United Airlines Is Bringing Chef’s Table Meals To Polaris — Starting August 1, They Promise Better Food

United Airlines is collaborating with Netflix’s Chef’s Table on new meals that will debut in long haul business class August 1.

• There will be 10 new meals
  
• Curated by a team of 11 “world-renowned chefs from four continents – representing United’s seven U.S. hub cities and key international gateways in London, Tokyo and São Paulo”

These chefs include:

Los Angeles – Nancy Silverton (Osteria Mozza)
New York – Fariyal Abdullahi (Hav & Mar)
Chicago – Jenner Tomaska (Esmé)
Houston – Justin Yu (Theodore Rex)
San Francisco – David Barzelay (Lazy Bear)
Denver – Penelope Wong (Yuan Wonton)
Washington, DC – Isabel Coss & Matt Conroy (Lutèce)
London – Tomos Parry (Mountain & Brat)
Tokyo – Tashi Gyamtso (Jimgu)
São Paulo – Manu Buffara (Manu)

United’s long haul business class meals are not very good. Oddly, they seem to perform worse in long haul business than for domestic first class.

Their CFO actually laid out a year ago that they believe they’ll generate more revenue by investing more in meals because it helps both (1) brand affinity and experience, and (2) cobrand card acquisition and spend.

Partnering with celebrity chefs does not ensure good food. Years ago, United had a collaboration with Chicago local Charlie Trotter – and flyers used to say those meals ‘gave them the trots.’

However, it’s a signal of quality. You can get a chef to put their name on the meal. Some chefs will sell their names cheaper than others! But it also indicates a strong desire on United’s part to draw attention to those new meals, which they wouldn’t likely do unless they thought those meals were going to be better.

It is silly to draw extra attention to a product that isn’t good. Great marketing actually hurts you when the product is bad, because people come to know it’s bad, while without the marketing fewer people know!

I often hear from flyers that they’d ‘rather see the investment in the meals than in the chef partnership’. After all, it’s not as though the celebrity chef will be in the flight kitchens preparing the food. However, this doesn’t seem correct to me.

• There’s no actual tradeoff between investing in the meals and investing in the partnership.
  
• Usually spending on those two things increases together
  
• When the airline wants to invest in its meals, it also wants to highlight the investment, so they make the substantive improvements and spend to market those improvements. (Though customers don’t always feel the food is improved.)
  
• And these partnerships aren’t necessarily expensive. From the sound of the release, this deal was done with the Netflix series and it’s not clear in which direction marketing dollars flow. Since there are marketing benefits to the show, it may just be that this was done quite inexpensively.

My takeaway is that United wants to highlight its food. They’re promising that about four and a half months from now, their business class meals will be better. That’s a good thing, and customers will hold them to it!