These large-scale kitchens in the dnata catering facility next to Changi Airport currently prepare between 18,000 and 20,000 inflight meals a day for airlines. On top of that, we have an average of 700 special meals – mainly children’s meals, vegan meals, diabetic meals, gluten-free meals and Hindu meals.
During the holiday season in December, we prepare up to 1,000 special meals a day. We have a lot of children’s meals during that period.
Similar to any other airline catering kitchen, the food is mass-produced: it’s bulk-cooked and then plated in batches. It’s a quick turnaround. Anything cooked is plated and on a flight today or tomorrow.
Gold standard
As you can imagine, a leafy salad sitting in a fridge deteriorates pretty quickly. So the quicker we get it out, the better it is. First, we weigh our salad and create what we call our ‘golden sample’. We put that at the front. Every one that follows is prepared to look like that.
That’s the same process for everything, whether it’s a salad, a sandwich or a meal. We’ll make our golden sample, start the process and make sure they are consistent.
Busy times
The peak period is from nine in the morning until six in the evening. There are more departures in the evening and early morning. Everything is freshly made and cannot be kept more than 48 hours.
We have a forecast, every day, of how many kilograms of each ingredient we need. We give our purchasing team the forecast. Every day, they will bring in whatever we require. Every day, we make sure that we have enough and not over what we need.
Raw material is delivered daily: fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and protein. We have receiving and production teams team working daily – 24/7.
Can’t get fresher
The produce arrives fresh. It’s pretty much put straight into a meal, and then it’s flying. It can’t get any fresher than here.
Some of the vegetables are produced in Singapore’s vertical farms. The most popular protein is chicken breast. Then for fish, we have grouper, snapper and sea bass. Then for Economy class we have more cost-effective fish, like dory or perch.
Food must be cooked to at least 75°C before it’s put into a blast chiller, where it must chill down to less than 5°C before it can be kept in the chiller.
We prepare Western, Chinese, Indian and other Asian cuisines.
