Finnair is now offering business class meals in supermarkets

Finland's national airline Finnair (HE: FIA1S) has started selling its business class meals in a supermarket to prevent downsizing in its catering unit due to COVID-19. The airplane meals have quickly become a hit: 1,600 meals were sold in the supermarket near Finnair's main hub, Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, in a matter of days, Finnair said. Finnair plans to sell in additional sales outlets.

"At Finnair there are already layoffs and layoffs, and we are trying our best to find new innovative ways," Marika Nieminen, head of the Finnair kitchen, told Reuters. Finnair said last Tuesday that around 700 jobs would be cut by March 2021. The first main courses from Finnair's on-site kitchen, for 12.9 euros (15.2 dollars) each, consist of beef with teriyaki and radish sauce, served with grilled spring onions and rice or smoked arctic char with chanterelle risotto. "In this desperate, remote work environment, this is a nice little taste of normal life," said Mika, a customer from Vantaa.

In 2017, Finnair ended the outsourcing of its catering services by acquiring LSG Sky Chefs, a company that operated at Finland's main airport, from a subsidiary of Lufthansa (DE: LHAG) and renaming it Finnair Kitchen. A year later, Finnair Kitchen was producing around 12,000 meals a day, but the numbers collapsed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit air traffic. Nieminen said Finnair plans to introduce new dishes, including reindeer meat from Finnish Lapland and Japanese-style pork shoulder, to supermarkets.

"We have had very positive feedback from our customers and this product has become one of the best-selling items in our store," said Kimmo Sivonen, store owner at Kesko's (HE: KESKOB) K-Citymarket Tammisto in Vantaa. Finnair Kitchen's head of product development, Juha Stenholm, said the high quality of the food justified the relatively high price of a packaged take-away meal. "Our unit focuses on business-class food, so ... premium raw materials," he said.