The travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have had an impact not just on passenger numbers, but also on the food and beverages that can be enjoyed on board.
The service on board needed to be adjusted to the drop in passenger numbers because of coronavirus restrictions, and to minimize the potential waste. Retail inMotion is developing innovative methods to ensure that our customers can reduce waste without compromising customer and crew satisfaction.
One such example is Advanced Loading Planner System (ALPS), which received an award in the “Best for Sustainability Onboard” category at the 2020 Onboard Hospitality Awards. ALPS processes thousands of historic data (consumption and missed sales) and pairs them with booking information like flight time, destination and passengers booked to predict future consumption and fight onboard waste. Learn more about it here.
Summer travel: Consuming food on board is safe
As the air travel business is picking up for summer, a trade association is aiming for its members to adopt even stricter rules to make travel safe. The Airline Catering Association (ACA), which includes members like the LSG Group*, gategroup, dnata, Saudi Airlines Catering, and Servair, recently issued a set of industry guidelines designed to reassure customers and passengers alike that flying and consuming food on board is safe.
Their declaration relies on the World Health Organization’s findings, which state that food is an “irrelevant” factor in the spread of the coronavirus. The ACA COVID-19 guidelines can be found here.
COVID-19 and food safety: How fresh food suppliers are changing their standards and processes
Fresh products have a short shelf life, and during a time when people cannot travel as much due to restrictions, the costs associated with waste are also higher. In order to reduce those costs, Retail inMotion has decided not to sell fresh products on board at the moment.
However, we are happy to report that several of our fresh food suppliers have further boosted their hygiene standards during this unique time.
In addition to the mandatory food standards in the EU, our suppliers have implemented additional protocols to provide operational guidance in order to increase the effectiveness of the precautionary containment measures taken to combat the COVID-19 epidemic.
The internal measures include but are not limited to health hygiene trainings and extended disinfection measures, as well as temporal and spatial separation of the staff during breaks and carrying out body temperature measurements.
Although food and beverages are being scaled back at the moment, we believe that the onboard retail business will expand as a result of the pandemic, given that more and more airlines will introduce Buy-on-Board as they transition from traditional catering to onboard retail.
For more information about the products we offer and the processes we have in place during COVID-19 and beyond, check out this article.
*Retail inMotion is a wholly owned subsidiary of the LSG Group.
