WASHINGTON — Amtrak announced last week that new lunch options have been introduced on five overnight trains offering so-called flex meals — the premade dishes reheated on board rather than prepared in the dining car. That’s good news for sleeping car passengers who have been offered the same entrees for both lunch and dinner since the flex concept replaced traditional dining as a cost-cutting measure beginning in 2018.
However, it also signals management’s intention to only marginally improve an inferior status quo rather than embrace hospitality strengths that set passenger trains apart from “stay-in-your-seat” travel options. Not growing revenue by enticing coach patrons to purchase meals in a dining car’s welcoming and unique environment continues to be a missed opportunity.
Lunch additions
Travelers in sleeping cars aboard the Chicago-New York Lake Shore Limited and Cardinal; New York-New Orleans Crescent; Chicago-San Antonio Texas Eagle; and City of New Orleans to and from Chicago have been offered the same “flex” meals-in-a-bowl choices up to three times during a trip, depending on the duration of their journey.
The new flex menu adds a ham sandwich, turkey sub, Greek salad, hot dogs, and an Angus cheeseburger. Previously confronted with an identical selection at lunch and dinner, many sleeping car passengers chose to flee to the train’s café car for some of these items. The variety of café offerings has improved lately, though individual pizzas have been dropped.
The press release announcing the menu change says, “Flex Dining offers guests the flexibility to eat at a time that suits them, whether that’s in the dining car or by having their meal delivered to their room by an attendant.”
That flexibility rarely occurs, because thinly staffed trains can serve meals only at set times. For instance, half of the Cardinal’s Amfleet II café has been closed to coach passengers when flex meals are offered to sleeping car passengers — the train runs without a diner — while Amtrak employees exclusively occupy the other half of the car all day.
The City of New Orleans’ lone dining car attendant heats food, delivers meals, and cleans tables; no one assists. On a recent trip into Chicago with a limited serving window before arrival, she took breakfast reservations the previous evening. If you didn’t show up at the prescribed time, someone came looking for you.
It’s understandable that under these staffing conditions, presentation suffers. Food is usually delivered in the container it is heated in, often with finger-burning wrapping intact. The exception is on the Lake Shore, where flex food has been plated separately for the past year. Though a worthy enhancement, there has been no indication that this common-sense upgrade will be extended to other flex meal trains, perhaps because it would require adding another employee.
Better options
Expanding the traditional dining model would allow superior menu choices: freshly prepared French toast and omelets at breakfast; grilled patty melt and grilled cheese sandwiches, chili, and loaded baked potatoes at lunch; and attractively presented steak, seafood, and chicken dishes at dinner. You know, meals anyone would expect to order at a local restaurant instead of a grocery store.
A recent trip on the Floridian was instructive. Staffed with only a chef in the kitchen and one lead service attendant, the very busy train with three sleeping cars and four coaches was able to offer a full menu in its Viewliner dining car. Even with only these two dining room employees, the hard-working LSAs out of both Miami and Washington, D.C. (where onboard crews change) invited coach passengers to purchase $20 breakfasts, $25 lunches, and $45 dinners after sleeping car occupants’ meal reservations were taken.
Admittedly, not every dining car captain feels the need to go to all this trouble. And on higher-capacity, Superliner-equipped trains, reduced staffing means there is often simply not enough time to feed coach customers during certain meal periods, so they get shut out.
The universal lack of servers dramatically slows dining car throughput for both flex and traditional dining. On the Chicago-bound Floridian, it often led to 45-minute delays between order taking and food delivery at lunch and dinner.
Out of Washington, though probably not authorized by existing union contracts, both a sleeping car attendant and conductor helped to clear tables. Except for President W. Graham Claytor Jr.’s insistence that Auto Train employees work multiple jobs, for more than 50 years Amtrak management has never seriously pursued solving restrictions on onboard division of labor.
Increased staffing to accommodate traditional dining expansion would clearly cost more than continuing the flex offerings. The company’s stated goal of breaking even by 2028 [See “Amtrak grant request touts ‘operating profitability’ …,” Trains.com June 16, 2025] could be a deterrent or rationale for delaying significant onboard service upgrades.
Other initiatives could also include adding a Viewliner diner and a second full sleeping car to the Cardinal’s two trainsets. Presently 16 of 25 diners and 50 of about 70 Viewliner sleepers are regularly assigned to eastern single-level trains so the cars are on the property, if not currently operational. As long as the equipment doesn’t remain mothballed, there is an adequate margin allowing for standby Viewliners distributed around the system.
Boldly addressing such opportunities could potentially deliver positive bottom-line financial outcomes while having a dynamic impact on customer satisfaction. Adding lunch items to flex menus is a start.
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