If, like the most recent high-profile incident, the outbreak is traced back to bagged produce, many operators find themselves wrestling with the idea of buying and manually prepping whole produce instead.
But, let’s face it, the ongoing labor challenges make it a really tough call.
That is unless labor is no longer an issue.
With the right food-prep equipment in hand, restaurant kitchen staff can dramatically increase the speed and productivity of cutting fresh produce and effectively offset the labor differential.
From there, foodservice operations can optimize fresh-cut’s latent profit potential over bagged, precut in several ways.
Simply based on a history of cases across the foodservice industry, foodborne-illness risks associated with bagged, precut produce are fairly well known.
But what actually creates the risk, particularly by comparison to whole produce prepped in-house?
NBC News dug into this question with a handful of food safety experts.
“Don Schaffner, a professor of food science at Rutgers University, said the more food is handled and processed on its journey from the farm to a restaurant… the more opportunities there are to introduce or spread bacteria. That includes slicing, prewashing, or adding ingredients.”
Further, in its original state, whole produce benefits from the natural barrier of its outer peel, leaves, shell, or whatever it may be. Once that barrier is broken, intentionally or not in all that handling, the fruit or vegetable becomes increasingly susceptible to bacteria intrusion.
Then, the risk is compounded in the packaging-and-transport phase.
According to “Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, …bags or containers that hold lettuce or other leafy greens can seal in bacteria and create an environment for it to proliferate.”
Mitigating these risks is, obviously, critical to protecting a foodservice chain from potentially catastrophic loss.
But, versus a bagged, precut option, fresh-cut produce prepped with the use of labor-saving equipment also offers measurable business gains.
First, the obvious.
Whole produce costs less than bagged precut because operators are paying the bagged-produce supplier for the labor.
Granted, the differential between that labor cost and prepping in-house is apparent. However, the right food-prep equipment can bring that differential more in balance for operators. Not to mention, they can also regain some quality control to reduce risk further.
Beyond that, the gains come in the way of reducing food waste.
Inside that natural barrier mentioned earlier, whole produce has a much longer shelf life. Just leave a whole cucumber out next to one that’s peeled and see what happens.
In addition, food-prep equipment gives operators precise control over portion uniformity and allows for more efficient usage of food inventory that, especially with the rise of zero-waste and root-to-stem cooking, pays dividends in a number of ways.
The quality differential between fresh-cut and bagged precut is obvious.
For restaurant brands built on quality, this differential is critical to earning the price premium necessary to support the bottom line.
However the less obvious is the presentation and flavor consistency that manual food-prep equipment brings to the equation. This consistency holds a strategic value for foodservice chains that have to manage their brands across multiple locations and countless numbers of kitchen staff with varying degrees of experience.
Fresh-cut also expands margin by its more natural and healthier differentials that appeal to other prominent consumer demands—namely, more environmentally responsible and better-for-you menu options that, especially if marketed effectively, can attract more and younger consumers and earn a higher price point.
Even though the value advantages of fresh-cut are clear, the landscape of food-prep equipment options might not be.
Equipment ROI is an equally critical aspect of optimizing fresh-cut profit potential, and that starts with understanding how to match an equipment’s value to a given application.
For more information, check out this article on which operations pay more for higher quality food-prep equipment and why, or this blog on how to decide between American-made food-prep equipment or economy-priced imports.