the meals at mealtime aren't so bad, the chicken sandwich or the cheeseburger are edible, but that pizza is really disgusting.

It would be nice to have more pitch but CO is able to fill the seats, so that's the way it will be. They are adding 2 F seats to all the 738's, so that will help a tiny bit, but they do sell most of those seats.

As for the difference between EWR and CLE to west coast, they only do transcon service on transcon flights. You don't get transcon service from EWR to SLC or ABQ even though they're "almost" west coast. I'll note that CO's transcon service is significantly better than the other transcon but not "ps" service of others. CO does transcon EWR-SEA/PDX/SNA/SFO/LAX/SAN, UA and AA only do their flagship service to LAX/SFO.

I do think that CO should provide a better "mid-con" dinner, because what they have is sub-par compared to UA, but its not horrible. and CLE is 400 miles west of EWR. You should still get the cookies/sundae though...