Nourish proposes an inflight catering revolution

How can airlines offer a broad range of fresh food on board that passengers actually want, and even will pay for, while avoiding waste and the myriad challenges of airport catering services? Nourish, a UAE-based startup, believes it can solve that problem, bringing quality meals to travelers while also delivering a bit of incremental profit to airlines.

We’re proposing to create a new concession vertical at the airport called quick flight services. It is a cloud kitchen paired with ground handling, loading passenger meals on to aircraft through the gate.

Thomas Eliopoulos, Nourish Founder

---

---

Rather than spinning up a new catering service, dealing with airport transportation logistics, and other common challenges, Nourish wants to see meals prepared in airport terminals and boarded on to the planes through the same door as passengers. It is a very different approach to a market that has not changed much in decades.

Speaking at the Future Travel Experience EMEA conference in Dublin last month, founder Thomas Eliopoulos suggests the concept is “a bit controversial, because at the airport you have a catering concession and then the other F&B. But what we’re doing is loading food through the boarding gate, onto the plane, without the inflight catering company.”

While that sounds an awful lot like a traditional inflight catering offering, Eliopoulos sees enough differences in the process to make a go of it.

Everyone wins (except the catering companies)

For passengers, the goal is a simple one: Offer a wide variety of fresh food choices at fair prices, delivered to the seat during a flight. Eliopoulos expects that travelers would order via an app, with a cutoff time much shorter than typical airline pre-order requirements. That shorter timeline is made possible because food production happens in the terminal, with just-in-time delivery to the aircraft galley.

For airlines, Nourish aims to offload meal creation, catering management, and everything else about the meals, short of cabin crew delivering them to passengers once the plane takes off. The airline would also realize a sliver of ancillary revenue for each transaction as part of the product’s service fee.

And airports would benefit, Eliopoulos explains, by adding additional tenants in the terminal in areas that typically don’t see passenger foot fall and are otherwise less valuable for retail tenants.

---

---

As the service grows, Eliopoulos expects that Nourish would expand, adding other commonly purchased goods (SIM cards, snack bars, etc.) that can be easily stocked and managed to boost cart value. He also anticipates integrating with existing airport vendors, adding their selections to the pre-order options. Not every restaurant in a terminal would participate. Moreover, Eliopoulos does not expect to make the full menu of each participant available. Being selective helps ensure that the company can actually deliver as promised.

Maybe good for catering companies, too?

It sounds like a rather competitive scenario, for sure. And Eliopoulos is not shy about wanting to see the landscape change. But as a “Quick Flight Services” operation, based in the terminal, he sees potential for integration longer term.

“Our platform will help them deliver better customer offerings and in a dynamic way,” Eliopoulos explains. “Most of the big players have been loathe to take the time to actually implement any new business model changes because they enjoy monopolies at most airports. But airlines have not yet required in-flight catering companies to transform. That is where Nourish comes in. As an interim step to gain learnings for the transforming this legacy industry, we are implementing a quick-commerce platform inside airport Terminals that aims to bridge that gap and show that there is a demand for a new way of servicing customers.”

Logistics and competition challenges galore

There are, of course, plenty of challenges Nourish faces, beyond establishing a new competitive market for legacy inflight catering operations.

Today a catering company fills all the bins in a galley. There’s no room for the additional food brought in from the terminal. Eliopoulos believes that can be solved, at least initially, by storing the additional goods on the galley counter, secured at takeoff with high-strength netting. Because the netting is not permanently installed, he expects the company can avoid most certification challenges that might otherwise arise.

Eventually, as the service matures, Eliopoulos expects the company would develop its own trolleys and simply roll them on and off at the gate. But still through the boarding door.

How does the company get those trolleys (or even their initial delivery bags) back to the base kitchen? How do they manage delivering a consistent service with the global footprint of most airlines? And how can a kitchen in the terminal scale up as demand grows do dozens of meals for each of dozens of departures in an hour.

Those are things that catering companies have long optimized for, and which are hard to disrupt. And they are among the impediments Nourish will have to address. But Eliopoulos is unfazed. And he’s convinced a few investors and one airport of the potential.

The company announced a $400,000 seed round in January and also a deal with Ras-al-Khaimah Airport in the UAE. Nourish participated in a tech accelerator program with Kenya Airways Innovation Hub and also partnered with Amadeus to validate integration with passenger bookings in the airline booking platforms.

So at least that’s a start.

Eliopoulos also says the company has turned down deals with multiple airlines, waiting to find one “more transformation minded, open and opportunistic” to launch its service. Perhaps one of the dozen he spoke with during the show will be that perfect fit to launch.

More news from Future Travel Experience EMEA 2023

• Alaska Airlines, American Airlines to deliver integrated app check-in option
• Ethiopian plans Dreamliner upgrades
• Sir Tim Clark expects IFEC, seats to help trim Emirates’ emissions
• Pricing tweaks ahead for Spirit’s in-flight Wi-Fi
• TagsForLife proposes RFID bag tags, without a barcode backup
• Nourish proposes an inflight catering revolution