Airline caterer serves up halal-only menu
By Pilita Clark in London
Published: September 10 2010 17:29 | Last updated: September 10 2010 17:29
The airline meal is heading for an unexpected transformation, as the world’s largest independent aviation caterer looks at making most of its dishes halal, or compliant with Islamic dietary laws.
“My aim is to make our large hub operations halal compliant,” said Guy Dubois, chief executive of Swiss-based Gategroup, whose Gate Gourmet division customers include Delta, Cathay Pacific and British Airways. Its first dedicated halal kitchen will open soon at London’s Heathrow airport.
“If I produce everything according to halal standards, I will reduce complexity and increase cost effectiveness,” he said. “It isn’t driven by social or religious considerations.”
Halal dishes cannot contain pork or alcohol and any meat in them must be from animals killed by a cut to the throat so they are drained of blood.
Airline caterers have long made such meals in smaller parts of their kitchens, but Gategroup believes it will be the first company based in a country without a big Muslim population to switch to making its main kitchens halal.
Demand for halal meals has grown in recent years thanks to the rapid expansion of airlines from Asia and the Middle East, such as Emirates of Dubai and Etihad of Abu Dhabi.
“Our demands for halal products are pretty astounding,” said Tim Clark, president of Emirates.
Emirates and Etihad use a smaller Austrian-based caterer, Do & Co, at Heathrow, while many other all-halal carriers use Gategroup’s rival, the industry market leader LSG Sky Chefs, a unit of Germany’s Lufthansa group. It has had a dedicated halal kitchen at Heathrow for 12 years but has no plans to turn its larger kitchens halal.
That may be a relief to animal rights groups, some of whom complain that halal slaughtering is crueller than standard abbatoir methods because animals are not always stunned before slaughter.
But for the $12bn airline catering industry, the more pressing concern is the added complexity and costs of halal meals, which must be made, stored and transported separately from non-halal or “haram” (forbidden) food.
Care must be taken to ensure kitchen cleaning products contain no alcohol, for instance.
The large industrial dishwashers that caterers use have to be drained and disinfected after washing equipment from a western airline before they can wash an all-halal airline’s utensils, a process that takes up to four hours.
Storing halal food separately also takes up valuable space, which is “a major inefficiency”, said Peter van Niekerk, the head of Gategroup in the UK.
The company’s new £2m ($3m) halal facility at Heathrow is much smaller than the main kitchen, but Mr van Niekerk sees obvious cost benefits in what he calls an “inversion”, where the larger area becomes halal and the smaller one non-halal.
“We are at the moment competing for some more halal business and when we make that, the scale tips,” he said, adding that Gate would consult widely with existing customers such as BA and Cathay, “to just manage perceptions and manage such a transition”.
BA told the Financial Times it had not yet discussed the move with Gate Gourmet and had no plans to change its menus.
Gategroup’s Mr Dubois said: “Today, halal food is a special meal, but I can see a time where pork chops are the special meal and all the rest is common.”
