How a Cruise Ship Makes 30k Meals Every Day [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2vXbFp5C9o

170 83 6 years ago

gherkinnn• 6 years ago

What a seemingly impressive operations. If only our dev process had Its shit together half as well.

sansnomme• 6 years ago

Give it a few years, very soon software development may just as well become a blue collar trade with teams of line cooks supporting one chef.

ken2• 6 years ago

So, like a "surgical team"? Fred Brooks proposed that 45 years ago, and I still don't see any evidence that anyone is moving in that direction.

Everyone I know says that all programmers and managers need to read TMMM, but any time I've brought up any part of that book other than Brooks's Law, I've been immediately shot down. According to every coworker and manager I've had, this book is a classic of the field -- yet apparently has all of one useful sentence between its covers.

smacktoward• 6 years ago

That’s essentially the “meta-programming” methodology Charles Simonyi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi) promulgated at Xerox PARC and Microsoft back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

CobrastanJorji• 6 years ago

You don't want that. Your devs are allowed to take a day off every month or so.

dylan6042• 6 years ago

The video says that's for 4 month contracts though. I've been on deadline crunches where the last 4 months of a 24 month contract were like that.

Havoc2• 6 years ago

That food all looks significantly nicer than what I got on the last cruise...

(not complaining - food was fine - just noticeable).

Meekro• 6 years ago

Which cruise line did you go on? I've stopped going on Carnival because the food is worse than it was 10 years ago. This video was Royal Caribbean, which I think is still great!

Havoc2• 6 years ago

MSC in the med.

Think the issue in part is that you can't exactly go hungry. So there is a peasant tier buffet included.

It's fine...just a "lots of pasta & skimped on meat" type vibe

solotronics• 6 years ago

I have been on a Royal Caribbean cruise and I did a tour of the galley (kitchens). I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the food, I cook a lot and get pretty fancy with my dishes and the food on the R.C. cruise was above my expectations.

bkanber2• 6 years ago

I've been on Royal Caribbean multiple times and the food is very good.

johnz• 6 years ago

If they spend $1,000,000 for 6,600 guests for 7 days then it only costs $21.60 in supplies to feed each guest per day.

throaway9912• 6 years ago

Interesting to compare with the valley. Google food and drink cost per employee per day was around $16 when I last heard. Dropbox was the highest around $60, although this was a few years ago.

Aunche• 6 years ago

$1 million is just for supplies. It doesn't account for labor and other expenses.

indecisive_user• 6 years ago

Cruises are generally feeding each passenger 3+ meals per day though. And people tend to overeat on vacation as well.

How many meals does the average tech employee eat at work per day? My initial guess would be around 1.5, with the biggest meal of the day, dinner, usually being eaten outside of work. That would mean google spends more than twice as much per meal than cruises do.

ckdarby• 6 years ago

Where did you find $16 per employee for Google? I'd like to read more about this.

chrisseaton2• 6 years ago

$60 per employee per day on food?! You could give everyone a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a fillet steak every day for that.

gamblor9562• 6 years ago

Plus crew...

dylan6042• 6 years ago

They only talk about the 6600 guests as part of that purchase. The video talks about having 1085 employees in the different kitchens. They need to eat as well, so does their meals come from this same stock of food? There's also the rest of the staff like engineering, bridge crew, cleaning, etc. I'm guessing there's a couple hundred more employees at least. I'm pretty sure I'm thinking way more about this than the producer's target audience though.

supernova87a3• 6 years ago

This video is a bit more extensive and entertaining with such questions addressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48HQCgZWg0

abtinf3• 6 years ago

Cruise ships often have more than .4 crew per guest. So 6600 guests would mean more than 2600 crew.

https://www.cruisewatch.com/top-10/ships-passenger-crew-rati...

leelin• 6 years ago

I always wondered whether the 7-day cruises were stocked only once at the beginning, or restocked mid-way at ports.

Does that mean they need to freeze lots of the seafood? Is the food less fresh by Day 6 and 7?

gamblor9562• 6 years ago

It depends on the cruise line, but generally the food at the end of a cruise is less fresh than the food at the beginning.

supernova87a3• 6 years ago

This video is a bit more extensive and entertaining with such questions addressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48HQCgZWg0

mynameishere• 6 years ago

I just don't get it. Who can respond positively to the continuous 1/2 second fast-cut edits and obnoxious "hard rock" music of videos like this? It's like everybody involved wants to advance from producing cruise ship documentaries to working for early 1990s MTV or something.

driverdan• 6 years ago

Do you think the food you buy at the grocery store is less than six or seven days old? It's not.

ryanwaggoner• 6 years ago

That really depends on the food, the grocery store, the geographic location, the season, etc.

jancsika• 6 years ago

Consumers can buy seafood at the grocery on, say, any given Thursday because they know the delivery truck makes periodic visits. And if they learn that schedule on a Tuesday they can wait it out two days until the phase wraps back around with fresh(ish) lobsters.

The phase reset on a cruise has the intended effect of re-supplying the fresh(ish) lobsters but with the unfortunate side-effect of dropping you off at the shore.

peterwwillis• 6 years ago

Most seafood you eat that you didn't catch yourself was frozen. Properly prepared and frozen seafood can taste better than unfrozen. And yes, their unfrozen foods that are going bad get turned into soup, but that is a normal restaurant thing.

bluGill• 6 years ago

It is a mix. Resupply depends on many factors. Remember ships are stopping at different ports - and often different countries every day (except for cross ocean cruises which of course which don't stop). Thus they look into local taxes, availability, and such. Meals are planned which means they know what they need - but also means they can look at what will be available. They have the ability to load at any port. If they can get X cheap at some port they will buy it there. Thus if they can contract a local farmer to supply something cheap in one port they will. If shipping means some non-local food is cheaper in one port than another they will buy at the cheaper one. If labor is cheaper in one port they will try to use more of that labor.

Supply management is important to a cruise line. They are very good at getting the best prices. They take advantage of the ship moving to get the best prices.

bdz• 6 years ago

Munchies have two good videos about cooking food for the marines on a US Navy ship

"Cooking Breakfast for 1,500 on a US Navy Ship" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywZevdHW5bQ

"24 Hours as a Navy Ship Line Cook" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFh6bJIHl2Y

walrus01• 6 years ago

One of the things I've always wondered about, but probably falls into the category of military secrets, is exactly what the manifest looks like for food on a patrol of a Ohio class submarine.

There must be spreadsheets somewhere with all of the ingredients broken down, costs, quantities, and probably cubic volume occupied (since freezer space and food storage space is somewhat at a premium).

haunter• 6 years ago

No idea but my guess would be that they all just eat MRE? Least space needed for sure.

samstave• 6 years ago

Whats the doc of the launching of the UK aircraft carrier. They have some info on that.

A lot of the docs on large naval ships cover this - modern marvels has a good episode on it too.

TheGallopedHigh• 6 years ago

If you’re into food docs like this I would recommend Munchies: A Frank Experience. Highly entertaining.

Animats• 6 years ago

17 pounds of food per day per person?

skyyler• 6 years ago

Including crew, I'm getting around 9.5lb/person/day. Not sure where you got the 17 pounds number.

Nine pounds of food and drink, including packaging, pallets, skins, peels and bones. Doesn't sound all that far-fetched.

PopeDotNinja• 6 years ago

I'm can't watch the video right now, but I was wondering if that amount includes drinks. Water is heavy.

dredmorbius4• 6 years ago

Food and drink, plus packaging. Allow for spoilage. And include crew in your served total, as others have noted.

Fresh fruits and vegetables have a high water weight, while being relatively calorically-sparse.

The total seems high to me, but it'd be interesting to see the breakdown.

canada_dry• 6 years ago

What you rarely hear about is the gross amount of waste.

People are especially wasteful when the food is 'free' and plentiful. If you watch waiters that are removing plates during a typical cruise ship meal many/most contain uneaten portions.

Which is why some all-you-can-eat restaurants have started charging for uneaten food that's ordered but left on the plate i.e. sushi places especially.

DraftDodger67• 6 years ago

The bigger amount of waste is from food prepared in excess to demand. That's why food is repurposed as much as possible - leftover meat into stews, leftover vegetables into hash etc.

wastedhours• 6 years ago

If you watch waiters that are removing plates during a typical cruise ship meal many/most contain uneaten portions.

Lunch and on some lines for dinner perhaps, but the line I've often travelled on you have the executive chef walking round at dinner and inspecting the returned plates to assess the quantities remaining (and whether any dishes perform better than others).

It's the buffet that has the potential for greater waste, but you often see them rotate leftovers for a couple of days.

They're certainly not great, but I've seen greater per-person waste in hotel breakfasts (or basically any free buffet scenario as you say).

bufferoverflow• 6 years ago

But not 17 lbs per person.

zenbane• 6 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/business/carnival-cruise-...

I'd love to see this industry reformed.

nimbius• 6 years ago

Thats not even the first fine they received. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_Cruise_Line#Controver...

Cruise ships can also avoid having to report or even really investigate cruise ship deaths or disappearances. Ken Carver is one of the only people on the planet currently pushing to investigate and hold cruise companies accountable for deaths and missing persons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLgc1dqhCsQ

https://www.cruiseshipdeaths.com/

tartoran• 6 years ago

Yes, because they operate on dubious laws under small countries flags, it is ridiculous that nothing is being done about it.

est31• 6 years ago

https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/why-more-lng-powered-cr...

acchow• 6 years ago

Court should suspend their operations for 5-10 years. That’s effectively what we do to humans.

sabujp• 6 years ago

We've only been on a cruise once and my wife still raves about the 24 hour Pirate Pizza joint the Carnival Cruise had that we went on. They were the thinnest, crunchiest flatbread pizzas we ever had.

carlosdp• 6 years ago

For some reason, one of my fondest childhood memories was using the ship debit card my parents gave me to buy many of those circle personal pan pizzas on the top deck of a carnival cruise. Cruise pizza is no joke!

code_chimp• 6 years ago

For me it's the Guy's Burgers - but it is soft serve ice cream 24/7 for my daughter.

It may be "The Walmart of Cruising" but we always have fun and meet new people on Carnival for a very reasonable cost.

blackrock• 6 years ago

I’ve always been too worried about catching a norovirus, to go on a cruise ship.

And plus, if I go on vacation, I’d rather explore, than be stuck on a boat for 7 days.

chrisseaton2• 6 years ago

I think you do explore - that's the point - the ship docks at various coastal towns and you go ashore for the day, then go back on and sail again. You're only going to be stuck on the ship for 7 days if you're sailing straight across an ocean.

Plus some people like to just relax and for example take the time to read a book on vacation and aren't looking to explore.

nerdbaggy• 6 years ago

I was on that ship, and whenever you went into one of the buffet area you had to sanitize every time you went in. There was an employee holding the bottle at the doors

DanBC• 6 years ago

Alcohol hand gels do not work against norovirus.

Loulybob• 6 years ago

I used to think this as well, but my family and I decided to try one out and we explored way more than we normally do on holiday - due to the fact that you're in a different port each day, you end up visiting way more different places than a traditional holiday, where everywhere you explore has to be centred around your hotel. Cruises especially allowed us to explore a lot of cities and towns, which we normally wouldn't have gone to due to the lack of "chill out" time on city break holidays.

Of course, this is my experience of cruises around Europe, where there's a lot of interesting ports clustered closely together. The experience is probably pretty different otherwise.

How a Cruise Ship Makes 30k Meals Every Day [video]

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