As airlines look to drive both sustainability and revenue, Swiss International Airlines has partnered with Too Good To Go to offer unsold service items at reduced prices
Airline food that is Too Good to Go? Possibly – Image, SWISS.
The aim is to reduce the volumes of fresh food items which remain unsold on its flights and must therefore be thrown away.
SWISS already uses historical sales data for each flight to tailor its fresh product uplifts as closely as possible to likely passenger demand. But the company is now taking a further step in this direction, by teaming up with its partner “Too Good To Go” to offer at reduced prices any fresh food items which remain unsold. To test customer acceptance, a trial of the new approach is being conducted in August and September on the last flights of the day from Geneva on SWISS’s European network.
How does it work?
Unlike normal “Too Good to GO” products, this will be offered exclusively on-plane, as opposed to being offered at the airport. However, if you’ve used Too Good to Go, you’ll know the concept.
The new concept consists in offering any fresh food items that remain unsold on certain services at the end of the flight concerned. These items’ availability is communicated via an inflight announcement, and interested passengers are offered a bag containing one, two or three such fresh food items at one-third of their usual price. The bag’s contents are not revealed in advance and remain a surprise for the purchaser.
In Quotes
SWISS CCO Tamur Goudarzi Pour said
“Managing waste on board is an important part of our commitment to greater sustainability,“
“We hope to significantly reduce unused food on board our aircrafts by introducing this service. Thinking about sustainability in all our products, services and processes is part of our SWISS DNA.”
SWISS’s Head of Western Switzerland Romain Vetter adds on the trial
“The first results from these trials have been promising,”
“The new approach has been well received by our passengers on the flights concerned. We’re now awaiting a final analysis of the trials’ findings to decide if we should extend it to further routes.”
Sustainability whilst extracting value
Let’s be honest – no=one likes dead stock at all – be it sat on a shelf long term, or throwing out perfectly good food. Partnering with Too Good to Go to sell off unused stock is a way of shifting that stock, so it doesn’t end up in a landfill or the compost bin
I’ve used Too Good to Go where I live, and scored some reasonable meals and items out of it. It’s good to see this concept being trialled in a place you wouldn’t normally see it (and the prices that go along with the food too).
It would be interesting to see this running out of the Zurich services (and I suspect a few other places if other parts of the Lufthansa group gets ideas).
Of course – the ultimate would be to offer this for an airport pickup for those who miss airplane sandwiches and snacks.
Maybe that is something that could be explored later…
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