TYPICAL KITCHENS IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY: PART 1

With today's busy lifestyle, people don't often have the time to sit down to a unhurried meal, and fast food restaurants are generally the answer. The good news is fast food restaurants are growing, and although it might take more thinking, low-fat meals can be found in most of these restaurants. Many fast-food restaurants now have salad bars where you can make your own meal and choose a low fat or non-fat salad dressing. Avoid regular salad bar items, such as bacon, eggs, pasta salads, nuts, seeds, and croutons. These items are loaded with fat. Instead, add healthy salad bar options, such as green peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, and carrots. Another option is grilled chicken. However, make sure the skin, which contains much of the fat, is removed and low fat or non-fat mayonnaise is replaced for high fat mayonnaise. Ketchup, mustard, or bar-b-que sauce are great non-fat replacements for the mayonnaise. Baked potatoes are also a good choice as long as they are not topped with butter, sour cream, bacon, or cheese. Alternative toppings are vegetables and yogurt.

The kitchen in this facility is a shiny display of tile and stainless steel projecting an image of sanitation in silver. A large grill, a deep fryer, and a furniture-sized toaster are the only pieces of cooking equipment. A whole crew of workers moves in synchronized fashion to cook, assemble, and serve the orders, each person carrying out one small step of the task. Behind them all is the manager, keeping everyone equipped, shifting people about as needed, solving problems as they arise. The result is speed, high volume, and happy customers.

How do they do it? The secret is simple. Everything is premeasured, precut, preportioned, preprocessed, electronically controlled, correctly timed. Custom equipment does the cooking. It is virtually person-proof, demanding only that things be put in it or on it and taken out or off again in reply to electronic signals. Substituting precision for creative cooking, the system turns out the fixed products its customers love.

A fast-food operation, whether it is burgers, barbecue, chicken, or pizza or sandwiches or fish or whatever is food preparation reduced to its simplest terms. It commonly has a limited menu requiring a minimum of cooking equipment and cooking skills. Precut and pre-portioned raw products reduce labor to a mini-mum. Production is divided into a series of small tasks anyone can be trained to do.

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