For as great a food town as Portland is, when it comes to middle of the night dining…Portland comes up very short. There’s a couple of Denny’s, and one or two taverns with bar menus…..we don’t even have a truck stop unless you’re willing to drive a half hour or so.
So middle of the night dining falls on drive thru fast food and 7-Elevens. If you’re a patron of the latter or a reader of this site, you know that 7-Eleven has been moving into proprietary snack foods lately, and their fresh wrapped sandwiches also fall into that category. Are those clerks busy making sandwiches between sales of lottery tickets and coffee? Nosiree, Bob, that task falls (at least in the Northwest), to LSG. Who’s LSG?
What do airline catering companies do when they are no longer serving meals on airplanes? Creatively expand their customer base, one guesses.Such is the case, apparently, with LSG Sky Chefs, a subsidiary of the German airline Lufthansa. I discovered this by reading the label of a fresh sandwich from 7-Eleven recently, which listed the manufacturer as LSG’s Seattle Facility.
LSG describes themselves as “LSG Sky Chefs is an internationally recognized provider of culinary expertise for airline catering. We serve 418 million meals annually for over 300 airline partners in 49 countries throughout the world.”
I would guess the diminishing orders from airlines caused LSG to look elsewhere for business. Since they have many, many locations across the US, they perhaps furnish 7-Eleven nationwide, or perhaps use other vendors, with LSG just serving the 300+ 7-Elevens in Seattle and Portland.
Just think, now you can buy an airline sandwich at 7-Eleven for about half the price they charge you on the airplane! Something to keep in mind, next time you travel.
My choice tonight was the Turkey Club. Pressed, chopped and formed turkey, leafy lettuce, and mayo with bacon bits sparsely sprinkled in it, between two slabs of thick-sliced white bread. Not so great, but not so bad.
If you have been following my writing since the early 70s, you’ll know on one of my previous forums, I wrote a lot about gas station sandwiches, and my conclusion at the time was that the Deli Express brand, from Minnesota, especially their “Muffaletta”, wins this category hands down.
But I do admire LSG’s creative solution to their diminishing market, and 7-Eleven’s creative solution to finding a vendor for their store brand.
