reduced costs.
Hiranjan Aloysius, chief executive officer, dnata Catering & Retail, Australia, relates how his company tackles such a task. “Working in partnership with our airline customers is key to our success and theirs. With an increasing number of airlines introducing pre-order options and other initiatives that offer greater flexibility and provide more choice to the passenger, the accuracy and flow of information is more critical than ever,” he begins.
“Passengers expect and value the ability to be as flexible in the air as they’re able to be on the ground, which is why we work with our airline partners to make sure the pre-flight and inflight experience we deliver exceeds those expectations.
“Our integrated systems and ways of working ensure we receive accurate and timely information across passenger numbers, flight delays and changes, plus special meal orders, right up until flight departure,” Aloysius explains. “However, it isn’t only our integrated systems and processes that are essential to getting the right meals to the right place, on time. Local customer relationships are key to servicing our customers’ requirements.
“An airline will always have last minute changes, which on occasion doesn’t allow the systems time to capture and feed through the information. At these times, it is our local teams and their strong relationships with the local stations that pull through and ensure the needs of our customers are met – sometimes with minutes to spare before departure,” he adds.
Norbert van den Berg, president and managing director North West Europe for gategourmet, notes that for most of his company’s hub customers, “we have direct connection to the customer’s booking systems. This allows for proper forecasting. In addition, our processes are set up as such that we are able to deliver our goods and services, as agreed with our customers, as per our specifications and at the right time and with a very high average delivery reliability”.
LSG Group – which has two expert brands dealing with airline catering – LSG Sky Chefs and Retail inMotion – works with a number of airline catering platforms to ensure product is available for production at any of its units. “In addition, we have an internal solution for production forecasting to capture our units’ anticipated needs to ensure sufficient timing for our materials teams to place necessary orders for our customer flights,” the Group states.
Manuel Hübschmann, retail director at Retail inMotion, elaborates on the systems used to ensure orders are met in a timely manner. “We have full integration from the flight and passenger data to our Vector loading planner system (vLPS) and then to the caterer and packer (making sure the correct quantities are packed for each flight),” he remarks. “Our data science-driven vLPS will ensure that each flight has the best predictions and loading quantities, therefore making sure that passengers have sufficient choice on board while reducing food waste. We have worked very closely with the airline and the caterer over the past months to reduce the time of production and loading so that all changes to the flight or passenger quantities are considered until shortly before take-off.”
Knowing when a flight will depart creates the issue of how far out a catering organisation will begin sourcing the produce for the F&B offer, menus have already been decided with the airline customer. According to LSG Group, this varies greatly based on the customer and the required timing of their selections. “In general, once a customer decides on a menu they would like to implement, we work closely with all internal departments to ensure products are available where needed,” the company comments.
At Retail inMotion, Verena Ventsch, director category management & design onboard retail, reports that trend scouting for new products is a constant process that happens throughout the year. “Sourcing may start up to one year in advance, mainly when a product needs to be adapted to airline needs, such as the packaging. If that isn’t the case, the majority of the sourcing will happen about 5-8 months prior to a listing period. Only after initial conversations with suppliers are products presented to the airline customer. Once the F&B offering has been chosen, we finalise the administrative aspects of the sourcing process and hand over to our SCM (supply chain management),” she states.
At dnata Catering & Retail, the local customer relationships also prove their value in this area. “In Australia we are very passionate about our ‘paddock to plate’ philosophy. We work closely with growers and producers not only to source products, but also to develop products based on seasonality, provenance and food trends, well before we design and finalise menus with our customers,” Aloysius emphasises.
“Once the menu is decided, our procurement and supply chain teams work together to ensure all products are available in each location, based on the menu and customer demand. This planning can be completed months in advance, depending on the season or planning lead times,” he continues. “Working with our growers and producers early in the supply chain means we can fine-tune the smallest of details, avoiding sourcing and delivery delays as well as any oversupply and potential waste creation.”
For gategourmet’s van den Berg, sourcing the raw materials hinges on a simple fact. “Procurement of goods depends on the product,” he declares. “Frozen products chosen by the customer are normally procured 10 days in advance, while produce for instance is delivered at our facilities 24 hours or less before production takes place. Our processes including procurement are following Just-In-Time planning to secure freshness and quality of products.” Such planning, of course, is carried out with the aid of IT applications such as ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems.
Returning to weight and emissions being a concern in every part of the airline system, apart from not over-catering, there are other opportunities to keep weight down, for example through changes in packaging. “We work with our customers together to reduce weight on board,” confirms van den Berg. “Loading to passenger loads, versus a full load, allows us to reduce the fuel burn of our customers. There is always room for improvement, but products and loading are continuous efforts we undertake together with our customers.”
A similar commitment can be found at Retail InMotion, according to Verena Ventsch. “However small an impact we can make with our Onboard Retail programmes (compared with flying itself), we will do it,” she stresses.
“When packaging is developed, especially for fresh food, we strive to develop sustainable packaging coming from agrarian waste, for example. This might not weigh less than ordinary packaging, but the environmental footprint is smaller. Another example is the guidance we offer to our customers on what impact certain product decisions have on the environment. While drinking beer out of a bottle might be viewed as more premium, glass is quite heavy. Having the same product in a can have a big impact on weight hence saving kerosene.”
Keeping weight down is at the forefront of everyone’s minds according at dnata , according to Aloysius. “The key thing is to get the supply accurate through clear forecasting, both on the side of our customers and within our own operations. Deeper passenger insights, the ability to pre-order meals and other technology-led initiatives continue to improve planning and minimise excess loading on aircraft, reducing weight and waste created.
“We also pride ourselves on minimising ‘food miles’ and ensuring that products are sourced locally wherever possible. We work with our suppliers to identify packaging efficiencies by removing unnecessary additional layers or single use plastics and utilising reusable crates to move product. This reduces emissions through the supply chain,” Aloysius continues.
“We also focus on quality and not quantity when proposing products to our airline customers, which assists in reducing weight loaded onto aircraft through a reduction in product and packaging, whilst also enhancing the passenger experience.”
Aloysius also notes how technology has been changing the way dnata operates. “From utilising technology to reduce paper processes to using data analytics to track on-time performance and customer satisfaction, technology continues to improve the way we do business.
“We’re seeing energy efficiency improvements, waste reduction, deeper retail insights and broad production efficiencies, all being driven by technology. It allows us to be dynamic in decision-making and efficient in implementing and communicating changes, ultimately driving greater flexibility and accuracy for our customers and theirs [the passengers],” he summarises in a way with which few would seem likely to argue.
Author: Bernie Baldwin
Published: 27th July 2021
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