Asiana Is Having A Meal Crisis That Has Allegedly Led To A Suicide - One Mile at a Time

CDR (Join to see) the real issue here is Asiana failed to consider single point of failure risk in their vendor, past performance, and technical capability to execute the work. When their prime couldn't meet the requirement, they wen to a completely unqualified contractor. They left scorched earth with it's previous vendor who responded accordingly. No surprise they were in no hurry to take on the work, as they likely sought other contracts and labor configurations so they didn't bleed out.

If I were in the shoes of Asiana, I would see if there was a way to have a more dependable, but less demanding meal offering for domestic flights (like a sack lunch of commercially packaged individual items) and pick multiple vendors that could cope with international flight food service demands for a more complex meal, focusing on the entree and leverage individually packaged enhancements. They are going to have to hire quickly some food service experts at high cost to be more hands on to manage these inexperienced vendors for mutual success to avert disaster for all of them.

Central kitchens allow greater efficiency and amazing throughput, but represent risk in a single facility. Most central kitchens have redundant systems. Some, are segmented to try and offset risk. Fire is hard to cope with as the fire itself is only the beginning. Smoke mitigation and water damage are just two painfully expensive consequences. Then there is bringing facility back into full code compliance for building code, food safety, and health standards. Airlines have exacting food safety standards to be allowed in the US. Hell, they have garaged sized steaming facilities to sterilize the flight generated garbage!

Bring a few buckets of chicken... sell for $5 a piece... make a profit on your trip.