Rail Catering
A view from the train
In the first of his regular columns on the rail travel food market in Europe, Roger Williams, gm, business development for Rail Gourmet, talks about retail strategy
One of the key questions that I get asked by railway clients is: “How can we raise sales of catering products in Standard class?” It is a conundrum many train catering operators ponder and some have spent thousands of euros on market research trying to solve. On board trains the trend is turning towards providing customers with at-seat services, although some train companies do not like the potential for damage to train seats and vestibules that trolleys can inflict. However, the caterers’ preference to include trolleys in their services is driven predominantly by the ever increasing reluctance of customers to leave their expensive personal belongings, such as laptops, unguarded whilst they have the hassle of stumbling through the train carriages in search of a drink or something to eat that may or may not be to their liking (or even available!). Concerns about retaining their seat (on unreserved services), personal safety and luggage security are clearly important but our research shows that, quite simply, the customer’s inclination to use a bar service is also consistently reduced pro-rata by their distance from the bar –
“rail caterers' preference to include trolleys in their services is predominantly driven by the reluctance of passengers to leave valuable belongings at their seats"
i.e. the more carriages they have to walk through the less likely they are to use the service provided. Research carried out by Rail Gourmet on a primary intercity route in the UK and on a cross border route between Paris and Brussels showed that in the coach next to the buffet bar over 50% of customers used the service, but that in the rear carriage this figure dipped to only around 5%. Coupled with increased competition from station cafés prior to boarding, clearly on-board caterers have to find new ways to generate
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www.onboardhospitality.com
Left: A new generation of train-friendly trolleys will soon replace this traditional old-style range; Above: First Great Western dedicated host
interest from these customers in order to raise sales. Consequently, more and more caterers are realising that they have to take their products to the customers rather than wait for the customers to come to them.
“caterers must take their products to the customer rather than wait for the customer to come to them"
The typical way to do this is via a sales trolley,
of which there are several designs on a theme – most of which are old fashioned, cold looking stainless steel which generally struggle to compete with the high-tech and heavily branded world of the modern day, station based, café culture that our customers are used to. Some operators have tried to introduce espresso machines with a variety of success but these have proven to be slow in service time and the style of coffee produced is expensive and not suitable for many markets, especially the UK and Ireland. One downside of using trolleys instead of a bar service is that the range of products, especially hot food and chilled drinks, is limited and so some caterers are now combining trolleys together with a bar or shop service to suit demand and
©First Great Western
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