About 16,000 bottles of wine-colored and 30 tons of heart and soul are serve every 7 days on one of the world ’s big sail ships .
Hey! I’mSpencer, and I love cruises. I just got back from my eighth sailing, this time traveling through the Mediterranean on one of the world’s tallest cruise ships. I’m always fascinated by how much food it takes these massive ships to serve everyone on board, and I managed to get a private tour of the galley and their off-limit decks, so here are some of the wildest things I learned.
To give you an idea of how much food they go through each week, you need to understand how big the 6,000-passenger ship actually is. I traveled onSun Princess, which is over 1,100 feet in length, meaning it’s longer than three football fields put together. This 21-deck ship is by far the tallest I’ve ever been on, and it weighs nearly 178,000 tons, which is almost 400 ~million~ pounds. Okay, now onto the food!
1.In total, 180 tons of food supplies are loaded onto the ship for every weeklong voyage. That’s about 400,000 pounds of provisions, which, to put into perspective, is just shy of how much the Statue of Liberty weighs. Below is what some of that food looks like when stored on the lower decks. The left pic, for example, shows a crewmember loading potatoes, which is a tough job when you consider that the ship goes through over 13,000 pounds of potatoes each week.
2.They also load about 50 tons of beverages onto the ship. This includes over 16,000 bottles of wine and champagne, along with upwards of 120,000 bottles of beer.
3.The ship I just sailed on had 28 different bars on board, and they served over 200 unique cocktails, the most popular being Piña Coladas and strawberry daiquiris. Most cruise lines offer unlimited alcohol packages to their guests, which usually cost between $50 and $80 per day. I did the math, and depending on which line you travel with, you typically need to order at least five beverages each day to get your money’s worth.
4.But if coffee is more your style then don’t worry. They serve about 6,000 cups of regular coffee each day. And that’s not even counting cappuccinos, espressos, iced coffees, and so on.
5.Between seated dining, buffets, specialty restaurants, room service, and more, the culinary teams are responsible for 8,000–10,000 meals every single day. In other words, a typical seven-day voyage can serve upwards of 70,000 meals.
6.And that means the machinery in the galleys (i.e. the cooking areas) is absolutely massive. Below is a picture of me standing next to one of the giant mixers, which was about to prep 440 pounds of pizza dough at once. For reference, I’m 5'11" (a real 5'11", not a Tinder 5'11").
7.I’ve traveled on four different cruise lines, and I think non-cruisers are always the most shocked to learn that none of the food on board is pre-cooked. This means that the galleys basically have to cook for 1,500 guests at a time during each dinner service. After one round of dining is done, they immediately do it all over again for the next service, and so on.
8.Believe it or not, all of the pastries and desserts are made from scratch too. Below are some photos I took to show what that process looks like. For example, on the right you can see the different stages of how they prep hundreds of cheesecake dishes to be served during a dinner service.
9.Thousands and thousands of pastries and desserts are made each day — I personally had a donut and Danish every single morning with breakfast, and I have no regrets. This means the ship has to go through a lottttt of eggs and milk. To be exact, 3,900 dozens of eggs and 1,700 gallons of milk are stocked for each seven-day period.
10.Cruises go through a lot of meat and fish too. About 30 tons of meat and 15 tons of seafood are loaded onto the ship every single week.
11.But if you’re a vegetarian or a vegan then you shouldn’t worry. Exactly 28 tons of vegetables are brought on board each week. In fact, guests consume over 2,200 pounds of fresh salad alone in that same time period.
12.Of the 6,000 passengers on board, about 4,300 are guests and 1,600 are crewmembers. The culinary team makes up 20% of the total crew and is comprised of chefs and stewards, i.e. those who clean all the food equipment and prepping stations. These people are responsible for making allllllll the food that gets served from the 26 (!!!!) different galleys on board.
13.All of this food obviously means that there’s a lot of trash on board, and since real estate on a cruise ship is super important and expensive, they recycle and “digest” as much as possible. For example, there are 15 biodigesters to help eliminate food waste. All the soft foods get put in them, which basically act as a stomach to break and grind everything into a “slurry." Yes, this room smelled as bad as you think it did.
14.All of that food is then placed in a dehydrator so the moisture can be removed, and it gets reduced by eight times its original size. Here’s a pic I took of the end result, which sort of looks like coffee grounds or dirt.
15.Finally, I was shocked to learn that all of the water on board is actually made from seawater. The ship basically uses evaporators and does something called “reverse osmosis” to purify everything and separate the salt, turning the seawater into fresh water. The water is then filtered, which makes it safe for everything from drinking to showering.
