V-Flyer

Virgin are changing their caterers ex MCO from Skychef to Gate Gourmet.

Hopefully a change for the better, as I have never been impressed with the catering out of MCO (which seems to have gone downhill when catering out of LGW has improved) and infact over the last few flights in J have missed out the main course all together, and just ended up with soup and dessert.

David

I hope they're in place when I return to Manchester on 12th May The food always leaves a lot to be desired on the return leg of my holiday.

Katie

Interesting move.

GateGourmet used to cater in a lot of places for VS, and then about five or six years ago, it was moved to LSG Skychefs, as a single-source contract, with a small number of other caterers providing service in locations that LSG didn't have a facility as sub-contractors.

An LSG-VS joint venture also took over many aspects of menu design, ingredient and raw material sourcing, and other areas of the inflight product.

My opinion of the food offered onboard has somewhat decreased since LSG took the catering over, especially with respect to the Upper Class offering, it seems the food was better when the menu design was mostly done in house, and executed by GateGourmet.

In the case of most Economy hot meals, these are often bought in from a central supplier as frozen meals, they aren't prepared by the local kitchen. Only the fresh items such as salads and fruit are prepared locally. It could still take some time for the food itself to change, unless the move is to locally prepared meals.

As I said, interesting move, and I do wonder if this is as a result of VS advertising for a new inflight service manager last year? Has the new manager has brought to an end the previous VS-LSG cosy relationship that had developed?

Mike

Fingers crossed it's an improvement, my last MCO UC meal was inedible.