International passenger growth leads to more business, jobs at LSG Sky Chefs

(July 28, 2015) - More international air service at Tampa International Airport means more in-flight meals.  And that means more jobs at LSG Sky Chefs, an airline catering company that moved into new digs on the airport campus in June.

LSG Sky Chefs has already increased its staff from 40 to 57, and anticipates adding another 12 employees – possibly more – when its parent company, Lufthansa, begins five-day-a-week service to Frankfurt, Germany from Tampa in September.   

“The better the airport does, the better we do,” said Jerry Gordillo, the longtime general manager of LSG Sky Chefs in Tampa. “The growth at Tampa International has kept us alive and growing.”

Since 2011, Tampa International Airport has added flights to Seattle, Panama, Switzerland and England. International passenger traffic is up more than 50 percent since 2010, and the airport anticipates ending 2015 with a 72 percent bump in international passenger traffic compared to fiscal year 2010. That translates into an increase in visitors to the region’s beaches, restaurants and hotels, and a bump for Tampa Bay area businesses, including LSG Sky Chefs.

Since 2011, LSG Sky Chefs has nearly doubled the number of flights it serves on a daily basis, jumping from 24 flights to 43. The company’s customers in Tampa include American Airlines, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Cayman Airways, Sun Country Airlines, and three airlines that have launched service at the airport since 2011: Edelweiss Air, Copa Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

The growth has also allowed LSG Sky Chefs to recently upgrade to a new, modern building. Their new home, located to the east of the airport’s main terminal, is second to none, Gordillo said.

“What LSG Sky Chefs has put in Tampa is just far above everything else,” he said. “It’s set up for full international travel. As the airport grows, we can add on and expand. There’s plenty of room to grow.”

He said the new building comes with a state-of-the-art kitchen, featuring new appliances and equptment designed to maximize cleanliness and efficiency.

Gordillo said all of the food – from production to delivery – is kept under refrigeration, maximizing safety and overall freshness. There are also new cleaning and sanitation systems to scrub the worker’s hands, arms and feet before entering, minimizing the chance for outside contamination.

The facility was also designed with sustainability in mind. All plastic, aluminum, cardboard and batteries are recycled in a single-stream system. Instead of delivering their food waste to the landfill, LSG Sky Chefs emulsifies it through an EnviroPure food system that rapidly breaks it down and converts it into reusable water.

“Our goal is to be 100 percent green,” Gordillo said.