May be how it is now. I ran a mess hall in Army 1982-4. Officers and enlisted on separate rations paid as they came in the door. In the field, no one paid even if on separate rations. You have much more recent info then me I am sure.
Are the meals subsidized? At my office, you have to pay for meals… but they’re all around half the price of a restaurant. Enough that people consider waste and don’t try to use the cafeteria to feed their family. But low enough to keep people at the office instead of going off-site (perhaps not a problem on a submarine).
I think that the law is the same or similar for the army, but the rates established are zero under similar conditions.
The argument has been made that, given the size of the Navy budget, BAS is small change, and the Navy has the power, but not the desire, to set the rate to zero while at sea. I won’t buy into the argument: my Dad paid for his meals while on active duty, and still thought that the advantages of the Navy over the Marines were self-evident.
Assuming “you” meant me.
You and I were contemporaries. I was in 81-88. My USAF & Army info is based on then, not now. In a chow hall = cafeteria type situation, yeah it was a flat rate, although IIRC different for officers vs. enlisted. You either paid at the door on the way in or out.
The typical USAF O-club was effectively a bar / grill / sit-down restaurant. At lunchtime they might erect a quick assemble-your-own sandwich or very short self-serve soup & salad bar to speed things along.
In any case there was a tab figured at the end of the meal for whichever item(s) you bought. Which you signed for and then got a bill at month end.
I did not spend great gouts of time in Army O-clubs but the idea seemed similar when I did use them.
My apologies LSLGuy yes I should have mentioned you by name. Eating in our O clubs was separate from any BAS. If one ate there one paid for what one ate like a restaurant. Yes usually a sandwich line at lunch. In the mess hall enlisted paid less then officers for meals.
I was a submariner 20ish years ago–but I still work on submarine sonar and have been on literally dozens of rides, there are probably very few boats I haven’t touched.
You have to understand that submarine “fine dining” is in the context of the rest of the services and the rest of the Navy haha. The ingredients themselves are the same cafeteria-type food you’d see at nearly any other institution (hospitals/college dining halls/etc) and the quality of the meals ultimately hinges on how much the CS division (culinary services/the cooks) gives a crap.
I’ve seen very few BAD meals, mostly just a range from middling to really good. I feel like most submarine CS divisions try a little harder because they know literally everyone on the boat. I’d imagine most people are inclined to do better work when they’re feeding their friends and not just a bunch of nameless chuckleheads.
My recollection of USAF practice was officers were prohibited from using the enlisted mess if there was an O-Club available on that base at that time of day.
Which meant that officers on a normal schedule on a typical base never saw the inside of the mess hall unless that was part of their job. Officers working weird hours could get “lunch” around midnight at the mess hall along with the rest of the overnight enlisted folks.
That seems like a big part of the reason along with the fact as you scale up to feeding thousands like on a carrier, it is really hard to maintain quality. Though improvements were possible even on the carrier.
I was on a boat from '04 to '07, and as a sometimes-gluttonous foodie, I was profoundly disappointed with sub food. For the first 2-3 weeks underway, while we still have some fresh food, meals are generally pretty good, varying from great (when a skilled cook is on duty) to mediocre (when a bad cook is on duty). After that, it takes a very skilled cook to make consistently good meals from frozen/powdered/canned ingredients. On long underways without port resupply visits, I found only 1 in 4 meals or so were good enough to actually want to eat beyond just a rumbling belly. I consistently lost weight underway.
It really is all about the cooks. Good cooks make good meals, bad cooks make bad meals, and more than half of our cooks were generally not very good.
Yeah, that’s why I included the caveat of “best food in the Navy” doesn’t exactly carry much weight. It certainly isn’t the best food in the armed services… we’d head across the river to hit up the galley at the Coast Guard Academy every now and then when in the yard and they ran circles around any Navy food I ever had.
Our CS div was stellar, so things were generally pretty good underway. I’ve been on boats where the cooks just didn’t give a damn and it showed. (Which also unsurprisingly happens at the most toxic/awful/inept commands. They make for underways that alternate between harrowing and depressing.)
In the Army O club or not didn’t matter. Officer could eat in any mess any time, just had to pay to do it.
Yeah, every junior sailor on the boat spends some time “cranking” (working as an FSA/food service attendant) and supports CS division with stuff like dishes, cleaning, etc. Working with our cooks on the boat there were numerous times I’d see them deviate a bit from the recipe cards because “it’s a little better this way.” I’d imagine you might not see as much of that when you have to crank out 5000 meals or whatever.
That parenthetical didn’t go where I expected it to go.
Oh yeah, the other cranking isn’t reserved for junior sailors. Most people do that from day one to day last.