IN PERSON
We'll wow passengers with a restaurant experience in the air. ifleat portions will be generous and come on a silver tray or expensive. I want to talk to airlines and their crew to develop the Best Restaurant offering. Airline crew travel all over the world so I want to hear about that great little Italian they frequent in New York, or where they think sells Tokyo's best sushi. Once we select the restaurant we send in a team to choose some dishes and develop a menu that works onboard. In Amsterdam we are working with Michiel Deenik, the top chef behind speciality seafood restaurant Visaandeschelde and the new meat-focused Roast Room. We’ll be offering some of Michiel’s signature dishes, like his Bouillabaisse. Some meals will be branded in the à la carte section too. We are teaming up with the popular high street café Le Pain Quotidien to offer breakfast and lunch packs – scrambled eggs with avocado, salads and sandwiches, all in a neat linen bag with wooden cutlery.
Q. Do you think ifleat will integrate into the industry?
A. ifleat is a total game changer so it’s
PROFILE: Jaap Henri Roukens Jaap has 30 years of experience in catering. After graduating from hotel management school he worked as a product and formula developer for Dutch retail giant Ahold, before moving into sales and development for companies including Marfo. He founded inflight catering's first food and packaging solution - Supplair, before overseeing its merger into gategroup. Jaap held several executive positions at gategroup and Do & Co before he escaped the corporate world to create ifleat. Email: jaap@ifleat.com
ONBOARDHOSPITALITY.COM
going to shake up the industry but that’s what onboard catering needs. We are working with restaurants that are passionate about delivering their creative menus onboard but we want to work with the current caterers too. However, it’s the airlines who own the passengers and in the end they will decide. We have already had interest from some carriers and I'm confident that others will follow. Passengers want choice so if airlines can give it to them without any cost then why wouldn't they? And what passenger wouldn’t want to order a fantastic meal if they had the chance? We travel because we want to discover new destinations and flavours and finally we have a solution that brings this to the inflight experience too - ifleat. ifleat.com •
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