ms Rotterdam Behind the Scenes

From: ms Rotterdam Cruise Review

Provisioning

Storage rooms for food and other items are also located on the deck below the main galley. The ms Rotterdam normally carries enough stores for 2½ weeks at sea, with a value approaching US $700,000.

Milk, produce, and meat are delivered weekly, mostly in containers that are shipped by air freight from the United States or delivered from authorized vendors elsewhere in the world. (The ship has its own forklifts for moving pallets of supplies around the lower decks.)

In the photo above, you can see a refrigerated locker for cut flowers that are used throughout the ship. Other lockers are used for refrigerated and frozen items, and the ship has computer-controlled rooms for defrosting frozen foods.

The ship's stores are under the control of the manager of culinary operations, who reports to the hotel manager.

On our cruise, the culinary manager was Donatus Habets, who attended a leading Dutch hotel school and worked in the catering industry on shore before joining the cruise industry.

(Mr. Habets's boss during our cruise was hotel manager Hans Dernison, an urbane Dutchman with a dry sense of humor and an unflappable demeanor.)