Consulting

“Customization” a Food Trend I Can Live With

Posted by John Reed on Feb 8, 2012 in Consulting, Menu Development, News | 0 comments

I tend to agree with a few of these trends. I especially believe in the customization trend. I started my business partly because I was tired of seeing the same items menus across the city. Chicken Ceasar especially. Why? I wanted to help culinary teams fine their “inner groove”.  

The top five food trends according to a culinarian | QSRweb.com.

Every kitchen has a soul. It is a collaboration of many factors and each should have a unique identity. Just because some else has it on the menu does it mean you have to. I have termed this the “vanilla” factor. Kitchens as well as guests want to have their unique twist on a dish and make it there own. By developing a menu writing formula and recipe writing processes based on things a kitchen believes in and does consistently well will allow continual improvement by the kitchen. It will also allow you to easily make special requests or custom orders possible.

A kitchen should focus on producing a core group of recipes very well and then with the right guidance from the kicthen a well trained sales person should be able to easily create unique menus. The sales person can be a waiter, catering sales manager or the receptionist who is the only one office. If they understand the way menus are put together it can work.  CCS is has developed a series of worksheets for custom writing menus  which details cooking methods best suited for a particular protein, provides an internchangable list of seasonal sides, sauces and garnishes which can combined in any manner based on the desires of the person writing the menu item. There is no experimenting on the guests with a on-the-fly menu item because it sounds good.

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How do people really see your menus?

Posted by John Reed on Feb 4, 2012 in Consulting, Menu Development | 1 comment

Menu writing is very important in todays market place. Have you every really thought about how they see the words on the menu. Words are a power medium. The wrong words used out of context can be devistating and bad for business. Everyone sees and interprets the words in a book diferently. Some guests who are detailed orientated my see a spelling mistake and become annoyed, they don’t see the great combination of flavors on the menu. They start looking for more mistakes. Are they focused on choosing dinner or commenting on your bad english. Sequencing of words is also overlooked sometimes. For example have you ever wondered about the Marinated Grilled Steak at the local bistro. Was the steak grilled first and then marinated. Well that is how it reads. Shouldn’t it really be Grilled Marinated Steak. It is the  logical method of preparation.

So it is interesting to see how someone like Phil Vettel looks at a menu in the following article. Jam: Deconstructing the menu by Phil Vettel. How do your guests critic your menu. It would be an enlightening experience for a third party to review your menu and see how they interpret it. Good questions to think about.

Don’t be afraid to talk to a non-biased person to help you move forward and write great selling menus

A Catering Christmas Story

Posted by J Reed on Jan 6, 2012 in Consulting, Food | 0 comments

As a culinary consultant I spend many days a week in a variety of kitchens discussing ways to improve kitchen operations. Impromtu demos, menu and recipe design and coaching are always are always happening. Stepping in and out of kitchens you don’t always see immediate impact or maybe I just witness a quick fix. As we are in the height of the holiday season I visted several kitchens these past few days and was given a great gift without even unwrapping something.  It was calmness, professionalism and focus. Owners, operation managers and chef’s always know this time of year is coming. They can react in several ways, lets buy everything so we don’t get overwhelmed, hire extra staff who might not be properly trained to prepare what is sold or even stop taking events as they have oversold their true capabilities.

My present was none of this. I have worked over the last year with kitchens to focus on the process of effieciencies, standardizing menus, defining roles for cooks etc and the work paid off. It is exciting to walk into a kitchen and see things being made from scratch. Trays of hand formed hors d’oeuvres not boxes being opened, The care of preparing things like this are important not only to the confidence and pride of the kitchen but the guest who can actually taste an original hand made morsel. I have nothing wrong with the companies who help the catering companies and food service operations by mass producing frozen items for the convienence. However the variety becomes limited and one is exposed to the fact that all of the companies using them start tasting the same. Where is the competitve advantage in that?

Walking in and seeing trays of hand decorated cookies made me feel warm inside and feel excited of seeing the cooks who made them smile with pride. The days that followed her where no dought going to be long, her feet will be sore from standing all day but there is honesty and truth in the 100′s of dessert trays and countless gift bags she was going to make.

This is a bust time for many catering compaines but they are doing great.  Why? Because they saw the need to start looking at their opeations earlier in the year and look at the needs of the future. They needed support and guidence not someone to do the work. They wanted to take ownership of their buisness and work with a coach and mentor. I loved going into these kitchens and spedning time with all of the cooks teaching them new things. They may have looked disinterested at times as they went through a demo, cooler conversation or a random sanitation inspection of their work station. However it”s paying off now even if they don’t relize it at the start of a midnight shift

Thankyou all for making my holdiays special.

Planning a New Year’s Eve Menu

Posted by John Reed on Jan 1, 2012 in Consulting, Food, Menu Development | 0 comments

I write and develop a lot of menus over the course of a year. From small little snacks to elaborate menus for a fundraising gala based on a specific theme.  After all these years some of the questions I ask  myself when thinking about what to serve are instinctive and come very natural to me. I want to stop for a minute and take some time to write down the process I go through when putting together a menu. In this case it was putting together a menu for new year’s eve for my family and best friends. 

I break down the menu writing process into several steps:

• Inspiration or Directive
• Research and Experience
• Selection of Ingredients
• Adaptation and Natural Flow
• Execution

The process started with a vision of a 10-year-old girl who would be there for the evening. She said “can we make home-made pizza?” Great, that starts the process. A direction, a request or need.  Immediately I start thinking about homemade dough. Next I consider the fact that there will be a diverse group of ages at the party and it’s also New Year’s Eve.