Would you willfully submit yourself to taste-test a bunch of airline food? Probably not, but I did this past week thanks to the people at Amazing Food Creations. And you know what? It was good. Beyond that, learning more about the insanity involved in getting food on an airplane was completely fascinating.

A friend of mine works at Amazing Food Creations (AFC) outside Chicago, so when I mentioned I’d be in town, we decided to set up a visit. AFC provides food to a couple of the largest airlines in the world. They put together everything from coach to first class, and they do domestic and international. They don’t do buy-on-board food just yet, but they’d like to get in the game.

So how come you’ve never heard of AFC even though you’ve likely had their food? It’s because there are an unbelievable number of middlemen involved in the process, so you’re pretty far removed from these guys.

I had the chance to sit with co-founder Dari Carré (pictured) to learn exactly how the process works. It’s nuts.

Complicated enough for you? Let me explain those numbers and hope I took accurate notes. I’ll use AFC as an example.

1. First, the airlines figure out what they need and put it out in a spec sheet that also shows the pricepoint per meal. That info is distributed.

   Then AFC and other food manufacturers prepare a presentation for them with prototype meals that are made in their test kitchens (at right). Sometimes, manufacturers deal with brokers to get their food onboard while other times, they just deal directly.

   Every airline has different requirements. AFC wouldn’t use any current names, but they said that Northwest wanted traditional, American meals with a bland flavor palette to appeal to its customers. Other airlines want something a little spicier and more exotic.

   Let’s say the airline likes what AFC has to offer. They’ll probably go back and forth for awhile until they get exactly what they want. Finally, a contract will be awarded. It’s usually 12 to 24 months in length.

2. Once AFC wins the bid, they have to figure out how to turn the prototype meal into a full production meal. That can require small or large tweaks to make sure the product is consistently good when it’s mass-produced.
3. AFC does all their manufacturing in their suburban Chicago facility. From there, a distributor comes to pick up the grub and distribute it. AFC provides food to airlines throughout the US and Canada, so multiple distributors will end up being used.
4. The distributor will take the food to the caterer in each airport location. These caterers are the ones you may know – GateGourmet, LSG Sky Chefs, etc. AFC only makes entrees, so these guys take them and add the salad, dinner roll, trays, condiments, etc. They then put it on the plane.
5. Lastly, finally, the flight attendant brings the meal to you and you shove it in your mouth.

 
Insane, right? I couldn’t believe it. It seems like there’s a lot of opportunity for the caterers to start taking over more of these roles so that you only need the airline, the caterer, and the food manufacturer.

It can get even more difficult than this. Airlines will sometimes contract with celebrity chefs to do meals. You might remember, for example, when Charlie Trotter partnered with United for meals. Well, when this happens, the company and the chef spend a great deal of time putting together meals that are true to the chef but also will hold up well on the plane. For example, you want to cut vegetables a certain way so that they prepare correctly onboard.

After all this, we headed to the test kitchen for a little bit of taste-testing. The chef and co-founder, Dari’s husband Eric Carré, creates food with several other chefs. These guys absolutely love doing this. It’s really funny to see someone put so much into airplane food, but it’s also pretty refreshing to know that there are people who are trying.

They brought out a spread of food for me to try ranging from the surprisingly delicious vegan 7-grain pilaf with fruit compote and sweet bulger wheat (left) to the just awesome mandarin orange chicken (right) which is served in First Class.

It was really interesting to see how the vegetables reacted to cooking. The meals are supposed to be heated in a convection oven on a plane, but they used a microwave because of our time constraints. The broccoli was soggy, and Chef Eric (as everyone called him) explained that the way they prepared it meant it was overcooked in a microwave but it would be in good shape on the airplane.

While AFC is doing traditional meals for now, they’re also looking at the buy-on-board world. They have a frozen meal that actually steam cooks in a bag (with Dari at top and at right). I tried them and they were really good, especially the Cuban veggies. Maybe one day you’ll be able to get it onboard.

Thanks to everyone at Amazing Food Creations for spending the afternoon with me. If you’d like to try their steam-cooked meals, head to Whole Foods where they sell them under the French Meadow name.

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with Bryan Bedford, CEO of Republic, in the carrier’s northwest Indianapolis headquarters. (It’s that building on the right, in the shadow of the odd-looking pyramid buildings.) You may not know the name Republic, but you know some of its brands: Frontier, Midwest, Chautauqua, Shuttle America, and Republic Airlines.

Our hour-long conversation was just downright fascinating covering topics from religion, to integration with Frontier and Midwest, along with bundling vs a la carte pricing and more. When we first sat down, Bryan immediately asked about me. We spent nearly ten minutes on my background before getting into the airline talk, which is where we begin today. I’ve broken this across the aisle interview down into three parts. Today, we start with the airline’s recent expansion and go into the strategy and now-discontinued multiple brand strategy. (Part 2 on competition and fees, Part 3 on religion)

ON THE RESULTS OF FRONTIER’S RECENT EXPANSION

Bryan: Where are you living now?
Cranky: Long Beach, actually, and I’m flying you back on Monday.
Bryan: Thank you.
Cranky: Gotta make sure we keep you there.
Bryan: Of all the new markets that we’ve opened that’s the one that’s really struggling. We’re trying some targeted advertising in Denver, because a lot of folks in Denver don’t know where Long Beach is. We’re trying to figure out how to get people to understand that it’s the Southern California alternative.

We’re opening 15 new markets and that is the only one that’s not hitting its revenue forecast. Some are just barely making it, like Santa Barbara is just, but some, like Branson, what a shocker.

Cranky: I was gonna say, you’ve already added capacity there.
Bryan: It’s blowing the doors off. The only reason we went there was because we had a really high revenue guarantee.
Cranky: I guess you won’t need the revenue guarantee right now.
Bryan: No, it’s going to be very profitable.

ON THE INITIAL REASON FOR BUYING FRONTIER AND MIDWEST

Cranky: So the strategy seems to be now more find the right markets for the Embraers.
Bryan: Step back a bit and look at a higher level. We’ve had great growth, great expansion through 2008. Then the fuel shock happened and we learned a couple of things. One, airlines are very jaundiced about adding capacity, and two, consolidation is on everybody’s mind and a lot of people’s lips. . . . Quite frankly it’s happened slower than I would have thought. I think the first go around with Continental and United should have been done . . . when United’s market cap was $600 million instead of $3.6 billion.

As the operator, consolidation is good since it makes your partners stronger . . . but the fact is that when they combine, if 70% of their passengers are flow, they can flow them through anywhere they want. So they can operate larger capacity planes by funneling more flow over a specific hub. Dehubbing becomes a very serious option.

Cranky: Shrinking pie for regionals
Bryan: Shrinking pie for regionals and certainly shrinking pie for smaller regional jets. We have to acknowledge there’s just not a lot of growth opportunities. There’s the opportunity for market share to move around, but having alternatives is healthy. We never wanted to be so big with one airline so that the loss of that partner would be an extinction model for us. But now, the fact that our core business is at risk for virtually no growth if not contraction, if there’s one area that can benefit from the capacity reduction and consolidation, it’s the LCC side.

ON REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION

Cranky: Do you expect consolidation on the regional side?
Bryan: There’s a lot more discussion about it. The Wall Street analysts love transactions, you know? It’s hard to consolidate because most of the contracts that we all have have change in control provisions that in some cases allow partners to cancel deals or at least renegotiate deals.

Cranky: Could be something like a Mesa in bankruptcy?
Bryan: I won’t say that it’s impossible. Nothing is impossible. I won’t even say it’s implausible, because when there’s a will there’s a way. . . . We’re all looking for the same thing. Where can you take out non value-add expenses to become more cost effective. I just think it’s hard because the seller is not necessarily controlling the revenue stream.

ON THE NOW DISCONTINUED MULTIPLE BRAND STRATEGY

Cranky: So now you’re in the [low cost carrier] LCC space. You started bringing Midwest and Frontier together. The question I asked you in Phoenix is “are you regretting it yet?”
Bryan: [Laughs]
Cranky: It’s been an interesting road. I’m particularly curious. It seems like at the beginning you had this plan to operate multiple brands, get the operational efficiency of running them behind the scenes. Clearly there’s been a change to go toward the Frontier brand after a few months of this. So what have you seen? Is the multiple brand thing something that just doesn’t work for a single airline?
Bryan: When we started looking at the possibilities of these acquisitions, we went outside the airline industry. Avis and Budget was a good example of the model where, here’s a company that’s in the rental car business where they have the premium Avis brand and the discount is Budget. And they seem to coexist well. And that was really sort of the example of a model where we were going to go after.

Cranky: Where Midwest would be the premium brand and Frontier . . .
Bryan: . . . the discount brand, yeah. We learned quickly. The education that we got was in 2009 we bought these brands at the trough of the recession and there was no demand for premium anything. So the Midwest response, even before we bought them was to make less premium available . . . so there was a lot of experimentation out of desperation to try and figure out a model that would allow that airline to work. Everything was working against them.

Cranky: Especially in Milwaukee
Bryan: Yeah, so we did start the customer research process not necessarily to pick one brand or not but just to measure brand health and try to figure out what resonated with customers. What we discovered was the Milwaukee community wanted the same thing as everyone else. They wanted affordable fares, nonstop service. In their own ways, each one of these airlines are trying to provide that.

A lot of what we learned is the Midwest brand had this perception of what it was back then. Customers would revisit the airline and there would always be disappointment. “That’s not what I remember Midwest to be.” And they were right, it wasn’t.

Cranky: They were lobster and fine china back in the ’90s.
Bryan: The Milwaukee community loved it but as soon as the economy soured, budgets went from buy first to buy coach. But sorry, you can’t buy that on Midwest. After all the struggles they went through, they still enjoy lots of hometown customer support. That underdog role that they took on with AirTran, people wanted them to succeed. But they really weren’t fulfilling the need of the customer at the end of the day. Shrinking service from the west coast, abandoning the west coast. Huge, huge mistake. Then again, the MD80s burned so much gas and the 717s couldn’t make it to the west coast. They had few choices and they were all bad.

Cranky: And now you have Frontier. Have you seen the acceptance levels, is there anything different now that Midwest is gone from Milwaukee?
Bryan: Interestingly enough, one, Frontier actually has great customer service. The inflight experience is actually very complementary. Having TV on the airplane is a new amenity for folks in Milwaukee and they really like it. We thought there was a need to try to bridge between what was Frontier and what was Midwest and the answer to that is Stretch [extra legroom seating].

I’ll post the rest of the interview over the next week or so.

New Tokyo Haneda Flights: Some Strange Choices, Courtesy of the Feds – BNET
Flight awards were handed out by the feds for the four coveted slots at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. They made some odd picks.

How to Get Home When Disaster Strikes – FOX News
Stuck when disasters happen? I talk about what Cranky Concierge did to help.

Alaska’s New Flights Put Its Relationship With American to the Test – BNET
Alaska is stepping on American’s toes in California. Is this a test?

Three Years Later, American Airlines Is Still Getting the Runaround in China – BNET
American will finally start China flights, but the Chinese aren’t making it easy for them.

Airlines Filled More Seats in April, but That Can’t Continue Forever – BNET
April traffic numbers continue to see increases in loads. This just can’t continue forever.

I’m still in the middle of my Midwestern swing, and I had an interesting experience that I thought was worth posting about this week. No, it didn’t have any wings attached. It was the MegaBus. There was a lot of good and a lot of bad about this thing. And it has implications for airlines.

I had to get down from Chicago to Indianapolis, so I perused my options. I was hoping to use a friend’s buddy pass to fly United on the short hop, but with the weather rolling in and the flights filling up, I thought it better to change course.

I looked at the train, and man, was it cheap. I could take a ride for only $19, but the train goes once a day and takes over 5 hours, getting in at midnight. That wasn’t going to fly with the in-laws.

I looked at Greyhound, but then someone suggested I look at MegaBus. I forgot they went out of Chicago, but when I looked, I saw they fan out all over the Midwest from there. I decided to go for it. My bus would leave at 6p and arrive a mere 3 hours and 15 minutes later. This seemed like the way to go.

I booked my ticket online and the system gave me a reservation number which I would give to the driver. It said to be at the bus stop 15 minutes before departure. In Chicago, it said the bus left from Union Station. If I needed to make a change, there was in fact a fee . . . $1. Nice.

I arrived at the massive Union Station looking for any sign of MegaBus and I couldn’t find one. I asked one person who told me to go upstairs. Then another person said to go outside and turn left. After wandering around aimlessly, the third person I asked told me the stop was a block south of the station, where I could see others lined up.

The stop was nothing but a sign and empty sidewalk. I sat down and did some work online while waiting for the bus to show. One bus came and picked people up for Iowa City, but the rest of us just sat there waiting.

Six o’clock came and went and there was no bus. In the meantime, an army of panhandlers walked back and forth begging us for change, unused bus transfers, bus passes, you name it. Even when I was on the phone, these guys would interrupt my conversation, and it was incredibly frustrating.

By 630p, I was getting annoyed. I had signed up for text message alerts but I hadn’t received anything about a delay. I called MegaBus reservations and they said they didn’t know anything but they gave me the number for a different customer service line. I called that and sat on hold.

Finally, someone picked up and told me that he would see what was up. He came back with the good news that the bus was only two blocks away. It was still no excuse for not providing that information more easily.

While this was all going on, a group of very drunk Cubs fans showed up and started asking everyone where they were going to sit. I just hoped to be able to sit nowhere near them. I solidified that thought when they ran to the corner drug store to pick up some more alcohol.

So our motley crew of about 30 or so boarded the bus and gave our reservation numbers to the driver. The bus was a double-decker and the drunkards went upstairs, so I stayed on the bottom. I was pleasantly surprised.

The first couple rows were actually lounge style with seats facing each other and a table in the middle with cup holders. Wanting to do work, I sat in one of those areas and had another person sitting on the other side.

The seats were comfortable and the bus had 110V power throughout. There was also wifi, but it was incredibly spotty so I just used my Verizon card instead.

Things started off rough . . . literally. That road getting out of Chicago is brutal and we were bouncing around enough that I couldn’t do any work. I had to wait until we reached Indiana for things to smooth out. But from there, it was smooth sailing.

The downstairs clientele was a good one – they were quiet. The guy across from me was from the UK and was here touring around baseball parks. The guy across was traveling for work. I don’t know about anyone else because they were either asleep or working.

We pulled in to Indy exactly when we were told and that was it. It was a nice ride. So what does this mean for the airlines?

Well, short haul routes can easily be served with a bus or train, but a bus requires a lot less investment. The product onboard this new generation of buses is quite nice, and it might be something that airlines would want to consider as a partner in the future. Multi-modal is the cool thing to do, after all.

Southwest is on the march through the South; however, instead of burning down Atlanta like others have done, the airline will simply use the old school backdoor approach that made it famous. In this case, that means tackling South Carolina.

The airline will go into Charleston, but the one that’s more interesting to me is Greenville/Spartanburg. (GSP). Both cities are expected to launch in 2011 and we know nothing else except that they won’t need any subsidies. (It was a pretty odd announcement.)

Why is GSP interesting? Geography.

Think about Atlanta. Right now, the airline “serves” Atlanta by flying into Birmingham, a couple hours west of town. GSP is about the same distance from Atlanta as Birmingham but on the northeast side instead.

It’s not just Atlanta, however. Southwest will also be looking to bracket Charlotte with this move. GSP is about an hour southwest of Charlotte while the airline already serves Raleigh/Durham, a couple hours east of Charlotte.

With GSP, Southwest kills two birds with one stone, theoretically. It’s an old-school Southwest attack on the fringes, but that’s uncharacteristic of the airline’s recent moves into big airports like Boston or LaGuardia. That makes me think there’s more to this.

If this is indeed the strategy, it seems like an odd one. US Airways is undoubtedly thrilled that Southwest isn’t coming into Charlotte right now, and they will certainly lose some business to Southwest in lower fare markets, but the high dollar business isn’t going over there. Also, AirTran and JetBlue already provide some limited low fare service in Charlotte itself.

As for Atlanta, well, that’s a non-starter. There is plenty of low fare competition in Atlanta these days, so I can’t imagine people driving to Greenville just to catch a flight. It’s not worth it anymore.

That sort of reality makes me wonder if there’s something in Greenville that they are seeing to make it attractive on its own. The Combined Statistical Area (which includes much of northern South Carolina) is around 1.2 million people so that’s not small. It is, however, quite spread out.

Companies like Michelin, 3M, Lockheed Martin, and Honeywell have operations around town. BMW has its US manufacturing facility in Spartanburg. Maybe they’re lining up corporate clients and looking to build a strong base in a historically high fare area.

At least, I really hope that’s the case, because the old Southwest strategy of serving out of the way airports doesn’t lend itself well to courting the business traveler anymore, as Southwest wants to do.

[Map via GCMap.com]