Gate Gourmet

Catering Services For Airlines, Lounges And Business Aviation

Company Profile

• Airline Catering

  Gate Gourmet is a leading global provider of a full range of catering services for today’s airline industry. At each of our kitchens, the focus is on culinary and operational excellence – and consistently providing the highest quality products and services tailored to strengthen your brand.

  From menu design through execution and delivery, our passion is giving you and your passengers an exceptional experience. To ensure that our high standards are met and maintained, Gate Gourmet instituted gateOPEX, gategroup’s operational excellence program developed to define and promote best practices across all functional areas.

  For our airline customers, this means that Gate Gourmet’s comprehensive catering services are standardized for consistency and quality from Atlanta to Hong Kong to Paris, and that whatever your aviation needs, our dedicated teams have you covered from cockpit to tail, on the ground and in flight.

  Premium Service

  Gate Gourmet’s premium catering offers customers the highest level of customized catering and provisioning service available in the industry – from First and Business Class cabins or VIP charter flight services, to bespoke private jet service. Gate Gourmet prides itself on serving some of the most distinctive cabins aboard the most recognizable airlines flying today.

  Gate Gourmet also provides food and beverages for airport lounges that are managed directly by customers or through a partnership with our colleagues at Performa. We support menu development and delivery of a wide array of hot and cold buffet meals including breakfasts, lunches, dinners and afternoon tea throughout the day.

  Our premium catering offering begins with consultations with Gate Gourmet’s experienced team of executive chefs, to fully understand the scope of your onboard program, including menus, drink service, service presentation and amenity kits or other comfort items. Our teams work closely with you throughout the menu development process and continually over the course of the relationship to ensure that your needs and expectations are met and exceeded, and that our unparalleled level of service is consistently achieved.

  Economy Service

  Gate Gourmet’s full offering of economy class catering covers your needs throughout the aircraft. We offer complete catering services and amenities in aft cabins – ranging from innovative and affordable meals, beverages and snacks for long-haul flights, to fresh or shelf-stable food for purchase on short-haul flights, and everything in between.

  We begin by understanding your needs and expectations, then design a catering program based on your desired meal and service elements, related options, and cost structure.

  

• Provisioning

  At Gate Gourmet we have a passion for on-time performance, and it shows: We handle more than 3 million airline flights a year with an average reliability rate of over 99 percent.

  Before a flight can be dispatched, thousands of individual items must be provisioned to make the trip safe and comfortable for passengers. Getting the right items on the right flight at the right time is a huge challenge, requiring precise coordination for loading and unloading trucks at busy gates, flexibility to meet critical turn-around times, and a mastery of logistics to ensure reliability. Here’s how we do it:

  Pre-Flight Cart Packing, Delivery and Galley Loading
  We orchestrate the assembly of meals according to specifications, pack the service trolleys in the prescribed manner, stage the carts for loading in controlled coolers, and execute delivery in high-loader trucks to provision the aircraft’s galley accurately and on time.

  Post-Flight Aircraft Stripping; Equipment Washing and Sterilization; Trash Disposal
  We remove carts from arriving aircraft and take them to the flight kitchen for unloading and sanitization. At locations set up for recycling, refuse is sorted accordingly. For international flights, we separate trash from the general waste stream according to regulations and sterilize it before disposal. Re-usable items such as crockery and cutlery are sent through the dishwashing/sterilization line. Carts are thoroughly washed and sterilized, according to specifications, and the trolleys undergo safety inspections to check for proper functionality.

  Inventory Management, Including Bonded Warehouses
  We maintain separate and controlled equipment storage areas for each customer. Our employees collect the data for inventory management either through your system or via gategroup’s proprietary software, giving you the confidence that optimal supplies of any service item are always available, inventory is tightly controlled, and waste is minimized.

  

• Facility Options

  Whatever your desired catering solution, Gate Gourmet has the operating model to deliver on your vision.

  Each of our facilities is clean and well-organized to promote the safe and on-time production, assembly and delivery of food, beverages, and complementary items for onboard service.

  Full-Service Kitchens

  Our full-service facilities offer customers a wide array of food and beverage options, generally with hot and cold food production capabilities and excellent flexibility and capacity to handle numerous ad-hoc needs, ranging from full-scale charter flight requests to last-minute additional meals for an increased passenger count on scheduled flights.

  The majority of our kitchens also have conference space to provide a comfortable venue for collaborative customer meetings, menu presentations, and other affairs requiring showrooms. Some of our hub locations have also been used for high-profile presentations attended by government officials and dignitaries, as well as members of the media.

  At our full-service facilities, our teams also handle packing and provisioning of non-food items, such as cutlery, headphones, amenity kits and comfort items, to name a few. And of course, what goes up must come down. Our facilities have a full complement of dishwashing and equipment processing areas, in addition to specified zones for proper handling of all trash and recycling in accordance with local and international regulations.

  

• Asset-Lite Facilities

  For those customers who offer an in-flight selection of pre-packaged food items, snacks and beverages, Gate Gourmet is ready to fulfill this need with our asset-light option. Our dedicated teams at these “commissary” facilities daily handle numerous services including:

  • Assembling soda drawers
  • Packing silverware
  • Building liquor and/or beer kits
  • Provisioning packaged food and beverage items
  • Providing dry supply uplift (napkins, cups, sugar etc.)

  Some of these locations even perform additional services, such as aircraft cabin cleaning.

  

• Culinary Excellence

  Gate Gourmet has an impressive track record in designing and delivering in-flight menus on par with some of the finest dining establishments in the world. Because as our chefs will tell you, it‘s all about the food.

  Gate Gourmet is proud to offer clients access to one of the most experienced and innovative teams of menu design and operational chefs in the industry. Our executive chefs have worked at some of the world’s finest restaurants and have a flair for true hospitality. Every day, all around the globe, Gate Gourmet’s chefs and catering teams bring their talent, passion and expertise to the kitchen to ensure that your travelers experience the best service possible.

  At Gate Gourmet we hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards of excellence for safety, operations and food quality. This is part of our corporate DNA – and we know that you and your passengers expect nothing less. We have a Group Culinary Organization in place focused on providing our customers with their own “culinary signature” and ensuring consistency on a global scale in all Gate Gourmet kitchens. This philosophy is founded on our culture of continuous improvement.

  Our world-class team of accredited chefs stay abreast of the latest developments in the culinary world. They track worldwide restaurant trends and regional preferences to design contemporary menus that can be replicated in large quantities. They also hold frequent culinary workshops, which often includes scouting for the latest food trends and evaluating new products, equipment and production techniques, to help ensure a truly memorable onboard dining experience.

  To deliver on your vision, Gate Gourmet chefs work collaboratively with clients. We set ourselves apart by listening carefully to clients‘ needs, presenting multiple options and working together to customize programs to your exact specifications and worldwide locations – whatever and wherever these may be.

  Whether it’s restaurant-quality fine dining for your premium cabins, or tasty sandwiches and snack items for purchase in economy class, or any level of service in between, Gate Gourmet’s chefs will work with you to design a menu that delights your passengers, reflects positively on your brand, and fits any defined budget.

  Our chefs hail from different regions and countries and are experts in their respective native cuisine. With Gate Gourmet, you can count on a partner with expertise in ethnic and cultural cuisines as well as dietary and religious customs. Gate Gourmet can provide any type of special meal to cater to any specific dietary need, in full accordance with IATA specifications.

  Gate Gourmet teams are passionate about creating a positive dining experience for your flying customers, whether its fine restaurant-quality meals in premium cabins, on long-haul or international flights or providing fresh sandwiches and snack items for purchase, we continually work with you to design menus that not only delight your passengers, but also enhance your brand image.

  

• Passenger Experience

  Gate Gourmet menu designs prove immensely popular with passengers, but we know we’ve done our job well when that delight is associated with our customer’s brand.

  We take into consideration our customers’ cultural significance, the regions in which it operates, and specific passenger preferences, translating these components into a unified, unique onboard experience. To spice up the menu and provide the variety frequent travelers desire, Gate Gourmet can also designs themed meals that lend something special to in-flight dining.

  For instance, a full-service flight out of Zurich might feature a local specialty, such as “Geschnetzeltes” – veal slices in a mushroom cream sauce accompanied by rösti, a Swiss-style potato pancake. And in April, when the end of winter is celebrated at Sechseläuten with winter being burned in effigy in the form of the Böögg (a large paper and wood figure of a snowman stuffed with explosives), the onboard dessert might feature a fire-shaped chocolate topped with a decorative edible snowman.

  And working with deSter, we designed visual highlights for tray setups, featuring illustrations or pictures that further solidify an onboard theme or dining adventure.

  It’s all in the name of pleasing the passenger and differentiating your brand.