‘Better Meals Than First Class’: Flight Attendants Swear By This Airport Vending Machine For Real Food – View from the Wing

One airport vending machine offers food that’s better than first class. Eating well can be difficult during travel, especially on planes and in airports.

• You don’t get much in coach. American Airlines even no longer sells much in coach. And it’s not exactly healthy stuff when they do.
• Domestic first class meals are quite bad. United is making improvements but their business class meals are quite bad. Delta’s meals lag both domestically and internationally.
• Every airport restaurant except Tortas Frontera is bad by design.

American Airlines Served This To Me In First Class

American Airlines Served This In First Class As An Entree

Flight attendant and long time writer Heather Poole recommends one vending machine for “a quick, healthy, delicious meal” as you pass through the airport.

Heather posted a picture of her sitting in the jump seat and eating a Farmer’s Fridge salad with the caption: “New York – Los Angeles ✈️ Farmer’s Fridge chicken Caesar salad is so good it’s hard to believe I bought it from a vending machine at JFK airport. Way better than first class food. Also, I wasn’t paid to say this. Just sharing good stuff with flight attendant friends.

Flight attendants who haven’t had a raise in years (like at United) often live off of stealing first class snacks. Bang for your buck is a must. Airlines don’t feed them well, and they often don’t have time between flights for a meal in any case. They can get in trouble stopping at an overpriced airport restaurant and picking up something to go if they’re on a tight conection.

Poole recommends Farmers Fridge machines. These machines are precisely the food on offer at the Chase Sapphire Terrace in the Austin airport which will be closing permanently in a few months. You make your vending machine selections, and just don’t have to pay, so you can take as much as you wish.

Honestly, it’s not bad stuff – salads, noodles, and the like and generally healthy options – considering it’s prepackaged meals from a vending machine. To be sure, vending machine food can be good. I grew up in New York when there were still Horn & Hardart automats in the city, and food quality hadn’t yet declined. But in the United States today it isn’t. The next best you’re going to do at the airport, probably (and this isn’t exactly healthy), is a Sprinkles cupcake and I just can’t get the jingle out of my head.