Today, on-board restaurants are still firmly installed in trains. Equipment and construction are already defined during the production of a train. As a result, many on-board restaurants are no longer state-of-the-art.
An initial design thinking process involving railway representatives, drivers and other service personnel produced the initial insights and challenges to be tackled when aiming for a totally new, bottom-up developed future approach towards on-board restaurants. This first blanket of information lead to an array of initial concept drafts and soon after to first designs and a mock-up. A collaborative, holistic concept development process with the customer allowed us to swiftly narrow down the proposals from 10 to 1.
The solution we then realised revolves around defining standardized dimensions for all installations and fittings, making a quick and modular conversion of on-board restaurants possible. Plug & play solutions for electrical appliances such as coffee machines or dishwashers allow for rapid replacements, repairs and maintenance. For example, mobile trolleys with cooling units can replace permanently installed refrigerators. If a cooling unit fails, the trolley can simply be replaced at the next station. Consequently, an unbroken cold chain can be guaranteed throughout and the necessity of complex removal and re-installation of refrigerators for repairs is eliminated. We have additionally upgraded our future-proof on-board restaurant with digital networking technologies which allow for immediate and accelerated inventories and re-stocking and assist goods management with predictions on customer frequentation and consumption behaviour.
Our concept ensures a fully flexible future installation of new on-board restaurant innovations in the current fleet. Customised solutions make modifications and modernizations more efficient, drastically reducing installation times and general maintenance and repair costs. At the same time the concept increases equipment and product availability.
