
How a Cruise Ship Makes 30k Meals Every Day [video] - peter_d_sherman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2vXbFp5C9o
======
sabujp
We've only been on a cruise once and my wife still raves about the 24 hour
Pirate Pizza joint the Carnival Cruise had that we went on. They were the
thinnest, crunchiest flatbread pizzas we ever had.

~~~
carlosdp
For some reason, one of my fondest childhood memories was using the ship debit
card my parents gave me to buy many of those circle personal pan pizzas on the
top deck of a carnival cruise. Cruise pizza is no joke!

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blackrock
I’ve always been too worried about catching a norovirus, to go on a cruise
ship.

And plus, if I go on vacation, I’d rather explore, than be stuck on a boat for
7 days.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think you do explore - that's the point - the ship docks at various coastal
towns and you go ashore for the day, then go back on and sail again. You're
only going to be stuck on the ship for 7 days if you're sailing straight
across an ocean.

Plus some people like to just relax and for example take the time to read a
book on vacation and aren't looking to explore.

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Animats
17 pounds of food per day per person?

~~~
canada_dry
What you rarely hear about is the gross amount of waste.

People are especially wasteful when the food is 'free' and plentiful. If you
watch waiters that are removing plates during a typical cruise ship meal
many/most contain uneaten portions.

Which is why some all-you-can-eat restaurants have started charging for
uneaten food that's ordered but left on the plate i.e. sushi places
especially.

~~~
DraftDodger67
The bigger amount of waste is from food prepared in excess to demand. That's
why food is repurposed as much as possible - leftover meat into stews,
leftover vegetables into hash etc.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Yup. Kitchen makes a few hundred sheet pans of stuff according to a menu
that's set well in advance (so that the ship can take on the proper supplies)
and then because of the way things just happen to turn out certain dishes will
get mostly eaten and others mostly trashed.

You simply can't optimize beyond a certain level because you need room to
absorb changes in customer demand. You can't not serve soup on Thursday
because the customers ate all your beef Wednesday and you have no stock.

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leelin
I always wondered whether the 7-day cruises were stocked only once at the
beginning, or restocked mid-way at ports.

Does that mean they need to freeze lots of the seafood? Is the food less fresh
by Day 6 and 7?

~~~
driverdan
Do you think the food you buy at the grocery store is less than six or seven
days old? It's not.

~~~
jancsika
Consumers can buy seafood at the grocery on, say, _any_ given Thursday because
they know the delivery truck makes periodic visits. And if they learn that
schedule on a Tuesday they can wait it out two days until the phase wraps back
around with fresh(ish) lobsters.

The phase reset on a cruise has the intended effect of re-supplying the
fresh(ish) lobsters but with the unfortunate side-effect of dropping you off
at the shore.

~~~
jefftk
Lobsters are a weird example because they're usually alive in the tank (at
grocery stores around here they're the only live animals sold) so I wouldn't
think "fresh" would matter much?

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johnz
If they spend $1,000,000 for 6,600 guests for 7 days then it only costs $21.60
in supplies to feed each guest per day.

~~~
throaway9912
Interesting to compare with the valley. Google food and drink cost per
employee per day was around $16 when I last heard. Dropbox was the highest
around $60, although this was a few years ago.

~~~
chrisseaton
$60 per employee per day on food?! You could give everyone a bottle of Veuve
Clicquot and a fillet steak every day for that.

~~~
awad
That's not TOO far an exaggeration from reality

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Havoc
That food all looks significantly nicer than what I got on the last cruise...

(not complaining - food was fine - just noticeable).

~~~
Meekro
Which cruise line did you go on? I've stopped going on Carnival because the
food is worse than it was 10 years ago. This video was Royal Caribbean, which
I think is still great!

~~~
Havoc
MSC in the med.

Think the issue in part is that you can't exactly go hungry. So there is a
peasant tier buffet included.

It's fine...just a "lots of pasta & skimped on meat" type vibe

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bdz
Munchies have two good videos about cooking food for the marines on a US Navy
ship

"Cooking Breakfast for 1,500 on a US Navy Ship"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywZevdHW5bQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywZevdHW5bQ)

"24 Hours as a Navy Ship Line Cook"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFh6bJIHl2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFh6bJIHl2Y)

~~~
walrus01
One of the things I've always wondered about, but probably falls into the
category of military secrets, is exactly what the manifest looks like for food
on a patrol of a Ohio class submarine.

There must be spreadsheets somewhere with all of the ingredients broken down,
costs, quantities, and probably cubic volume occupied (since freezer space and
food storage space is somewhat at a premium).

~~~
haunter
No idea but my guess would be that they all just eat MRE? Least space needed
for sure.

~~~
dredmorbius
Incorrect.

Morale is a huge issue on boomers and subs, which patrol for months at a
stretch, generally submerged the entire time (the whole idea being for your
adversary to not know where you are). Crap food on top of the isolation and
lack of outdoor exposure fares poorly (so to speak).

Fresh produce is limited to the first week or so of cruise AFAIU, but
preserved/frozen and dry goods are available for the duration. I don't know if
there's any fresh-grow possible, though there've been experiments.

(General information, no direct experience.)

Some sources:

"Everything you wanted to know about food on a US submarine"
[https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-
ships/a147643...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-
ships/a14764350/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-food-on-a-us-submarine/)

"Sub Grub Is Navy’s Five-Star Secret" (2003)
[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-18-fi-
subma...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-18-fi-
submarine18-story.html)

"US navy researchers conduct tests to grow vegetables on submarines" (2016)
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/06/vegetable-
ga...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/06/vegetable-garden-
submarines-navy-research)

~~~
swixmix
Subs also get food delivered from other ships.

~~~
greedo
USN subs? Subs generally never want to reveal their position, and only surface
when absolutely necessary.

~~~
culturestate
I'm not a submariner so I have no idea how regularly at-sea resupply happens,
but the USN does maintain a small submarine tender fleet -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_S._Land-
class_submarine_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_S._Land-
class_submarine_tender)

~~~
greedo
Yes, and they're ancient; commissioned closer to WW2 than to today. They're
basic use is to head to a port, and provide services to submarines in the
area. I don't believe they have any capability to provide re-supply at sea,
especially munitions like torpedoes and missiles which are large, heavy, and
difficult to transfer in anything less than a perfectly smooth sea state.

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zenbane
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/business/carnival-
cruise-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/business/carnival-cruise-
pollution.html)

I'd love to see this industry reformed.

~~~
nimbius
Thats not even the first fine they received.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_Cruise_Line#Controver...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_Cruise_Line#Controversies)

Cruise ships can also avoid having to report or even really investigate cruise
ship deaths or disappearances. Ken Carver is one of the only people on the
planet currently pushing to investigate and hold cruise companies accountable
for deaths and missing persons.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLgc1dqhCsQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLgc1dqhCsQ)

[https://www.cruiseshipdeaths.com/](https://www.cruiseshipdeaths.com/)

~~~
tartoran
Yes, because they operate on dubious laws under small countries flags, it is
ridiculous that nothing is being done about it.

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gherkinnn
What a seemingly impressive operations. If only our dev process had Its shit
together half as well.

~~~
sansnomme
Give it a few years, very soon software development may just as well become a
blue collar trade with teams of line cooks supporting one chef.

~~~
ken
So, like a "surgical team"? Fred Brooks proposed that 45 years ago, and I
still don't see any evidence that anyone is moving in that direction.

Everyone I know says that all programmers and managers need to read _TMMM_ ,
but any time I've brought up any part of that book other than Brooks's Law,
I've been immediately shot down. According to every coworker and manager I've
had, this book is a classic of the field -- yet apparently has all of one
useful sentence between its covers.

~~~
flukus
Well we have pair programming now, but unfortunately that has all the problems
of two surgeons with none of the benefits of complimentary skills.

For a while I was paring with someone where we did take on more of a surgical
team model that worked quite well. The other guy was the c++ and domain expert
cranking out code and I was the unix, git, etc expert and acting as the
toolmaker and "magic spell" provider.

That said, in a real surgical team some of members make considerably more
money than the others so I doubt we'll see it take off in our industry.

~~~
ken
> That said, in a real surgical team some of members make considerably more
> money than the others

Is that not already the case with software development teams?

~~~
dodobirdlord
Outside of unusual scenarios the pay ratio between the best paid member of a
software team and the worst paid member probably caps out at around 4x,
whereas on a surgery team it's probably more like 10x.

