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)