what percentage of restaurants use frozen/pre-made/microwave food?

[brainhulk]

Watching the kitchen nightmare shows has me wondering how many cut corners

 

[rudeguy]

I'd say closer to 90-95%

 

[KeithTalent]

Pre-made in what regard? Prep teams in the morning usually pre-make a lot of things for the night service or even for a few days of service depending on the place and what it was they made.

KT

 

[Jaepheth]

Also, it can be very difficult to get consistency between batches with some items (e.g. tomato sauce)

Therefore, to maintain a consistent product, you have to outsource certain ingredients or items in order to ensure your customers get what they're expecting.

 

[KeithTalent]

That is also true. I remember working one place where we made everything by hand, but due to volume and consistency, we eventually had to outsource and get something pre-done.

KT

 

[brainhulk]

Pre-made in what regard? Prep teams in the morning usually pre-make a lot of things for the night service or even for a few days of service depending on the place and what it was they made.

KT

Yeah, i guess thats what i am referring too. The restaurant i saw premade the dishes (sometimes a day or two before), put them in buckets and just reheated the food in the microwave or something

 

[yuchai]

Yeah, i guess thats what i am referring too. The restaurant i saw premade the dishes (sometimes a day or two before), put them in buckets and just reheated the food in the microwave or something

I think you have to do that to an extent, since most people don't want to wait too long for their food.

I do think there are good/bad ways of doing it. It's all about figuring out what can be done earlier without sacrificing the quality of the final product.

 

[rudder]

Pre-made in what regard? Prep teams in the morning usually pre-make a lot of things for the night service or even for a few days of service depending on the place and what it was they made.

KT

Pre made as in the restaurant does not produce any smoke or other tell tale signs of cooking fresh food..I.e., Olive Garden.

 

[SamQuint]

I remember the horror when I saw a cook at McDonald's taking pancakes out of a plastic bag and throwing them in a microwave for the first time. That was a long time ago...

 

[zerocool84]

I remember the horror when I saw a cook at McDonald's taking pancakes out of a plastic bag and throwing them in a microwave for the first time. That was a long time ago...

Well of course, it's fast food.

 

[KMFJD]

Boston Pizza is horrible for this...how the fuck do you serve a lasagna that's still frozen in the middle (happened twice)

 

[IronWing]

There's kind a local joke here about chain Mexican places...

"Oh Pancho"
"Oh Sysco"

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

It depends on where you draw the line. Most restaurants purchase bread and bakery items, condiments and, drinks. Pre cut and weighed meat products are great for consistency and ease of costing but absolute crap for quality. Frozen veggies are great time savers but, serving seasonal fresh veggies and fruit rocks. There's always been the trade off between convenience and trained cooks. Sadly, cost constraints and corporations actively dumbing down food service, have greatly increased the purchase of prepackaged over processed food. There are a number of Chefs like myself who continue to fight for good food prepared by trained professionals but, we are in the minority.

 

[SamQuint]

Well of course, it's fast food.

I remember when they made them fresh hot off the griddle. REAL pancakes made to order and it was still fast. They just got cheap and lazy.

 

[Vapid Cabal]

It depends on where you draw the line. Most restaurants purchase bread and bakery items, condiments and, drinks. Pre cut and weighed meat products are great for consistency and ease of costing but absolute crap for quality. Frozen veggies are great time savers but, serving seasonal fresh veggies and fruit rocks. There's always been the trade off between convenience and trained cooks. Sadly, cost constraints and corporations actively dumbing down food service, have greatly increased the purchase of prepackaged over processed food. There are a number of Chefs like myself who continue to fight for good food prepared by trained professionals but, we are in the minority.

I wish more had the same attitude. Serving FRESH seasonal veggies and fruits
can certainly be profitable if managed properly.

 

[Lonyo]

Boston Pizza is horrible for this...how the fuck do you serve a lasagna that's still frozen in the middle (happened twice)

Some people think reheated lasagna is better than "fresh", but obviously that assumes it's actually heated and not still frozen.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Any of the chain restaurants, guaranteed. If it's not a chain, and I had to guess, 50% still use some sort of frozen/pre-made food that they didn't prep themselves.

 

[BladeVenom]

I picked 75%, but it's probably even higher than that, like 99%. I imagine it's prettier rare for a restaurant to make everything from scratch.

 

[Raduque]

At my last job, a small casual-dining steakhouse chain with about 18 stores, we made pretty much everything from scratch. About the only thing that came pre-made/packaged was the soups, and right as I was leaving we were switching over completely to scratch-made soups.

They even hand-cut all the steaks except the t-bones.