thegeneral

I've been pondering the new snack packs on Alaska and the dumb idea of dropping Jones Cola. The old picnic pack seemed to have a good variety of high quality Alaska destination focused food. There was some fun stuff in there and the quality of everything was great.

I've now ordered my way through just about everything on the menu they have. The chips and salsa? Besides being rather salty, you're left with a huge bag of plain blue chips after the small salsa container is gone. The picnic pack replacement seems lighter on optoins. A bag of chips? Really? A nice, varied picnic pack has items replaced with something as pedestrian as a bag of chips? The nice swiss style chocolate is replaced by a fruit roll up? Are plain old chocolate chip cookies really needed? I've only eaten that 1000 times before. Boring.

The hummus pack seems to now have been replaced with some sort of mediterranean pack. Do I really need big salty olives when flying in a tin can with ~10% humidity? While this pack does have the nice little chocolate bar (used to pair so well when eaten with the little pack of almond butter) and the dried apricots, everything else in it was just not very good.

All of this combined with the dropping of Jones Soda makes me think that they hired some genius who wanted to come in and put his/her own spin on things. In doing so, they've gotten rid of the regionality of the snacks and the uniqueness of the snacks. Pretty soon AS will be back to regular old peanuts and boring as hell coca cola

Does anyone know who at AS makes these decisions so I can try to track them down? I'd much prefer to give feedback to the people who have taken what were, by far, the best snacks in the air and replaced them with garden variety crap. It's sad.

thegeneral

100+ views and nobody else has an opinion?

Points Scrounger

I rarely fly AS mainline Y, and when I have I have never bought food.

I tried the Jones soda a couple of times, and wasn't all that impressed.

Now you know.

hgdf

I've never tried any of the picnic packs, so I can't really comment on them. The only BoB food items I've had on AS are the breakfast skillet and the burger which are both edible, but nothing to write home about.

The old snack baskets in F had some halfway decent "regional" stuff, but some of it was kinda weird.

As for the Jones soda, I know you feel strongly about, but at this point I think your beating a dead horse. When I go to the market I buy Coke; not because I care one way or the other about the company, but because I think it tastes better. I'll take Coke Zero or Fresca over any of the Jones diet offerings.

The truth is that people aren't soda connoisseurs, but rather they just want what their used to drinking every day. As they saying goes: "Obey your thirst."

longdrelation

I was a big fan of the Anytime Picnic pack. The almond butter started falling downhill (they switched to another company) and then they scrapped the whole thing. I agree, the "healthy" options seemed to set AS apart from the basket of twix and cookies you find on DL. I can see if they dropped Jones for some reason like Jones not doing cans anymore (someone on another thread mentioned that), but the snack packs used to be a little better for you and definitely said Northwest, rather than mainstream America.
I almost ordered one of the new ones yesterday to try it out, but nothing jumped out at me. Maybe next week.

EIPremier

What I'll miss are the Jones Root Beer and Sugar Free Cream Soda. Those were really good...in fact pretty much what I was in the habit of drinking on AS. Unless they are coming up with some other root teer to replace it, I'll be bummed. But then again, I have zero trips booked on AS a.t.m.

The hot BOB food (skillet, burger) AS serves is decent, and not that many other carriers even offer hot BOB food. Even VX doesn't based on my experience. I had the $6 snack pack once and thought it was also pretty good. I did not realize they were no longer offering it.

AS Flyer

Alaska still offers the picnic pack. The original picnic pack is now known as the Deli Pack. Some ingredients have changed. For the record, there were never "regional items" or "Alaska focused items" in the picnic packs. The original picnic packs were put together and packaged by a company in Chicago and they did not focus on sourcing local products. Their focus was sourcing healthier products. This company also put together the UA snack boxes.

General, I get that you will miss Jones Soda but I think the variety of snack boxes available now is satisfying more people. At least now you have an option of something other then a salami pack. The hummus pack was very short lived and didn't do well.

United757

Why is this guy still complaining about Jones? They are poor - moving to only bottles - no cans - AS needed to go back to Coke (thank god it wasn't Pepsi). Big whoop.

And yeah, the hummus packs were gross - I had a FA comp me one up front before.

What I'm concerned with is the meals up front. ORD-SEA is the beef turd, salad, and a little chocolate, while UA serves hot nuts, hummus + pita, salad, CHOICE!!!! of entree (w/ roll), and warm cookie or pie. It's sad when UA is the standard, and AS can't even meet that. However, in the end, UA isn't gonna have my fav eskimo on the tail...

ANC

[QUOTE=United757;13479572]

What I'm concerned with is the meals up front. ORD-SEA is the beef turd, salad, QUOTE]LOL!!!!!! The greek vinegarette is pretty good with the salad but wow Im not going to be able to eat that beef the next time I see it...thanks

And yes big whoop Jones is going away. Its better in bottles anyhow and their cans never were that good. And obviously it aint space or cost effective for AS to carry around a bunch of bottles if they dont have to. They already have to deal with beer and wine bottles

United757

Dude, you have no clue how sick I am of the beef turd...with mystery sauce. hehh

beckoa

Beef. Its what's for Dinner!

Oh, and don't touch my Angus Cheeseburger- just wish we could pre-order those online, even if in F! (yes, I'll pay $6 for a burger with my meal )

United757

Beckoa...I'm so good...I always get both! No seriously, I get both. I always politely ask, "When coach service is done, would it be possible if I could get one of the left-over burgers if there are any?"

WORKS EVERY TIME! Eating airplane angus beef FTW!

ANC

oh I wouldnt disagree. My January trip was 6 segments. 2 on an AA EMB for a 30 minute flight. The other 4 segments on AS and in F. 3 of those segments(PDX-ORD, ORD-SEA and SEA-ANC I had the turd and salad. Probably wouldve served it from ANC-PDX too if it wasnt 2am. Ive had my fill thats for sure.

beckoa

Well... it seems flights ex-ANC and ex-Hawaii always run out of the Angus Cheeseburger by the time Y is served... (good for AS though so they don't have leftovers)

ANC

well us Alaskans and Hawaiians like our big greasy burgers and our scales back that up with evidence