Originally Posted by
bisonrav
Some tiresome victim blaming here, given that a CE ticket is a big premium over Y. The concept of "food waste" is just greenwash camouflage for "cost reduction". Obviously demand is saturated for some meals, so unless someone is monitoring and stretching the limit, there's no real way of adjusting. But you'll find, for example, that a chicken curry will run out very quickly as everyone takes them in the first few rows. BA are just cost cutting by weighting loading away from the more expensive items.
It does seem that BA agree too, as they have wiped out the cost of loading a few extra full breakfasts on many flights with the compensation they've paid. They still wasted 3 of the 6 meals loaded too. Pre-ordering meals would help everyone - maybe alongside the kosher and vegan there could be a "most popular meal" choice for specials.
AA and DL manage to have pre-order that affects the catering on shorthaul (if all 20 in F order the short rib, 20 short ribs is what gets catered), though to be fair, on a flight the distance of LHR-BHD neither would offer more than drinks and a snack basket (if even that). Part of the rationale for having preordering is cost cutting (catering 20 meals instead of 30, even if those 20 end up being the priciest option).
(UA's preordering apparently doesn't affect the final catering order: UA's approach to catering cost control is to limit the number of expensive dishes catered and only use pre-order to allocate the distribution on board (which in turn dilutes the benefit of being first to order on board given to GS and 1K)).