Why are they fucking ALWAYS late on deliveries? It doesn't make sense

Absolutely true.

How the fuck else is a restaurant supposed to get its food ingredient supply in mass quantity? Seriously, am I being memed on?

If you're serious in chef a major city you use specialized purveyors to bring you good ingredients. If you're serious out in the country you cultivate relationships with local farms to the degree you're able.

But it's only those who don't know any better or have just stopped caring who just get everything from shit tier one stop shops like SYSCO or US Foods. Usually it's burnout. I watched a chef open a place ten years ago in a semi-rural location with a seasonal vacation crowd. For the first couple years the food was good. Then he realized most customers didn't really give a fuck how good the food was. They just went there because the place was nice and it cost about what they expected to pay. So eventually he burned out and just started concerning himself with making money. The US Foods truck started showing up, his menu became almost entirely made from frozen and canned shit. The food went to hell. But he kept making money. The few of us who actually gave a shit about food stopped going there, rolling our eyes at each other. And chef became sheepish around us on the street because he knew what the consequences of his decisions were, and he knew we could tell he'd sold out his original vision for the place.

Another friend of mine bought a hotel that had a restaurant in it. The restaurant was just floating by because the only customers were rich old people, and the chef got everything from SYSCO except the seafood, which was locally procured by my friend. After eating there I told my buddy the chef was phoning it in, and he could do better if he sourced better and did more from scratch. But the chef saw no need to because he could keep the place afloat with powdered soup base and bottled salad dressings because the dining room looked nice. My buddy got out of that business quickly, and stuck to just being the top notch seafood purveyor.

A chef may choose to dumb down their food for a variety of reasons. But that won't improve the food.

Their ketchup and mayo are awful. What are they thinking?

There are parallels to this in every industry and it's depressing as all fuck.

You take pride in something, work hard at something, be proud of it.. but it's really hard to keep that energy going when you realize it doesn't actually matter, is appreciated by few, and you'd be just as well off for the most part phoning it in.

You can say work ethic and pride and all that shit, and maybe some people can drive themselves that way beyond a few years, but it's a fundamental principle of the universe that things tend to take the path of least resistance and presented the option to work hard and get a result or work less hard and get the same result, eventually the less hard method is probably gonna win out.

Phil??
...Evan?

They were always on-time for me.
The one time they weren't was when a different driver had to sub and drove to the wrong store on the other side of town.

>mfw it's a blizzard outside and they show up 6 hours late

That's absolutely ridiculous. Why is everyone so pompous here? In any decent restaurant you use multiple purveyors and if your chef has any brain whatsoever he/she will put all of their purveyors up against each other. If you use any one purveyor exclusively you're getting fucked in the ass by your sales rep. Sysco, US Foods, GFS, PFG all have ingredients. If you've ever looked at any of their catalogs they have plenty of items that's aren't premade frozen greasy freezer treats. I'm not going to go to a local farmer to get flour or sugar or paper products. If you live in a small city like I do, farmers grow shit there, I know because I've tried sourcing local. Source some local grass/weeds fed shwag beef and tell me how much better it is than a properly raised grain fed/finished aged piece of meat. The local produce in my area is so hit and miss and we are talking basics, nothing specialty. Be realistic. All of the above purveyors I listed are necessary for remote locations like ours, the only thing local I've found that's worth a fuck are blueberries. We've tried sourcing local produce and proteins, the proteins are shit and the produce is marginal at best. We get all of our seafood from two seafood specialty companies, we get all of our proteins from another company that specializes in super high quality beef first as well as anything else you can imagine, they don't do produce or anything else. Produce we shop the different big purveyors we use as well as a produce specialty company. Talk to your reps from any of the above and believe it or not they can special order items they don't warehouse. Get your heads out of your asses. If you are claiming you don't use any of the big distributors, you're lying. If you are in fact "phoning it in" and relying on them to make your menu, that's your own dumb ass fault

Same. Two orders a week and they always deliver the same days. Time of day depends but they'll usually get in from 5a-11a. They'll issue credit or even pull the items from their other stops if theyre short something. Regional rep visits once a quarter to check what we think of their service.

I don't see the issue everyone else does.

Agreed. Sysco routing has their shit together better than most

>If you are in fact "phoning it in" and relying on them to make your menu, that's your own dumb ass fault
Agreed. My point is that many places are run like this because the chef has lost his passion, or never really had it in the first place. If the business can do well enough serving food that's only a small step up from fast food the only reason to do better is the pride the chef takes in the kitchen. And not everyone in that position has that kind of pride.

Sysco and other big purveyors can be used to purchase ingredients and items from. Because a business buys from them doesn't automatically make them just a small step up from fast food. This depends on how much you control your business and your buying and how much you allow your sales rep to influence your buying. You can choose to purchase quality ingredients or you can be the lazy ass who lets the rep talk you into buying their premade garbage. They all carry shit tier all the way up to decent to high quality. It depends on how you shop and what questions you ask. If you are running a Sysco kitchen then yes you are in fact just phoning it in. If you are however running your own kitchen it's all you. I'm not defending Sysco as a company but to say that if you buy from Sysco you are only a little better than fast food is just a false statement. Sysco reps will try to sell you their branded premade product s all day long because that's where the convenience will overrule the quality. A good restaurant doesn't have to have "specialty" everything. Fresh high quality ingredients in their simplest preparation can make great consistent food. You can get a lot of high quality ingredients from all of the big player distributors, you just have to ask. If they don't have it you find it somewhere else or you badger the shit out if them until they find what you need. They will ALL special or whatever you need just to keep you from buying it from someone else.

Fucked up the last sentence. Meant to say
They will ALL special order whatever you need just to keep you from buying it from someone else

I agree with you. But you know as far as most restaurants in the US are concerned I'm right. Because your customers don't have any reference points beyond fast food and what they buy at the supermarket. They wouldn't know really good foos if it bit them on their asses. They love the frozen jalapeno poppers you dump into the deep fryer and the cryovac tuna portions that probably aren't even tuna.
>A good restaurant doesn't have to have "specialty" everything. Fresh high quality ingredients in their simplest preparation can make great consistent food.
We'd all like to believe that.
>You can get a lot of high quality ingredients from all of the big player distributors, you just have to ask.
I'd wager they're lying to you most of the time.

>>A good restaurant doesn't have to have "specialty" everything. Fresh high quality ingredients in their simplest preparation can make great consistent food.
>We'd all like to believe that.
I said Can not Does. This all depends on who is handling the products and how.
>I'd wager they're lying to you most of the time.
They are salesmen of course they are going to lie especially if they are commission reps. YOU need to know what you are buying and it's up to you to educate yourself on what you want to buy and sell. That's also why you check your ingredients when delivered and if it's shit you send it back. I've been doing this successfully for over 30 years. I own a top restaurant in my area. We are #1 in our city and in the top 40 of over 6000+ restaurants in the area. We didn't get there by accident. We keep it fresh, simple and delicious. Myself or my wife touches every single plate that goes out. We love what we do. I know what to buy and who to buy from. We are far from fast food.

There are times that signing an exclusivity deal is actually better

some people may just be wasting their time trying to save pennies shopping around

> (You)
>There are times that signing an exclusivity deal is actually better
This is typically true with corporate restaurants or restaurants that rarely have any sort of menu changes so it is beneficial for them to lock in contract prices for extended periods of time.

>some people may just be wasting their time trying to save pennies shopping around
This statement is also true. But shopping around isn't always about pinching pennies. This is also how you find the products you and your customers like. By shopping around I've been able to find exactly what we need. I look at who has the cheapest paper products or who has condiments for the tables at the lowest price but for the Same exact product. I never buy what's cheapest when it comes to what goes onto the plates, I buy what's the best.

>specialized purveyors

Because I like paying $20 for a panini at a casual restaurant.

cool

where are you located

If you still had a reasonable alternative, you'd be using them instead.

>>specialized purveyors
>Because I like paying $20 for a panini at a casual restaurant.
Not sure this user was referring to a casual restaurant. Casual spots typically don't take themselves that seriously. I'll sell you a quality sandwich for $10 or less depending on what you want.
>cool
>where are you located
We are in a warm southern state

I'm in Florida right now

Filtered.

Ouch. Glad I moved out of that shit hole. Area code or general location? I moved out of the 386 central florida to 216 NE ohio

Why didn't your buddy do the obvious thing and bring in a new kitchen team?

My regular driver is spot on at 6am every Wednesday just right before ourban morning rush, so I have the perfect amount of time to get it put it away. The other guys like to show up at 8 or 9 when we're slammed and get pissy when I don't have time to check the invoice. Sysco products blow either way.

Why would it even matter? Half your shit is microwaved anyway.

561

i'm up in boston for university, though

i'm only here for thanksgiving

He's in a tourist place, so aside from a handful of oldster regulars the business ios seasonal, and the pool of talent he had to draw from was small. The good chefs in town are already established in their restaurants.

It was more headache than he wanted to deal with. He sold the business. He's successful as a purveyor. Just decided he'd try out the restaurant business, then realized for him it was a nope.

If you haven't worked in restaurants for your career it's typically a bad move to open one. I don't know exact numbers but your failure rate is going to much higher. Already it's a high stress low profit business. Even as a a successful restaurant owner the stress and hours are very overwhelming. I've questioned whether or not it's worth it time and again. It's not on the market but my restaurant is always for sale for the right price. There will always be some young business executive that likes to cook at home with a dream of opening a restaurant.

My buddy is a successful purveyor, so he was not unfamiliar with the restaurant business. What he didn't understand was the importance of the decisions the chef makes. Because a restaurant can serve mediocre food and make money. A restaurant can serve great food and go out of business. But you need a driven chef with a vision for the place and a good business sense to serve great food and make money. And if you suddenly find yourself in the position of owning a restaurant without such a chef and no idea where to find one you are in way over your head. Which my buddy quickly realized. I knew it before I even tasted the food, because he took me into the kitchen to meet the chef and there was an open container of soup base sitting on the counter. All I could think as I shook his hand was, "This guy is cutting corners." That showed in the food.

I hear you. I am the chef and owner/operator of my place. I have an advantage over a lot of people who have never actually worked in a restaurant. Selling goods to a restaurant is not working in a restaurant. I am sure he gleaned quite a bit of info on the way to owning his place but again you've taken a salesman and turned him into a restaurant operator. Two different areas of expertise. I'm sure he probably would have been a great floor manager but if you don't know BOH operations and you don't secure somebody before you open this place, it's going to be too much for most.
Just curious, are you a chef? If so what type of place do you run?

>Just curious, are you a chef?
No. I found another career to keep me from ever being rich - I'm a musician. Food and cooking are just my hobby. But I have a bunch of friends in the nightlife business (of course), so I hang with restaurateurs and people in the wine business often. And I've toured all over the world, so I've gotten to taste all kinds of good things at all kinds of places. I spend a lot of my leisure time reverse engineering my favorites in my home kitchen. So I can hang with chefs the way a serious amateur musician can hang with pros. I don't know the business so well, but I know good cooking from mediocre.

Too funny. I myself, before becoming domesticated, was a touring musician. Loved it but was never good enough to make a living at it. Always had a restaurant job when not on the road. Started making a full time career out of it in 1996. Got in with the wrong band for a few years. I'm a creative guy but had no creative input in the band so it became a job that wasn't fun and didn't pay any bills. I still play a little but only when I'm not working or chasing two young kids around.