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T RAIN C ATERING

New Era for Russian Train Catering

For passengers travelling by Eurostar, ICE or Thalys in Western Europe, a when you book your ticket, for example vegetarian, low-calorie, or a children’s good system-catering service on board the trains is taken for granted. menu. For the regular meals, Business The situation is rather different in , where hundreds of individual Class travellers have a choice of meat, fish or poultry. The food is served on F&B suppliers serve the vast train network in a wide variety of ways. For chinaware and brought directly to the the first time, the new high-speed trains operating between St. Peters- passengers. For Economy Class passengers there is a burg and are now offering travellers a modern foodservice on Bistro car, which can seat 40. Places can the Cook & Chill basis: a milestone for Russian Railways. http://eng.rzd.ru be reserved when purchasing the tick- ets. For RUB390/c10, there is a substan- Since December 2009, there have been and 45 minutes. Now a modern foodser- tial breakfast available (including potato eight modern high speed trains – built by vice offer has also been introduced on pudding with meat and mushroom – running between St. Peters- this route. cream sauce, cottage cheese pudding burg and Moscow. Bearing the name For passengers in the Business Class, the with plum and apple jam or oatmeal (the Russian name for the pere- fare includes breakfast, lunch or dinner with dried fruit, as well as assorted grine falcon, one of the world’s fastest depending on the time of day. Similar to cheeses, yoghurts, croissants and birds), they cover the 700 km between the in-flight-service on the airlines, you drinks) until 12 noon. They also serve a Moscow and St. Petersburg in 3 hours can indicate your special preferences restaurant-style menu of starters, main

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courses, desserts and a set menu priced While total investment for the ICTN pro- at RUB450/c11. ject – planned by Israeli consultant Leon All food is cooked off-site at a central Roseman, who used to work a lot with Is- production unit, which was officially in- rael travel and social catering – was more augurated last autumn, on the outskirts than RUB1 bn/c25 m, the system should of St. Petersburg, and is regenerated in a have paid for itself in less than five years, convection oven in the train’s galley according to Andrey Larionov, CEO at kitchen. This self-contained system of ICTN. Like his management colleague centralised production and decen- Sergey Rusyan, Head of the Technical De- tralised regeneration is a terrific innova- partment, he previously worked for Do- tion for Russian Railways (RZD). The system is based on the Cook & Chill method. In the central kitchen, which currently has a capacity of 20,000 meals We aimed to reach a day (expandable to 40,000), the meals the highest level of are cooked sous-vide, divided into por- food safety. tions (warm meals into ovenable con- tainers), fast chilled to +3° C within 1.5 hours and then stored at 0 to +4° C. Thanks to state of the art technologies like Modified Atmosphere Packaging, modedovo Air! Service, the leading Russ- the meals can be stored for between 3 ian airline catering provider, and was and 20 days. able to profit from the know-how of LSG The ICTN (Integrated Catering Trade Sky Chefs, who advised the company at Network) production plant is operated the time on the construction of its own by a joint venture of Russian Railways, production facility. “We aimed to reach Food Service Capital Group of Russian the highest level of food safety,” Rusyan entrepreneur Mikhail Zelman and Trans - states. “Our philosophy is Long Life Fresh creditbank. The project links up with the Food. Thanks to latest production tech- long-term vision of providing a modern nologies such as Sous-vide Cooking, foodservice offer on the vast Russian Cook & Chill and Modified Atmosphere railway network with its 1.1 bn passen- Packing we enhance the quality of the gers every year. food served on-board, enabling the prod- ucts to retain their freshness and flavour for a longer time which at the same time ■ ■ ■ ICTN ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ helps us to stay cost-effective.” Currently, ICTN not only delivers to the ICTN (Integrated Catering Trade Sapsan trains on the St. Petersburg- Network) production plant Moscow line with 40,000 meals every Founded in 2007 as a joint venture month but also supplies various airlines of Russian Railways, Mikhail Zelman’s operating from St. Petersburg airport RPCOM (part of Zelman’s Food Ser- with individually packed, pre-cooked ICTN joint venture vice Capital Group since June 2010) meals. Apart from the above, ICTN is also partner together with and Transcreditbank to build up a taking a shot at industrial catering and Russian Railways and modern catering system for high- working out a project of providing meals Transcreditbank is speed and long-distance trains. Put for health-care facilities in the neigh- well known Russian in operation in 2010. bouring Tver region. entrepreneur Mikhail Located in the Metallostroy district, Rusyan is convinced that production Zelman. One of the St. Petersburg will already have reached full capacity largest players in the Floor space 15,000 sq m by the middle of the year. And while country’s foodser- Total investment RUB1 bn/325 m RZD considers buying more high-speed vice industry, since Production capacity 20,000 pre- trains as the demand for the fast rail link 2003 he has operat- cooked meals per day (expandable has proved to be strong in Russia, and ed several fullservice to 40,000 meals) also plans to renovate dining-cars in restaurant chains in Production technology ‘Long Life older long-distance trains to make them Russia, Ukraine, UK Fresh Food’, Cook & Chill, Sous- appropriate for working with ready-to- and Switzerland, Vide Cooking, Modified Atmosphere serve meals, the ICTN investors are al- among them Goodman steakhouses, Filimonova & Yankel fish- Packing, Extended Shelf Life ready planning to build similar produc- houses and Kolbasoff beer restaurants – a total of 30 restaurants. Staff 350-450 employees at full tion facilities in cities like Moscow, Latest venture: a Goodman steakhouse opened last autumn in production load Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. Zurich. Since 2010, Zelman has also been master franchisee for the Distribution channels railways, Julia Matveeva Russian market for the US-based Wendy’s/Arby’s Group. civil aviation, social and industrial catering

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