Next generation in-flight dining

Producing in excess of 16 million passenger offerings per year, Q Catering’s Brisbane operations are leading the way for in-flight catering in the Asia Pacific.

In-flight catering can make or break the reputation of an airline. Passengers often remember their dining experience – good or bad – yet most give barely a second thought to where their meal tray began its journey.

With ever-increasing pressure for airlines to remain competitive, catering is an easy target for saving costs. Qantas thought differently and seized the opportunity to build a next generation flight catering facility that could still produce quality meals, but more efficiently. In addition, why not combine it with an award-winning piece of architecture that reflects the industrial activity within the building as well as its corporate image?

We worked with Laing O’Rourke to deliver this 8,310m² single-storey, temperature controlled, semi-automated assembly plant. The facility has dedicated landside receival and airside dispatch docks, and also an undercroft for waste management. The entrance is marked by bright red facades carrying the signature Qantas red swatch.

Once a labour-intensive process, we took successful elements of the existing operation and introduced new strategies and automation to reduce the time and manual effort it took to assemble the trays. Setting a benchmark for others, Qantas is leading the way for dining at 30,000ft.