WASHINGTON — Amtrak has begun offering coach passengers on the Empire Builder, California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, Coast Starlight, and Sunset Limited the opportunity to buy meals in those trains’ dining cars, a practice that began March 1.
Since mid-2021, these are the only long-distance trains offering breakfasts, lunches, and dinners prepared to order for sleeping-car passengers; the cost of food and one alcoholic and all non-alcoholic beverages are included in the price of each ticket.
Now, a “limited number of seatings” for breakfast, lunch and dinner are being offered to coach travelers on those trains at a fixed price: $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, $45 for dinner, and $20 for all kids’ meals. Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods tells Trains News Wire, “The onboard purchase comes with the full traditional dining experience —including a complimentary alcoholic drink, complimentary non-alcoholic beverages as well as the bar selection.”
Gradual downgrades to dining
Full-service dining cars offered individually priced meals to all passengers since Amtrak’s 1971 inception. In response to concerns from Congress and the Reagan Administration that the company was losing too much money on food service, in the 1980s Amtrak began including meals in the price of all sleeping-car customers’ tickets, an accounting practice known as “first class transfer.”
After former Delta Airlines chief executive Richard Anderson was hired by Amtrak’s board of directors as president and CEO, in May 2018, onboard meal preparation and staffing was dropped on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited in favor of pre-packaged food available only to sleeping-car passengers and served in balsa-wood boxes.
“Flexible dining” meals-in-a-bowl, along with the policy of limiting coach passengers to cafe cars, spread to the Crescent, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, City of New Orleans, and Cardinal in October 2019. It was implemented on the Texas Eagle and other western long-distance trains in the summer of 2020, justified by management as a health precaution during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when no vaccines were available.
Once Amtrak brought back dining-car meals on the western trains (except the Eagle) the following year, the company began a “pilot” project of offering Coast Starlight business-class patrons the opportunity to buy meals at a fixed price. With a limited pool of prospective diners and thin dining car staffing, the Los Angeles-Seattle train’s experiment was designed to begin re-establishing what Amtrak had previously hosted before Anderson’s cost cutting.
Some questions remain
While the Coast Starlight template has been extended, exactly how the “limited number of seatings” will be offered could vary on a train-by-train basis. Amtrak’s Woods would only say that “the dining experience for coach passengers will be based on availability.”
Assuming sleeping car travelers get the first pick of lunch and dinner times, it isn’t clear whether coach patrons would be offered vacant early slots or only seats at the last seating. The same is true at “first come, first served” breakfast. How this is handled likely depends on how each train’s dining car lead service attendant assess passenger load and dining car staffing.
As for the possible expansion of traditional dining to the single level New York-Miami Silver Star and Silver Meteor or other trains that still offer only “flexible” meals to sleeping-car passengers, Woods says, “We’ll let you know about changes to dining on the Silver Service should we have something to announce.”
