Where did the rest of the buffet go?

How do you deal with the leftover dishes from the buffet that day? I know a little bit about it, because I am in the catering industry. Before I opened a store, I also worked in management in a buffet restaurant. In fact, in my personal opinion, as long as it is a more formal buffet business

Well, there must be standardized operating procedures for handling leftover ingredients. Take the place where I used to work as an example. As long as there are leftovers that were not finished in the buffet that day, the remaining food must be processed first. The dishes are first divided into categories and brought to the back kitchen, and then the processing begins

And after the remaining dishes are all brought to the back kitchen, it is necessary to start from meat, seafood, and stir-fry dishes. Food, cold dishes, snacks, and drinks are processed one by one. First of all, we need to find the meat that is of relatively good quality, that is, the meat that has not been eaten by the guests, and put it in the refrigerator

All the meat products that have been eaten by the guests will be thrown away. As for the seafood products, seafood with better quality will be found and put in the freezer again. However, I want to explain here that I have At work, most seafood is not cooked, but cooked at regular intervals

Therefore, the remaining seafood can be kept in the freezer. As for the seafood that has been cooked The food is mostly handled by the waiters, so there is no need to deal with it. Unless there is something the waiter doesn't like to eat, if there is such seafood, it will be thrown away directly. As for the stir-fry food brought, it must be processed every day.

Because this stir-fried food is probably the most leftover dish in any buffet restaurant every day. As for other restaurants, I don’t know how they handle stir-fried food, but I used to work In the buffet restaurant, when it comes to stir-fried food, no matter what dishes are left, most of them are thrown away

But to be honest, there are a lot of stir-fried food, most of which are thrown away by the staff in the store. The dishwashing aunts brought them home. Although the store's management system does not allow them to take dishes home. After all, food safety is still a concern, but every time I see these dishwashing aunts, they bring these stir-fry foods. When I saw it, I could only pretend I didn’t see it

As for the final snacks and cold dishes, there is nothing superfluous to say about them. Most of them are just thrown away, and the remaining drinks only need to be I opened my mouth and took it directly to the kitchen. As for the drinks, they were mostly brought directly to the chef for cooking, while the drinks were directly handled by the waiter

Previously in I have worked in a large hotel and have seen hotel buffets open and close. Please answer.

1. Alcoholic beverages

All bottled, canned and boxed alcoholic beverages are recycled, and there are strict counts. However, there are also cases where waiters stole yogurt from large buckets of juice drinks (concentrated juice blends, mostly "new" concentrated juices) from hard-hit areas. They were blended about half an hour before the meal started on the day, and there was all the remaining juice after the meal. Pour it out, and some staff will drink some of the freshly squeezed juice. The juicer and fresh fruits and vegetables are placed together. Guests need to ask the waiter to help squeeze the juice. There is basically no situation of leftovers. The remaining fruits and vegetables will be recycled depending on the situation and quality

2. Chinese and Western snacks

Chinese steamed snacks and fried snacks will be thrown away after the meal is collected, or the staff will eat Western-style bread and packaged snacks after the meal is collected, because The food is relatively small and there is almost no leftovers. If the few remaining cakes are not eaten by the staff, they will throw away the cakes. There are several kinds of cakes. Some of them cannot be saved and will be thrown away or eaten by the staff ( The waitress likes it very much), there are several types that can be stored, and the remaining ones with better quality will be recycled and stored in the freezer

3. Cold dishes

Collection of Western salads All the leftover Chinese salads will be thrown away after the meal

Any leftover Chinese salads will be thrown away

The braised vegetables will depend on the situation, as long as the chicken wings, chicken feet and the like are clean The spoiled and high-quality products will be recycled, and the cut braised vegetables (such as pork heads) will be thrown away

Hai

There will be no leftovers such as fresh sashimi. The cost is high and the meals are small. They will not be piled up for guests to eat. The leftovers will be eaten by the staff. The production of salmon, arctic clams and the like is strictly controlled. When the guests needed freshly cut fruits, they were too lazy to sort them. They put them on a cold dish. Intact fruits (whole apples, pears, bananas, longans, cherry tomatoes, lychees) will be recycled and will continue to be used as long as they do not spoil. Cut fruits are still available. Throw them out directly

4. Whether the hot dishes are Chinese or Western, the production of hot dishes is strictly controlled, and any leftovers will be thrown away regardless of their quality

PS: The above things that will be thrown away will be shared by the waiters and staff in the meal preparation room after receiving the meal. Some dishwashing ladies will put them in bags and take them back to eat

In general The hotel buffets I have seen and know about are quite clean. Hello everyone, I am Lao Wang. Where did the remaining dishes from the buffet go? Some are recycled and some are thrown away.

Don’t be arrogant about this kind of question. First of all, it is impossible to recycle all the leftover dishes from the buffet. It is also impossible to throw everything away, which will increase the cost of the catering company. This has nothing to do with the price of the buffet. It can be as small as tens of yuan or as large as hundreds of yuan.

Why are buffets so popular? The first popular thing is the price of the buffet. The price of the buffet can be said to be very cheap. This price is relative to the food you eat. If you go to a restaurant for the same price, you may eat half of the ingredients in the buffet. Take the simplest prawns as an example. A plate of shrimps in a restaurant costs at least 70-80 yuan. An ordinary hot pot buffet is only about 80 yuan, with unlimited prawns.

Secondly, the buffet has a lot of options: when you go to a restaurant, everyone orders one or two of their favorite dishes, because if you order too many and you can’t finish them, the buffet will be completely different. You have ten kinds of dishes you want to eat. You can eat all of them, as long as you add less of each kind. The buffet can satisfy every diner's needs.

Finally, the reason for the popularity of buffets is the dining format: many people gather together to eat, which is very lively. Although there are many people eating in the same restaurant, there will be no contact between people who do not know each other. The buffet is different. The most popular ingredients in the restaurant, or the most expensive ingredients, connect everyone. Because if you go late, they will be sold out, and you can only wait for the next supply.

Why are buffet prices so low? Buffets do not require highly skilled chefs. This saves a lot of costs. Whether it is a hot pot buffet, a barbecue buffet, or a seafood buffet, the requirements for chefs are not high. Of course, I am talking about a pure buffet restaurant. If it is a buffet in a hotel, it will be different. Because in addition to the buffet, the hotel also has a la carte meals, although there are very few a la carte meals.

What dishes are recycled and thrown away at the buffet? The first is recycled dishes, which mainly include various vegetables, seafood, whole fruits, quick-frozen meats, beef and mutton rolls, etc., mainly unprocessed ingredients. There will also be some meats in hot dishes and braised dishes in cold dishes. Most of these braised vegetables are whole, such as chicken feet, quail eggs, etc.

The second is the disposed vegetables. Such dishes include fried foods, stir-fried vegetables, and whole vegetables in cold dishes, such as whole chickens and whole fish. There are also meat and vegetable dishes in cold dishes, such as cold pig ears, elbows, etc. Because the pig ears and knuckles are almost eaten, the rest are vegetarian dishes, and the seasoned vegetarian dishes will change their flavor overnight.

Summary: Buffets rely entirely on customer flow to achieve profitability. Many buffets are afraid of guest waste, which will invisibly increase costs. Most of them will include reminders such as fines for excess leftover food. As for where the leftovers from the buffet went? It must be recycled what can be recycled, and what cannot be recycled should be thrown away. There will be no absolute situation. Even if it is not thrown away, it will be made into staff meals.

Laowang Food Shop, professional baking and daily food communicator.

The current economic downturn has caused bleak business in many industries due to the epidemic, especially the catering industry. However, you can still see many buffets that look good in business, not spending too much money, but with many categories. Therefore, many people occasionally choose to go to the buffet restaurant to improve themselves. So there are so many categories in the buffet restaurant, and many of them cannot be eaten on the same day. What will the restaurant do with the leftover dishes? After chatting with some catering friends, I learned that they will deal with it in several situations:

2. The remaining items that do not look good or have a shelf life that cannot be overnight will basically be transferred to the staff restaurant. Because most restaurants and hotels provide employee meals, these dishes will be consumed by employees.

3. Then there is the food that needs to be thrown away as food waste. This includes food that the guests originally wanted to eat but did not eat, and the shelf life is extremely short.

Most hotels will handle the remaining dishes of the buffet on the day in this way, but they should also be classified into regular hotels or small restaurants, because after all, the sales price is different, and the cost control also varies from operator to operator. Therefore, When choosing a buffet, try to choose a hotel with a relatively high scale. This way, although the price may be slightly higher, the food safety is relatively guaranteed.

Shiwujun has a friend who works in a catering restaurant in Tjin (which has Chinese food and buffet). I heard him tell some little inside stories about the buffet: the snacks and some fried foods in the buffet, if that day If the food is not sold out, it will usually be disposed of as leftovers. Someone will collect it every day (sometimes staff or cleaning ladies will also take it away), because these foods are low-cost, have little value in refrigerated storage, and taste less good when eaten the next day. It's so obvious... Of course, if it's a large cake, it will be recycled and stored in the freezer because the production cost is high and the raw materials are expensive.

In addition, alcohol can be recycled and stored. Bulk fruit juice drinks will be thrown away or part of them will be digested by internal employees. Same as above, storage is of little significance, and the same goes for some endless cold dishes. Meat dishes, braised seafood, etc. will be classified according to food. As long as they do not spoil, they will usually be refrigerated and sold again.

I have a friend who works as a chef in a buffet. He said that the meat cut in the buffet is expired frozen meat. People will get sick if they eat too much, and he doesn’t dare to eat it. To eat, usually when he is hungry, he buys noodles from outside to eat. In the buffet, the leftover meat from the guests is recycled by the boss. If a group of guests come to eat, the recycled meat will be reprocessed by the chef and the waiter will serve it to the guests.

If the boss fails to instruct the leftovers to be recycled, the leftovers placed on the big table will be distributed among the employees and taken back to the children at home. Or the employees didn’t have time to pack the food and ate all the leftovers at the table. The boss doesn’t raise pigs and is afraid that it would be too wasteful to throw away the leftovers. The ingredients can only be recycled and reprocessed, and the guests who come to eat cannot taste that they are eating leftovers from the previous batch of guests.

So it’s really dirty to go to a buffet to eat. Usually those who go to the buffet on weekends are college students or school girls. One time I went to a milk tea bar buffet and saw a dozen students and students eating hot pot. I looked at the various dishes cut out and displayed, and they were all frozen meat. Look, what the pretty girl sitting on the table is eating is not milk tea or cooked frozen meat, but a bowl of gongsixun (gongsi noodles) bought from outside, and she eats it with gusto!

I have eaten at buffet barbecue several times, some of which are good, and some of which are unpalatable. I have also worked in the catering industry, and after seeing the situation in the kitchen, I can only say that if you really want to go out to eat, it is better to ignore the things in the kitchen.

I don’t know how many buffet restaurants will dispose of the leftover food of the day, but most cheap buffet restaurants will definitely keep it until the next day, because I am the only one who has done buffet barbecue. Friends told me not to eat it.

But it’s okay to eat occasionally to satisfy your cravings, because you will get tired of eating home-cooked meals every day. It is best to choose a restaurant with a good location and a good environment for a buffet. It is not a big problem to eat it once a month. Recycle and use the next day

The buffet industry is an industry that has particularly high requirements for catering ingredients. If you make too much, it is easy to waste. If you make too little, there will not be enough ingredients, and the guests will not come at all.

Therefore, the management of ingredients in the buffet industry is particularly strict. From the current point of view, most buffet restaurants cannot ensure that there are no leftovers on the same day. The only difference is more or less. When we usually go to a buffet restaurant, there will basically be overnight dishes and ingredients.

In other words, when they have too much leftover, they will never throw it away on the same day but will save it and use it the next day. This is a very common practice, otherwise their costs would not be sustainable at all. Serving small amounts and multiple times

Secondly, there is another way that they freeze all the ingredients and serve them on time when they are no longer available. For example, they will serve 20 chicken drumsticks first, and then they will serve them after the guests have finished eating. We will make 20 chicken drumsticks when the ingredients come out, instead of making 40 drumsticks at once, and let everyone pick them up by themselves. So many times when we eat at a buffet, we find that the ingredients are gone while we are eating and we have to wait for a while before they come out. It is for this reason. Making food according to the needs of guests greatly avoids waste, so there is a lot of management principles involved in serving dishes at the buffet!

The remaining dishes from the buffet were used as staff meals.