Catering firms creative in making in-flight menus
Catering firms creative in making in-flight menus
JAKARTA (JP): Ever wondered how you can be faced with so many
choices of food while flying? Ever wonder who cooks the food, and
where and how?
The Jakarta Post found the answers when visiting the state-
owned catering service, PT Aerowisata, at the Soekarno-Hatta
International Airport compound recently.
The airline kitchen, which started in 1974 under the name PT
Aero Garuda Dairy Farm Catering, currently caters to 30 domestic
and foreign airlines flying to and from Jakarta. It supplies
Indonesian, Western and Asian dishes. For example, it prepares
Japanese food for the national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia on
its services to Japan airlines.
Operating 24 hours a day, the catering service makes at least
20,000 meals or 320 menus per day, said Bambang Soerachim,
Aerowisata's general manager.
Each day Aerowisata needs one to two tons of chicken, 750
kilograms of meat, 750 kilograms of fruit, 300 kilograms of
tomatoes and 250 kilograms of carrots to meet the demand.
For the Western menu it imports 50 kilograms of salmon per
day.
To satisfy the different palates of airline passengers,
Aerowisata employs four chefs: one for Western food, one for
Japanese, one for Indonesian and one for pastries. To help them,
the company has about 300 cooks who must be both skillful and
quick. An omelette maker, for instance, said he and his colleague
churn out 200 to 300 egg omelettes an hour.
To cater to the different tastes of passengers, menu changes
are of the highest importance.
The Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific airlines, for example,
arranges its in-flight menus in three cycles a year. Each cycle
offers different menus, depending on the route served and the
nationality of the majority of passengers.
"We conduct surveys to know what kind of food our passengers
like," said Cathay Pacific Indonesia's country manager Gregory
Hughes.
For its first cycle, which covers the first four months of
the year, Cathay Pacific offers Indonesian food because the Idul
Fitri celebrations usually falls during those months. "So, during
that season there usually are a great many Indonesian
passengers," Hughes said.
That does not mean that the other menus are deleted. Other
choices, such as Western food, are also offered. And during
Christmas, it is Western food that becomes the leading feature on
the menu.
Obviously, Aerowisata, too, must be creative when preparing
new menus. Special menus for vegetarians and children must also
be offered.
"We prepare only food that is halal for Moslems. We have
already obtained a halal certificate from the Indonesian Ulemas
Council," Soerachim assured the Post.(als)