Ready-to-use ingredients help chefs combat labor and food cost woes

Sponsored by MegaMex

Restaurant sales and transaction counts are up, and ticket averages are as robust as they’ve been in years. As the post-pandemic restaurant recovery continues unabated, operators are scrambling to meet pent-up demand.

The flipside, however, is daunting. Ingredient prices are soaring, and supply chain problems are forcing chefs to adapt menus to available ingredients. Worse, unprecedented staff shortages have forced chefs to pay record-high wages to cooks.

Knowing their restaurant customers are battling these headwinds, ingredient suppliers are developing high-quality products that reduce labor and food waste, increase product consistency and provide chefs with opportunities for menu variety.

“We’ve definitely looked to some really good heat-and-serve products to help us through this labor shortage,” said Chip Herchert, co-owner and operator of Backside at Whiskey Row, newly opened in Louisville, Ky.

At his other restaurant, Sidebar at Whiskey Row, Herchert has long relied on heat-and-serve proteins for menu variety and speedy service.

“When there are games and concerts at the arena two blocks away, we serve a lot of people quickly,” he said. “We have to make it easy on cooks to do that consistently, and, yeah, we do use convenience items where it makes sense.”

James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence operates a mix of restaurant concepts ranging from the white tablecloth City Grocery in Oxford, Miss., to Big Bad Breakfast, a casual 13-unit brunch-centric chain. Chefs, he said, are constantly pressed to find novel solutions to many unique problems.

“We’ve got to be on top of our game right now more than ever,” Currence said. “As we grow Big Bad Breakfast, sourcing ingredients is challenging, and that can affect consistency. Customers shouldn’t have to care about our problems. They come to us because they expect the food to taste good. It’s up to us to innovate and make that happen.”

Make it simple, keep it real

Pandemic slowdowns didn’t dampen consumers’ passion for menu variety, and chefs remain willing to offer it to them. Through the ongoing fusion of global cuisines, it happens almost naturally, said Dan Burrows, chef-owner of 3F Consulting. Latin American flavors exemplify this trend, he said, because they mesh so well with countless others.

“One thing we found over time was the proliferation of all these different peppers into U.S. foodservice,” Burrows said.

Whether dried or canned in sauces, guajillos, chipotles, anchos, pasillas and others are being used to invigorate non-Latin foods of every stripe.

“The peppers bring so much flavor to these dishes that chefs just want to try them out,” Burrows said.

As a consultant for MegaMex Foods, Burrows and a team of chefs simplified the use of dried peppers by turning them into pastes that are easily added to recipes. Instead of having cooks stem, seed, toast, soak and purée dried peppers, the MegaMex Foods team created finished pastes to mix directly into other ingredients in a dish.

“We kept asking ourselves how to get those dried chile flavors without going through all that work—especially with labor being so important in this environment,” he said.

The answer was TRES COCINAS™ Authentic Pepper Pastes made in three varieties: Ancho & Pasilla, Chipotle with Adobo, and Guajillo. Fully authentic, the pastes are a natural fit for adding Mexican flavor, and their versatility makes them suitable on almost any menu, said Desiree Mimlitsch, senior brand manager for Foodservice for MegaMex Foods.

“The pepper pastes are game changers because these flavors now are accessible to a wider range of operators who wouldn’t otherwise have them,” Mimlitsch said. All three pastes give chefs added versatility across their menus, Mimlitsch added. “Take the chipotle paste, add it to mayonnaise and make a chipotle aioli. Do the same thing with ranch dressing to get chipotle ranch. Add it to a marinade to make chipotle chicken or mix it into a brownie to make a chipotle brownie.”

Avocados any way you like them

Citing Americans’ enduring love of avocados in and on just about everything, Burrows and Mimlitsch pointed to MegaMex Foods WHOLLY® AVOCADO products as another cost-saving ingredient. The 100% avocado options are peeled, pitted shipped and ready-to-use in a variety of consistencies—smooth pulp, chunky, super-chunky hand-scooped or halves.

“The labor of peeling and pitting is gone with these,” Burrows said. “If chefs want to slice the halves for a nice presentation, they have that option. To use in an application, the avocado comes in a consistency that is ready to be seasoned for guacamole or used as a spread for sandwiches.”

WHOLLY® AVOCADO products also give chefs needed product consistency, Mimlitsch said.

“Given the current labor and cost environment, WHOLLY® AVOCADO products are more relevant and add more value to the operation than ever before,” Mimlitsch said. “We kept asking ourselves how we could take out time and labor without sacrificing the quality of the end product, and I think we’ve come up with some great answers in these products.”

Would you like to save time and labor, reduce waste and boost the authenticity of your ingredients and dishes? Consider MegaMex Foods options for your next menu update.