Spring Corporate Travel: Resetting Your Flight Department's Catering Program for Q2

The turn from Q1 to Q2 is one of the most practical moments in a flight department's calendar for a catering program review. The first quarter generates real data — vendor performance, cost-per-leg actuals vs. budget, coordinator time spent on catering coordination, and passenger feedback — that should inform how the program operates for the rest of the year.

Here's the structured approach DFK recommends for a quarterly catering program review.

Step 1: Pull Your Q1 Catering Data

Start with the numbers. From your catering invoices and flight records:

• Total catering spend in Q1
• Cost per leg
• Cost per passenger (actual, not budgeted)
• Number of legs at each menu tier
• Number of rush orders (less than 24 hours notice)
• Any documented service failures or discrepancies

If you can't pull this data because your catering isn't tracked at this level, that's the first thing to fix. Without data, your program is managed by intuition rather than performance.

Step 2: Vendor Performance Assessment

Rate your primary catering vendor against these criteria for Q1:

• On-time delivery rate (percentage of orders delivered within the agreed window)
• Order accuracy rate (percentage of orders received without discrepancy)
• Issue resolution time (when something went wrong, how fast was it addressed?)
• Communication quality (were you proactively informed, or did you chase updates?)

For any category below 95% — in a real flight kitchen, these numbers should be very high — document the specific failures and discuss with your vendor. If the pattern of failures is structural (recurring delivery delays, recurring allergen errors, recurring wrong-item substitutions), it's time to evaluate alternatives.

Step 3: Passenger Satisfaction Review

If you have passenger feedback — either from formal post-flight surveys or informal coordinator observation — review the themes. What's consistently praised? What's consistently insufficient? Are there specific menu items that come back untouched? Are there requests that come up repeatedly but haven't been accommodated?

Passenger satisfaction data is the most actionable input for menu tier calibration. If your principals are consistently eating half their entrees, you may be over-ordering portions. If they're consistently asking for more substantial food, you're under-ordering.

Step 4: SOP Update

Review your catering SOP against actual Q1 practice. Where did coordinators deviate from the documented process? If deviations were improvements, formalize them. If deviations caused problems, retrain.

Step 5: Q2 Planning

Armed with Q1 data and Q2 travel schedule, set Q2 catering goals:

• Cost per leg target (with any tier adjustments from passenger satisfaction data)
• Rush order reduction target (a goal of zero rush orders is achievable with better planning)
• New vendor capability test if Q1 revealed performance gaps

DFK is glad to participate in program reviews for existing clients — our account team provides quarterly reporting that feeds directly into this analysis. Contact us to discuss your program.