DANNY MEYER BRINGING BBQ TO SOME DELTA FLIGHTS
Life just got tastier for passengers flying in business class from New York to London.
As the race to cater to the premium airline customer heats up, Delta Air Lines struck a deal with restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. Starting in February, passengers seated in the front of the plane will be able to order a meal designed by the culinary team at Blue Smoke restaurant.
It is Union Square Hospitality’s first foray into in-flight meals. The partners said in a joint press release today that the relationship could expand to fare from other Union Square Hospitality restaurants.
Passengers can order the so-called BusinessElite Express Meal whenever they want it during the flight, and it comes with several courses all at once.
While Delta has been offering quick meal service in its business cabin on all its international flights for two years, it has never done so with a celebrity restaurateur or chef.
The Blue Smoke meals will be served on the three daily flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and London-Heathrow starting in February. Delta recently took a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways to better accommodate the number of passengers, including many business travelers, who need to fly to London.
The express meals are part of a growing trend in business travel, said a Delta spokeswoman.
Business class travelers, she said, “want to eat their meal and go to sleep in our flat-bed seats. They want their food in an abbreviated format,” compared with the typical business class experience that calls for several courses in which the flight attendant returns multiple times.
As part of the venture, Delta has also become a client of Union Square Hospitality’s corporate consulting arm, Hospitality Quotient, a three year-old education and consulting business that teaches companies across all industries, from banking to health care, how to improve their customer service. Delta is Hospitality Quotient’s first airline client.
About 4,500 Delta flight attendants serving the New York to London route will take part in the training, said Kerry Held, director of client relations for Hospitality Quotient.
“We are looking at how people are feeling when they come onto the plane” she said, though she has not yet developed the curriculum for the program. “Hospitality is the emotional piece and the area we focus on.”
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USHG on Delta
