How does Qatar Airways prepare 2 lakh meals from scratch daily, serves them fresh 30,000 feet in air? Watch video

Qatar Airways' Doha catering facility processes 30 metric tons of fresh produce daily, utilising advanced machinery, alongside manual preparation.

Qatar Airways is one of the world's leading airlines, and the 2026 World's Best Airline Awards rank it number 1. Operating from its hub at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, the carrier links cities across Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. A network this large also needs an impeccable catering facility.

According to a November 2024 video shared by Business Insider on YouTube, the airline operates a massive catering facility in Doha that produces over 2,00,000 fresh meals daily, which is also why it has won the best airline title for so many years.

How does Qatar Airways prep 2,00,000 meals every day?

According to Business Insider, Qatar Airways prepares over thousands of fresh meals every day at its Qatar Aircraft Catering Company (QACC) kitchen in Doha through a highly organised, multi-step process. Firstly, to prevent biological or physical contamination, no workers are allowed to enter the kitchen without first passing through an air shower corridor.

Moreover, to process 30 metric tons of fresh fruits and vegetables daily, the team utilises custom machinery, such as a washer that can handle 12,000 peppers a day and a peeler that skins six cantaloupes in under a minute. More delicate ingredients, like strawberries and dragon fruit, are peeled and carved by hand.

Cooking from scratch

Each dish served onboard to passengers is made from scratch in the kitchen. Bakers churn out 10,000 croissants every hour, make handmade focaccia, and bake eggless chocolate brownies from scratch.

On a weekly basis, the kitchen goes through 36,000 fresh eggs, turning another 3.5 tons of pasteurised egg whites into 12,000 daily omelettes. They also use over 300 potatoes a day to make aloo tikki, and all food served is Halal, prepared in accordance with Islamic dietary laws.

Strict quality control

Meals also undergo a final taste test by senior chefs in a centralised tasting area; if a meal does not meet their strict criteria, it is redone. Once finalised, each dish is stacked on a tray and labelled with a barcode, which helps trace any potential food safety issue all the way back to the exact chef, day, and time it was prepared.

To prevent bacterial growth, food trays are cooled for 90 minutes, checked with infrared thermometers, and stored in a cooling chamber that holds up to 3,500 trays, is managed by a robotic arm across 30 levels, and is set to below 5°C.

Nothing is fully frozen, as this would alter the taste and texture, and a few hours before takeoff, chilled trays are brought out for portioning, which is done strictly against a ‘golden sample’ visual reference to maintain visual and quantity consistency.

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