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Finland's national carrier Finnair has started selling its business class meals in a supermarket to prevent job cuts at its catering unit due to COVID-19.
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The airplane meals have quickly turned into a hit with 1,600 meals sold within days at the supermarket located near Finnair's main hub the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, Finnair said. It plans to sell in more outlets.
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"There are redundancies and layoffs going on already at Finnair and we are trying our best to find new innovative ways," head of Finnair Kitchen Marika Nieminen told Reuters.
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Finnair Kitchen's first main courses on the ground, for 12.9 euros ($15.2) apiece, comprise beef with teriyaki-radish sauce served with grilled spring onion and rice or smoked arctic char with chantarelle risotto.
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Marika Nieminen, Head of Finnair kitchen and Juha Stenholm, Finnair Kitchen Chief pose for a picture in Vantaa, Finland, October 22, 2020. Picture taken October 22, 2020. REUTERS/Attila Cser
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"In this desperate remote work environment this is a small, nice taste of normal life," Mika, a customer from Vantaa said. In 2017, Finnair stopped outsourcing its catering services by buying LSG Sky Chefs, a company that operated at Finland's main airport, from a Lufthansa subsidiary and renamed it Finnair Kitchen.
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A year later, Finnair Kitchen produced some 12,000 meals a day but the numbers collapsed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit air travel. Nieminen said Finnair planned to introduce new dishes, including reindeer meat from Finnish Lapland and Japanese-style pork shoulder, for supermarkets.
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Finnair said last Tuesday it would cut around 700 jobs by March 2021.
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