Food Glorious Food

Lufthansa hosted a Culinary Academy in Toronto yesterday (Sept. 24) providing travel trade types with an insider’s look a how the airline is able to consistently provide its passengers with a superior culinary experience. On hand for the presentation were Lufthansa’s director & head of inflight services and lounges, Dr. Ingo Bulow and area manager Americas product design and caterer management, Ernst Derenthal.

Together, Bulow and Derenthal offered those on hand a look at the effect of altitude on the taste of food and the changes that needed to be made to recipes in order to accommodate these effects; how menus are developed and Lufthansa’s collaboration with some of the world’s leading chefs; and trends in onboard dining.

And under the heading of did you know, each year, Lufthansa’s yearly budget for its inflight service is enough to feed 120,000 households for a whole year.

That investment, Bulow noted is due to the fact that Lufthansa is striving to achieve the goal of becoming the first western airline to be award a 5-star ranking from Skytrax.

The challenge, said Bulow, is that taste is a very individual thing and an airline always has to cope with that and what makes it even more difficult is that the sense of taste at 30,000 feet – due to temperature, cabin pressure, humidity, etc. — is not the same as if you’re on the ground.

As for Derenthal, he pointed out that Lufthansa has 60 million food designers on board because everyone of its passengers has an opinion.

In 2014, Lufthansa introduced a new regional menu out of the United States to positive response and it is now in the process of doing the same out of Canada. The Canadian regional menu will be launched in March of 2015.

One thing Derenthal noted was that food is more than just about feeding the passenger, it’s about entertaining them.

Seen in the photo, from l to r, cooking up a storm are Lufthansa’s Ernst Derenthal, area manager Americas product design and caterer management; Hans De Haan, director of the Lufthansa Group Canada; and Dr. Ingo Bulow, Lufthansa’s director & head of inflight services and lounges.

For more, check out http://www.lufthansa.com/ca/en/Food-and-beverages_1 .