Sponsored by Anchor Food Professionals
Operating a food business today is harder than ever. In the front-of-house, your modern, urban consumer is busy and strapped for time, but is also demanding a consistently great dining experience. In the back-of-house, operating costs continue to rise and finding and retaining qualified staff is becoming increasingly difficult.
Maintaining both high quality and high performance can be quite the balancing act. Sometimes, just changing one thing can make a huge impact. There are companies and resources out there whose sole purpose is to create products that make life easier. But, sometimes new solutions are passed up because there’s no time to make a change, or “this is the way we’ve always done it”.
The time to change is now.
Gone are the days of long lunches and patience.
We’re living in a time when everything is on demand and everyone is rushed. There are even apps that consumers use to track wait times for dining or take out. They demand quick service because they’re always multi-tasking, and there’s no time for a long lunch. This is why the fast-casual segment is on a roll – because food needs to taste great, look great and be served hot and fast. What can you do to meet demand? Look into ingredients that help you serve faster. Consider using pre-shredded cheese on your pizzas, or a cooking cream that comes right out of the box ready to bring to temp and serve –you can just mix it with your other ingredients and go. These ingredients can be game-changers when it comes to saving time and resources, speeding up delivery and giving staff more time for other tasks.
Inconsistency in today’s food business can result in dire consequences.
With today’s culture of social media sharing, even one bad review can spark negative conversation or even a loss of business. According to BrightLocal, consumers are likely to spend 31 percent more at businesses with excellent reviews. Even a one-star bump in ratings can add 5 to 9 percent of revenue to a small business' books. Conversely, bad reviews can deter would-be customers and damage a brand. A recent survey found that 22 percent of respondents would not spend money on a business after reading a single negative review. After three bad reviews, the number jumps to 59 percent. Just one bad experience at your establishment can spark off a chain reaction in social media. Kitchens may have only one head chef, but there can be many cooks – and they’ve all got different techniques. Some ingredients are particularly tricky, like cream – which takes time to reduce and needs to be watched so it doesn’t burn. The longer it sits, the worse it looks and you either have to serve an unappetizing dish or start over. A product like Anchor Chef’s Cream coats the pasta and maintains its consistency and flavor no matter who does the cooking. Check out videos and more information here.
Get creative and experiment with flavors.
To keep the crowds coming in, you must keep innovating. Consumers love new things, and new dishes are no exception. According to research by Zizzi, 18-35-year-olds spend five whole days a year browsing food images on Instagram! Already stretched thin, they want even more from you. This means using all types of ingredients and global flavors to create new tastes and enticing dishes. To do this, you will need versatile ingredients that mix well and minimize waste. Cream isn’t just for Alfredo sauce, but many times, heavy cream doesn’t stand up to acidic ingredients… it loses consistency, separates or just plain looks bad. You should be able to mix cream with wine, lemon or tomatoes to keep your menu fresh. A product like Anchor Chef’s Cream can take the heat and the acid, so any dish turns out perfectly.
Don’t lose control of your quality.
With easy access to services like UberEats and GrubHub, more and more consumers are eating restaurant food at home. When you’re prepping food for delivery or catering, you need to be thinking of what that dish will look like when it gets to your customer’s door. Delivered dishes need to look good and taste good when they arrive or repeat business (and your reputation) will suffer.
In addition, with the expansion of prepared food sections in grocery stores, it’s more important than ever to make sure food can sit out…without looking like it’s been sitting out. With conventional cream, dishes like mac & cheese don’t do so well with prolonged heating. They can look dried out or curdled even after short periods of time. This is unappetizing to consumers, leading to time and money wasted…not to mention the food itself.
Minimize waste in your kitchen.
The last thing you need to be doing today is wasting ingredients. Conventional heavy cream needs to be reduced before serving, usually resulting in up to a 40% loss in yield, not to mention the time wasted watching over it so it doesn’t burn. But there are options that already come at a reduced consistency. This means nearly 100% yield instead of a 40% loss. So, more dishes can be prepared with the same amount of cream, saving time and money.
Today’s new generation of consumers are more demanding than ever, so you need to be geared up and ready to face them head-on with delicious dishes they will love (and share!). Implementing some of these changes as soon as possible will make your business more agile and give you the flexibility to be creative. Now is a great time to start!
