Airport lounges are becoming an increasingly important part of the travel journey. For airlines, card issuers and airport operators, they offer an opportunity to build loyalty by creating memorable guest experiences.
Food and beverage is one of the things guests remember most about an airport lounge.
Today's travelers expect fresh, restaurant-quality meals, seasonal menus and local flavors. At the same time, lounge operators need to serve thousands of guests every day, respond quickly to feedback and find more sustainable ways to operate.
Meeting those expectations takes more than great recipes. It takes an operation that's built to listen, adapt and continually improve.
That's the role of Sodexo Live!’s commissary kitchen in Atlanta: preparing high-quality food & beverage for multiple airport lounges from one central kitchen.
Serving 12 airport lounges and up to 20,000 guests each day, the commissary prepares fresh food from scratch, develops recipes, sources local ingredients and gives our culinary team the flexibility to keep making the guest experience better.
Listen to Airport Lounge Guests
Guest feedback is one of the most important ingredients in every menu.
"If we hear feedback in the morning, we can often test a new recipe that afternoon. We're constantly tasting, adjusting and looking for ways to make the food better."
When guests commented that the mac and cheese was too sweet, chefs tested a revised recipe and introduced the updated version the same day. When one client wanted to improve the quality of its croissants, the culinary team worked with its bakery partner to adjust baking techniques, oven settings and delivery schedules. Within days, lounges were serving a fresher, more consistent croissant.
Cook from Scratch
Preparing food from scratch gives the team more control over quality and more freedom to innovate and improve recipes. Our hummus, cookies, sauces and dressings are all made from scratch.
One of the kitchen's most popular menu items is a hummus recipe passed down from one of our chef’s grandmothers.Every day, the team soaks chickpeas overnight and prepares around 600 pounds of hummus. The bakery makes 9,000 cookies each day, rotating seasonal flavors such as red velvet and pumpkin alongside year round favorites like chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia.
Make Improvements Quickly
Because recipe development, culinary expertise and cooking happen under one roof, new ideas can move quickly from concept to menu.
The team partnered with a local bakery to develop five different sandwich breads, pairing each bread with a specific sandwich instead of using the same bread year-round.
Seasonal menu items and new recipes are introduced throughout the year, giving frequent travelers more variety while allowing menus to evolve.
Bring Local Ingredients to Airport Lounges
Food is one of the simplest ways to connect travelers to the place they're visiting.
The commissary partners with Georgia suppliers for much of its produce like the Atlanta-based hydroponic farm Forever Young, located just 20 minutes from the kitchen. Fresh greens from the farm are served in salads and sandwiches throughout the lounges, bringing local ingredients to travelers while supporting regional growers.
Reduce Food Waste In Airport Lounge Operations
The same approach that improves food quality also creates opportunities to operate more sustainably.
Food scraps are composted instead of being sent to landfill. Used cooking oil is recycled into biofuel. Since launching its composting program in 2023, the commissary has divertednearly 300,000 pounds of food waste from landfill, creating more than 97,000 pounds of compost that's shared with local growers, schools and community gardens. The initiative has also avoided more than 767,000 pounds of CO₂e emissions.
Never Stop Improving the Airport Lounge Experience
Great lounge dining isn't created by a single menu. It's created by an operation that's built to keep improving.
Every guest comment, seasonal ingredient and new recipe is an opportunity to make the dining experience better. That mindset shapes everything the team does, from testing recipes and sourcing ingredients to introducing new menu items and reducing waste.
The menu is never really finished.
And that's what helps keep the lounge experience fresh for the thousands of travelers who pass through it every day.
Our latest research found that travelers increasingly define premium lounges through high-quality food and beverage. The work happening in our Atlanta commissary kitchen is one example of how those expectations come to life every day.
