When you order a meal, a lot goes into preparing it. Of course, there are differences between places that offer fast food and fine dining, but both the former and the latter (and every establishment in between the two), have things they would like to stay behind their closed kitchen door. So no wonder there are plenty of posts on 'Ask Reddit' where people are asking servers, chefs, and other restaurant insiders to share the industry secrets most customers aren't aware of. To give you a better understanding of what you're paying for, we compiled the most interesting answers into the list you see below. Bon appétit!
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Not so much a secret but a lesser known fact...
Kirkland products, the white label brand from Costco, are independently tested to beat OR EXCEED the industry leading product in that category. Razor blades. Cookies. Cheese. Laundry pods. If it doesn’t beat the industry leader, they won’t put the Kirkland name on it.
Ice-machines are RARELY cleaned out. Like almost NEVER. Bugs, dirt, food particles, whatever.
At two previous restaurant jobs I felt bad that customers were getting gross ice (both places had a single machine), and mentioned it to my managers at the time. They both brushed it off as having better things to do with my time, so I used to "accidentally" kick the plug out of the wall in the evenings, come in the next day, and find a half-melted ice machine. I was stuck cleaning it, but it was worth it, since I felt better about the ice being served. We had to use ice from the store down the street for the rest of the day, but it wasn't like it cost the restaurants much money.
One bartender told me he would "accidentally" drop/break a glass into an ice machine to serve the same purpose if the management wasn't being cool about it. Broken glass = scoop out and dump all the ice, and might as well clean the thing since it's empty.
I worked in a fancy country club ($25K initiation fee, then $7K/year in the 90s). A slice of "homemade" cheesecake was $7 each on the menu. One of the sous chefs stopped by the Giant Food grocery store every day on the way to work to pickup a whole cheesecake for about $5.
This happens alot in restaurants. My boyfriend said he loved the ice cream at the restaurant I worked. Any restaurant. 'It just tastes different from store bought He constantly asked me for some.A while layer we got to talking and ice cream came up. I decided to break his heart and tell him the ice cream from my job was bought at IGA, a local grocery store. He was so disappointed 😗
Alright, I've worked in fast food, in causal dining, and fine dining, in kitchens and front of house. In my experience, casual dining is usually the most dirty/unsanitary.
In fast food, supervision and rules are the most strict, so they're usually pretty clean. In fine dining, you have kitchen staff that takes pride in their work and actually knows *why* all those health department rules exist. They know how to handle raw meats, contaminants and allergens correctly. They don't follow all the rules to the letter, but they know their s**t and they care, so stuff is usually pretty damn clean and food safety is important to them.
Casual dining (especially non-chains) is right at the intersection of people not knowing/caring about food safety and not having strict rules and supervision. That's where s**t gets gross.
Of course these are just generalizations, but pretty true in my experience.
Most of our desserts are purchased from the Wal-Mart directly across the street then marked up 500%. For the price of a couple of pieces of cheesecake, you could just go across the street to Wal-Mart after your meal and buy a whole one.
We just drizzle a bit of chocolate or raspberry sauce on it so that it doesn't look exactly like the one from Wal-Mart.
Also, a smoker outside the building doesn't mean your barbecue is fresh. Most of it is frozen. Sometimes we just throw logs on there so it looks and smells like we're barbecuing. Homey, we made that shit two days ago. That's just wood you're smelling.
Everybody wants to believe that fast food restaurants are disgusting and have terribly low standards for everything, but the reality is that they wouldn't be able to stay in business if this was the case. On the contrary, many fast food places have absurdly high standards for cleanliness and food preparation. For two years, I managed a Jimmy John's franchise, and frankly, you could eat off the bathroom floor, and that's not an exaggeration. Corporate stoolies keep such a tight watch on individual franchises that a business owner risks losing their contract if they stray from compliance in any major way. The food may not always be the best quality (though JJ's meat is surprisingly decent quality), but you know that you get what you pay for. If you want a $5 meal, most fast food restaurants will provide that to you without you having to worry about what's going on behind the scenes.
Edit: Since some people are getting upset over the fact that their anecdotal experience didn't match this statement on one or two occasions, I would like to clarify that no, this doesn't apply to 100% of restaurants. I wouldn't think that would have to be said... but I guess it did.
Had a customer once ask if the Tomato Soup is vegetarian. I said I think so, and she asked if we'd check. Sure enough, she was right... most tomato soup starts with Chicken Broth.
It was nice of you to actually check though, it’s more than a lot of people would do.
Veggie burgers were grilled on the same grill as the meat, and were often cooked in the grease of other burgers.
Maybe not a "secret secret" but just not something people realized.
At Wendy's, the cooked burgers that don't get sold, those go into a pot in a refrigerator, and they get made into TOMORROW's chili.
The crispy chicken that doesn't get sold today? Those go into a pot in the fridge and those get made into TOMORROW's crispy chicken salads.
Back when Wendy's had a salad bar ... the burger buns that are going stale at the end of a day? Those got made into tomorrow's garlic bread on the salad bar.
None of this is unsafe, all of this is approved by the department of health, and none of this is a trade secret ... but I bet you didn't realize that.
We buy tiny wine bottles for $7 and sell for $37. Spaghetti Factories house wine is Franzia box wine.
Health inspection is really kind of a sham. Health inspectors tend to inspect all the restaurants in an area around the same time. When the inspector shows up at one restaurant the manager will typically notify the other restaurants in the area. I worked at a Taco Bell. When we got a call from the BK down the street that the health inspector was there, we knew he would be showing up at our place sometime in the next week. We would call in extra people to do a deep clean of everything. It did not matter that most of the year every time we hosed out under the fryer or food prep lines, we drowned hundreds of roaches. When the health inspector showed up everything was clean, so we still had a 100% on our health inspection.
So true. And they only check for certain things. Not everything they should really be checking for. I used to work for the health department and I ACTUALLY did my job properly and red flagged so many restaurants that previously had perfect health inspections. I literally got death threats. So I quit.
Okay everyone. I JUST left my job at Wendy's that I've been at for quite some time. I worked my last shift this last Friday. You want to know why? WE GET TREATED LIKE S**T. that's the most disgusting thing. That's the big secret. I know at any job the potential for that will always be there. But it gets to the point where when my felon coworker is throwing food at me and spraying me in the face with a power hose and drunk people are coming in, reaching across my counter and threatening me and nothing is getting done about it, I knew I have to leave. And I did. Best thing I ever did to improve my quality of life.
Used to work at Silver Mine Subs. I think the grossest/weirdest things were probably the ice machines (I always was extra careful to inspect the ice, before filling it, because I found quite a few frozen bugs in there) and the fact that people sometimes smoked weed in the walk in freezer. I never did this but I caught several co-workers doing it. I mean sure I get high sometimes, but can't that wait until after work?
One notable story: I did delivery driving for a while and one time I was in a big rush with a bunch of orders. I had a customer's food and was running up the stairs to their apartment with it, and tripped over the top step (it was weird because you'd go up the staircase, turn the corner, and there was a random diagonal step there that was about half the height of all the other ones and nearly impossible to see.) I fell flat on my face and the bag of food went FLYING over the railing. Extremely embarrassed, I immediately went up to the customer's door, knocked, and admitted what happened. I apologized profusely, said I'd have the order remade, and comp him out for it.
He said to me with a smile "Don't worry about it. That step is f*****g annoying and I've honestly seen at least 3 or 4 other drivers do the exact same thing. You're the first to admit it happened; they all just went and got the food off the ground. And brought it up hoping I wouldn't notice. Thanks for being honest."
So I call my boss explain what happened and can they please remake the order, and bring it back to him, everything is fine, and he tips me like $15 on the comped out order. I think he tipped me more for the order than it originally would have cost, just because I was *honest* that I *dropped his food on the ground.*
I was pretty horrified that other drivers would do that. And that he'd be so impressed by me being honest about something that I'd have assumed any other employee would own up to.
Sounds like he should make a sign warning people about that step unless he's okay with eating sidewalk food. Yeah, the apartments should probably do it, but I'm the type that I would make one to warn people. Common courtesy and all. I don't want food that's been on the ground unless I do it and decide if the five second rule is cool in that instance or not. Lol
Back when I was a fry cook, some customers thought they were being slick and would order unsalted fries to make sure they got fresh ones. Us cooks would just put already salted fries back into the fryer to wash the salt off.
Papa John's employees are always high. Always.
Ex starbucks barista.
-All the pastries come frozen and we defrost them. We think they're overpriced too, don't complain about the price, if it's too expensive for you then starbucks is not the place for you. Everything is overpriced here, DD is cheaper and even cheaper is just going to the grocery store
-Lots of syrups are made with milk and/or honey so they're not vegan; this is problematic for customer's who pay extra for soy milk because they want to avoid animal products
-Cleanliness and freshness really depends on the individual location. I worked at a 24/7 location with some of the highest traffic in the US (comparable to Times Square starbucks) and I assure you that hardly anything was properly sanitized and things were not always fresh. We tried but it's very hard to keep up with cleaning and such when you have 50 customers in line and people yelling at you wondering where their drink is
-If you're rude, chances are you might get decaf shots. Cause f**k you. Or if you're rude and you order a skinny drink someone might use real syrup (may it go straight to your a*s, b***h!) But no one would ever do anything other than this pettiness, it would be super f****d up to actually ruin someone's drink or make it gross
-If it's rush hour and you ask for a complicate drink, we hate you
-We're supposed to regularly check and log the temperatures of the milk carafes that are available for customers to use but we get so busy that the milk usually has been sitting out for hours, rising above safe temperatures.
-The ice machines are probably nasty. I don't think we ever cleaned ours in my 2 years there
-Iced coffees and iced teas are automatically sweetened using "simple syrup." You can switch for another syrup free of charge or ask for fewer pumps of syrup if you prefer it unsweetened.
-We're supposed to sanitize the foaming nozzle between drinks; the container holding the sanitizing agent gets super nasty very quickly from all the milk but it doesn't get switched often
-During rush hour, baristas often leave the milk jugs out rather than return it to the fridge between use because you're pouring milk literally every 30 seconds. Unfortunately this means the milk temperature rises above safe levels and bacterial growth duplicates
-Please don't order a special "secret menu" drink. There is no secret f*****g menu. Tell us what strips you want in it and we can make it but if you just tell us a ridiculous name (snickers crunch frappuccino!) chances are we have no clue how to make that and we probably will make it up. Which it probably will end up tasting fine anyways.. Unless you're used to having it made one way and suddenly someone makes it up using different ingredients
-When you approach the cashier, put down your phone and know what you want to order. Be polite not rude! It's crazy how many times people come up and are like "hold on, I'm getting a drink for my friend, let me call her real quick." Um no.
"Or if you're rude and you order a skinny drink someone might use real syrup (may it go straight to your a*s, b***h!) But no one would ever do anything other than this pettiness, it would be super f****d up to actually ruin someone's drink or make it gross" All i can think of is how some people can't have sugar for medical reasons... Sure, it's fun to be petty, but it's it still fun if that person ends up being admitted?
The only thing that is fresh and healthy, not pre-made, bagged and/or frozen at like all fast food places. Is the tomatoes.
Yeah, but the tomatoes also usually look sort of anemic and lack any discernible flavor.
I work at Taco Bell, and you DO NOT want to see how the meat comes into the store. The meat we use for the tacos and other things of the sort comes in big plastic bags labeled "Suitable for human consumption". They smell absolutely awful until we put the seasonings in. Yeah, don't go to Taco Bell.
Not gonna say which chain but the one i used to work at was very clean and well managed. The only real secret we had was...well... Nobody was drinking the sodas they thought they were. We didn't use regular syrup in the fountain machines. If you ordered a coke, you got "panda cola". If you ordered a 7-up you got "panda lime-up".
Sorry...
My ex use to work at Applebees. She told me that everything you eat there is pre-packaged and just microwaved once you order it, including the ribs and steak.
Zoup! The Fresh Soup Company:
All the soups are frozen. They come in frozen and if there are leftovers at the end of the night they are refrozen and served another day. Pretty standard for fast - casual dining, but I found it unusual considering "fresh soup" is in the name.
I'm not fast food, but I work at an Outback, and none of the servers practice anything like proper sanitation with the bread coming from the bread oven. No one has time to wash hands and use tongs and everything when grabbing bread, often even if you were just offloading dirty dishes at the dish pit.
And speaking of dishes, our dishwasher only works properly maybe 1/3 of the time, so the dishes you're eating on? Those were probably run through dish, came out still dirty, and were just wiped down with the same towel we've been using all night.
Then there's the ice machine. Last time I saw it properly cleaned was well over a year ago, when we found a serious black mold infestation in it, and I had to scrub it out by hand, with basically just hot water and a weak sanitizer.
TL;DR: Dirty hands, dirty bread, dirty dishes, dirty ice.
At KFC, we were supposed to change the fryer oil every couple days. Our penny-pinching manager had us change it every couple weeks. We'd just skim off the 'floaters' and cover it at night.
McDonald's tea is just Lipton with 4 cups of sugar . Made in the morning right after the coffee.
Worked at Taco Bell in college.
The most disgusting thing was probably that salaried managers made about the same or less per hour than hourly wage employees.
There was really nothing unsanitary. The food is all low-quality cheap s**t, of course, but there's nothing actually *wrong* with it. I don't know how the hell people get sick after eating there; they must have incredibly weak digestive systems. There's never any raw meat in the store; it all comes pre-cooked and just gets warmed up.
Oh, actually, thought of one thing: the taco salad bowls are all fried up in the morning, so if you get one late in the day, it's been sitting in the warmer for a while. That's about it.
Sometimes the chalupa shells sit around a while, too. If you want fresh ones, just ask. It's appreciated if you come inside the store, though, so it doesn't affect the drive-thru times, as they take a couple minutes to fry.
I once lived near a California agricultural-service town that was supported by many Latino workers. That town featured several budget Mexican eateries with excellent food -- but the pathetic Taco Bell attracted out-of-town customers. Sad.
Whenever we have ingredients that is going to expire or just expired, we tell our cashiers to subtly "promote" certain foods when a customer seems unsure about what to buy.
I saw a cook at Ihop f**k up an omelet and put the wrong sauce on it, he just washed it off in the sink and than tossed it back on the grill.
My brother services coffee machines in restaurants.
Never, *EVER* get coffee from McDonalds.
Ever.
Candy man here. We left chocolate out in display cases for months on end. When my friends came by to the store I told them to avoid it at all costs.
I worked at mcdonalds, and the mcrib if left out raw, melts into a liquid
I worked at Little Caesars in Sumner, WA. The “Cheese Pizza" cost $5.99 whilst the “Pepperoni Pizza" cost $5.99. The manager told me that it's that way because the customers are informed that more cheese is added onto the “Cheese Pizza”. This was a blatant lie as we put equal amounts of cheese on all the pizzas. The cheese is added before any other toppings.
DOUGH-->SAUCE-->CHEESE-->WHATEVER YOU WANT TO IMAGINE.
So you don't really know which ones are going to be baked as “Pepperoni”, “Vegetarian” , ”etc..”.
Well, the pepperoni customers got a good deal then. Legit, except for the lie!
I work at Culver's, and I'll still order most everything from the menu. In fact, my respect for them has grown and I consider them a top place to eat.
Just don't order the salads.
The ingredients are (for Cran Blue):
A shit ton of lettuce
3 tomatoes
3 cucumber slices
Handful of blue cheese
Handful of cranberries
Then the chicken is added. You're being seriously undercut on tomatoes and cucumbers, and the blue cheese and cranberries NEVER get changed out because no one ever orders them. So yeah, the cheese turns yellow-blue and the cranberries are rock-hard. Cool
I loved Culver's - sorry they're only a memory now that I'm in New England!
I worked at a starbucks where they allowed a full on roach infestation.
More on the DM and Managers then Corporate but it really got to a point where Seattle must have known.
They were everywhere.
The pastry case, in the storage, around the dry powders but the worst was a saw one (and just to make this clear, this 100% happened) crawl out of the espresso spout in the machines.
As employees, we were on the front line trying to defend our location even though a huge majority thought it was disturbing.
Eventually, one of our regulars put in a complaint at the health department.
It was about the time I put in my 2 weeks notice and my manager blamed me specifically for it.
I honestly didnt care.
Starbucks is a hilariously simple job with the hardest task consisting of lifting 10 lbs and the most complex task being holding a milk pitcher at an angle to create foam for milk.
TL;DR: Starbucks roach infestation, I got blamed for "whistleblowing" although i was innocent, I took the blame though because the job is a joke.
I worked bbq in college. our meats were never frozen, but we did smoke them and reheat for service using a sous vide. unless you have someone smoking over night (which we occasionally did) it's almost impossible to guarantee not running out of things during dinner, and we found our customers were not satisfied when we ran out of things such as ribs for instance. it was a constant battle of trying to limit how much meat to smoke in advance vs cutting it close to have the freshest meats possible. but goddamn fresh off the pit ribs are heavenly.
we never used the stoke the fire just for the smell trick. probably because my boss would lose it if we wasted anything, including our hickory logs. miss the hell out of that place.
Also not surprising. Smoking a brisket right can take like 24 hours, how do you make more for that for customers? Ribs are like 3 to 4. I sous vide my leftover home made BBQ for myself to heat it up. Sounds like a solid place Though I do freeze my own meat and BBQ, it's not the end of the world but of course better fresh made
so back in high school I worked at a FF joint. I'd been setting up the soft serve ice cream machine, scooping it with a plastic spatula. Put spatula on counter next to french fry machine.
Turned around with bucked, elbow hit counter. Plastic spatula fell into fryer. I ALMOST, ALMOST out of reflex, went to grab the spatula as it slowly melted/sunk into the oil.
Manager walked up and put a basked of french fries in the fryer. I just stood there and didn't know what to do.
TL;DR Ya'll ate some plastic coated french fries.
I worked at a fried chicken joint during my teenage years. The owner refused to let us throw away chicken pieces that have gone bad to where you'd gagged if you smell them.
We battered them up, fried em and served them to unsuspecting customers.
Short-rib flatbread pizza. We take leftover short rib from the previous night, shred it, put it on $0.05 worth of flatbread with a sprinkle of cheese and some diced red onion, and ship it out for $11.45. It's literally $10 profit.
And people love it. We sell easily 20-25 every night as hot apps.
Don't eat the mayo!
Ask for it fresh!
A hair in your food is probably not from the head!
The hand washing signs displayed are to make the public feel safe, the workers don't actually wash their hands as much as they should.
If something other than the original ingredients falls into the food 99% will not notice, no reason to waste food ($) because somebody "Might" complain. A complaint only leads to half of the food wasted.
I still eat fast food. 🙃
My husband used to work in a gastro-pub in a well-to-do area where it was the only option.
The baked Camembert. It was literally the Camembert from Aldi. £1 each. Baked and sold for £15 to share.
Everyone was convinced it was some really posh continental fine cheese with a special Camembert oven or some shit. Nope, they could do the exact same thing at home for a pittance of the price.
This is how restaurants work. They buy stuff, do something to it, and sell it at a higher price. If they sold it at the same price they bought it, how would they pay the rent? Pay the staff? If you want Camembert for the lower price, eat at home. Not sure about some of these posts, they seem to have been written by children.
I used to cook at a seafood restaurant and without a doubt it was the lobster rolls. We used hardly any filler in them, basically all lobster and i still couldn't believe what we were selling them for.
I see absolutely no problem here other than not knowing where I should be headed for lunch?!
When we run out of cheesecake someone draws a straw to walk to the Publix across the street to buy more.
This has been pretty much been explored to death on this list and, Publix does make a pretty decent cheesecake. Next?
I worked for Edible Arrangements for 2 years and worked every position there. Delivery driver in a pinch, chocolate dipper, fruit skewer-er, arranging arrangements, dealing with costumers.. ofter all of those positions on the same day since there was only two people working at my store at one time (excluding driver) and my manager only trained me to do everything because he was too lazy most days to do it.
We often get mushy/moldy strawberries from our distributers. If it's just a little bloop of mold (strawberry still looks big and red otherwise) we'll dip it in chocolate and hide the mold. When they are starting to secrete red goo, that's actually when they're the sweetest. But most people think that since they aren't pretty that they taste bad. So we blot the liquid off and dip it in chocolate. Just short of a pure mold shapeless blob, it's used. Also, they're **never** washed. As in ever.
Pineapples are fresh and chopped every day but unfortunately not all pineapples are sweet because we all know that b******t can't be controlled. Even if it's sour/tart, we will use it and just hope no customer calls and complains. Same thing with honeydew and cantaloupe.
If you want a replacement, we will happily oblige as long as you have not eaten the entire damned thing. If there's not 98% of the fruit still there, you will not receive it because clearly it wasn't *that* bad. Call as soon as you find out. Not a week later. Not even a day later. The sooner, the more likely we can replace it. Same thing if you just want a refund for the sender. There must be a 98% remainder.
Apples are 98% fresh and good. But a lot of the time they're bruised and we hide it with chocolate.
Bananas are bought from the food market next door. They can be practically black (the inside) or peel completely green and we'll use them if we have no other option.
Grapes will often times be moldy. We just put it under a high pressure hose and knock it off.
The chocolate isn't gourmet. It's Hershey's. Yes, it's cheaper to make it yourself. You're paying for the pale and someone else to do it for you.
Yes, we fully understand that the prices are outrageous and can't believe people pay it. But I personally also find a weird pride/joy to see how high I could get someone to go. I could sell a condom to a nun. (Highest average sales for almost a year straight). Please understand that deliveries AREN'T TIMED. We have more than one costumer a day for deliveries and you're not special. If you want it by a certain time, *pick.it.up*. No. the driver will *not* sit there for 15 minutes waiting for you to come home. You knew we were coming today. So if you have to leave, put a cooler out and in the shade with a note of the door. The driver does NOT want to working at 7pm still because you think you're so special that we should be waiting for you specifically.
Please do not have your kid try and sign our clipboard or make an order in the store. I 100% understand that you want your kid to be better at stranger interaction/ordering. But I'm not the person to do that to. I get you think it's adorable to try and force your child to sign our clipboard, especially if the bouquet is for them, but it's not as cute as you think. And when it takes you 2+ minutes to wrestle your child into sort of making a signature; we don't think that's cute. We see it as a time eater. We have 15+ other deliveries in a 100mi radius of the store. Usually none of them near each other. So when each person thinks they're kid is special and is "only" going to take extra time, it adds up. Time I could be making to a toilet.
Lastly, we call the day before or morning of to tell you the delivery is going out. It *only* goes out if you, the receiver, OKs it. So you know it's coming between 12-5. PLEASE tell them if you live up a large hill that isn't plowed (a big problem in my area). Our truck CANNOT make it. Also, if it's for a time sensitive delivery; tell us. We will try but under no circumstances will we garuntee it. We will try our best and if we simply cannot, we will tell you. Please do not stomp your foot like a child. Sorry the world doesn't revolve around you.
Where I used to work sold a pint of pepsi for £4. It made me sad. Thirsty family comes in and orders a pint of cola each for the parents and a half each for 3 kids? £14. That's 2 hours wage for me.
That is ridiculous considering its basically water with sugar but I'm noticing that here too with the prices.
Friend of mine used to work at Subway, aparently the chicken comes in vacum packed from Thailand with a 2 year sell by date.
Our manager is really stingy when it comes to throwing away food. He will keep leftover eggs from breakfast and use it the next day and if any of the food on the line looks dry or is starting to look thick he'll just poor a little water in it and there you go, "fresh" beans! Sometimes when we receive the truck full of veggies the tomatoes are really squishy and brown. I work at Taco Cabana and luckily for you guys there only located in Texas.
Idk what you qualify as disgusting, but i worked at a quiznos. My boss told us to skim on everything. Take off at least an inch for each size breads, put less meat, put less veggies, less sauce. When we had coupons, she'd take off meat after they'd pay if she didnt see them in their hands beforehand. It was pretty horrible, but i never skimmed as much.
Places like that give the managers bonuses for keeping food cost down. He isn't going to eat it and he doesn't care.
Chick Fila is generally pretty good for freshness and quality. That said, the chicken fridges were horrible for the workers. Chicken came in frozen, and you loaded the frozen bags in metal pans and put in the fridge to thaw. As it thawed, chicken blood/juices/whatever would spill out and collect at the bottom of the fridge. Has to clean up like an inch of sticky gunk at the bottom. Sometimes it would then dry up hard. We'd clean it every day, but damn, chiseling dried chicken blood is really not fun. This was like 20 years ago. I hope it's different now.
When I was 17 I worked at a certain taco fast food restaurant for a whole 3 weeks. I cleaned things and often would stir the sloppy moist taco beef in the giant kettle. It was often close to overflowing and many times some would fall on the (filthy) floor. I was told directly to pick it up and out it back in, as the heat would burn off any bacteria it may have picked up on the floor.
If the cooks replace all the oil in the fryers with fresh oil the food tastes like shit for a day or two.
The trick is to replace about 75% of the oil with fresh oil. You have to leave 25% of the old stuff in so that the "flavor" that people expect is there.
Also, only the oldest guys are usually the ones that change the oil because it's heavy, hot/dangerous, and back breaking work.
Therefore if that guy isn't on schedule for a while the oil isn't getting changed.
So even though it's supposed to get changed weekly it can go a month without being changed easy.
I agree new oil always tastes like s**t. I've worked at a few places with fries and specifically with Arby's it was the worst when we changed the oil. New oil makes French fries taste terrible! Same with Chinese food. Hate going in late and they have cleaned all the pans. The fried rice always taste flavorless and just not as good.
Worked through lots of fast food jobs over my years before I had enough lets see what i can add.
McDonald's Coke is actually stored in its own co2 mixed tank unlike the rest of the fountain drinks which come as 5 gallon syrup boxes. In 2014 or so they changed the Sweet Tea from 1 bag of sugar on a 5 gallon bucket to the soda syrup style.
Always order off the grill or out of the oil if you visit after like midnight (if stores even stay open late night anymore for you) as the grill person typically will not put down new product all the time due to the amount of tasks they have to complete.
Wingstop garlic Parmesan is garlic sauce, and a bunch of butter with shake Parmesan on top. The bone in chicken is shipped in 40 pound boxes and kept in a standard refrigerator while the boneless is always froze. The floors behind the counter are death traps of grease regardless of how many times they clean it. After fry oil spills on it every week it just doesn't care about degreaser anymore. If you were to walk back there with regular shoes and a bit of water you could skate the length of the kitchen.
Always always make sure that if you are promised a raise or promotion that you check up on it immediately. I was screwed out of a whole dollar for 6 months before covid hit while i worked as an assistant manager at one Mexican place.
Late night delivery drivers only get upset about your last minute orders if you tip like shit. The fact that most of the crew is high school kids that have to leave by 11pm when the place closes at 2am leaves 4 hours of work for typically a manager and up to 3 drivers. 4 hours of stacking dishes with nobody to clean them and the mess of making pizza results in 2 to 3 hours of cleaning for the closing crew. As a late night driver i typically worked from 5pm to 4am 5 days a week, please tip y our drivers well. It gets brutal out there.
The peanut butter topping at DQ just sits in a big metal container and hardly, if ever, gets used. And in my time there it never got switched out.
Sitting there the oil eventually separates and when someone actually wants something with peanut butter it's a b***h to pump out (actually it's impossible I just had to use a spoon) and needs to be stirred to mix it back in with the oil.
Idk if this is at shocking as some other nasty secrets but it grossed me out, and made me sad because I love PB.
Oh and the frothy s**t at Orange Julius is just salt and powdered egg and some mysterious dairy extract. Don't ever fool yourself into thinking anything there could ever be considered healthy.
Secret Menu's don't really exist, maybe sometimes you get lucky and get what you wanted but most of the time the cashier would tell you that we don't have it.
KFC worker here. Our gravy base is made of the stuff we scrape off the inside of the deep fryer. Yum.
not a chef, but if a takeaway in the UK serves multiple things, you can garauntee only one of those things is any good.
and it's never the pizza
I worked at Sonic in high school. DO NOT, EVER, GET THE GRILLED CHICKEN.
Sure it's grilled. From a frozen chicken patty. After it was cooked, it was then thrown into a steam broiler to keep it warm. The rule book said replace them every 2 hours, but my manager would yell at me if I pulled them out earlier than 4 hours.
After 2 hours, the chicken becomes hard and rubbery and tastes like c**p.
Besides that, the worst thing about that place was the floors were greasy as f**k and even proper work shoes didn't help prevent slipping.
When I was a pizza cook my boss at a Pizza Pro franchise told me that "explosive diarrhea" was not a good enough reason not to come in and put my hands in the ingredient bins and then place toppings on pizza dough that I had just kneaded.
I worked at Subway for 2 years. Every meet we have (besides Roast Beef) is turkey based. Even ham. You never get what you think you're getting. Also, if anyone wants to know the inner workings of Subway, feel free to ask!
I don't know if anyone will be able to shed light on the quality of a chain vs the quality of local management. I used to work at chick fil a and most employees were just dumb teenagers so things weren't always done by the book, mostly in regards to hold times or whatever.
Like the hold time is 20 minutes and it might stay out 30 minutes before going in to the bin to be made into chicken salad. But I justified it to myself by thinking if you cooked at home, set out food for dinner, ate with your family, and then refrigerated it, the leftovers you make the next day world have gone through worse conditions and that's without a heat lamp.
Also we had a lot of paper and food waste
If you were a dick in the drive-thru, your food 100% got spat on or "accidentally" dropped on the floor. Managers partook, too.
I didn't, personally, but maybe that's 'cos I was too busy shoveling fries into boxes.
I guess it ain't a secret 'cos everyone suspects, but I thought it was a myth TBH. Was kinda stunned.
....I'm sorry you're either lying or worked somewhere incredibly disgusting. You don't screw with people's food. Worst I've ever seen done on purpose working hospitality across the board is either a weak drink when you're being an a*s, less chips/whatever on your meal or maybe a decaf when you were rude to your barista.
Back then, around decades ago. Rats, roaches , people not washing their hand are a thing, wether it has changed,I do not know.
I can’t believe I worked like a horse for such misery pay.
I used to work at Wendy's, and the chilli is the worst. It's saved for up to two days, made with ground up patties, microwaved for 7 minutes, and sometimes the patties used are the ones left over from the day before. Which then get ground up and microwaved. I want to vomit just thinking about it.
A few posts above it was seen as something good that they don't waste food. And seriously people, if it's properly refrigerated, meat doesn't go bad in one single day (not including fish of course). Stop the food waste!
I worked at McDonald’s for like two months and when someone dropped fries on the floor they didn’t care and put it in the box anyway
Secret recipes aren’t nearly as secret as you think they are. Most of what I’ve seen can be found with a name brand at your local market. Worked at a pizza place in high school and the place received a lot of buzz over something done with the pizza crust that people liked and having really good hot wings and cake. The pizza crust was glazed with store bought garlic butter. The wings that people raves over were “Great a value” wings, and the cake was Pillsbury cake mix.
We serve "hot fresh baked pretzels" for $8.95.
We get em by the case frozen. Roughly $75 per box. 100 per box. We get 33 orders per box and one to eat while figuring out math.
33 orders X $8.95 = 295.35.
So profit is 220.35 (minus the cost).
So with that 220.35 we pay the electric, gas, rent, taxes, staff, equipment, etc. And thats assuming we sell all 33 orders of pretzels. Stan my line cook eats an order. Boom, down to 32. Jose burned an order. Down to 31. Barb sneaks one home in her purse. 30 orders. 3 pretzels are broken in the box. Down to 29. So our 220.35 just went down to 184.55 pretty quickly...and very easily.
Arbys roast beef is actually made out of a gelatinous paste, collected and excreted by an exotic sea mollusk that is farmed en masse upon the shelf of the mariana trench.
It's best not to eat too much of it.
Incorrect. Why? They'd have to put a seafood warming on it for allergies and they can't call it beef if it contains none at all
I worked at Taco Bell. The cinnamon twists are fried pasta, when we say we are out of something we really are, and finally we don’t give two shits about how your good is made if you claim it’s wrong we’ll give you the exact same thing you gave us to fix it just in a new bag because you were probably an asshole
Here's one: Wood chips and saw dust make great disinfectants. In the old days, they used to keep butcher's floors covered in them. Eventually, they'd get full of meat juice (which is not actually blood), and you'd have to replace the chips, but you'd be surprised how long businesses went between such cycling. Supposedly this was done away with for food safety, but it was actually safer than what replaced it. There were *other* reasons they did away with this.
No, they're not. My husband repairs commercial/restaurant equipment. These are mild examples by comparison.
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What's the lesson here? Go eat at the local mom and pop restaurant. Nothing is mass quantity and the food is almost always so much better because it is homemade.
No, because that one person said they were the dirtiest. But then all those other people said fast food was gross too, so I guess eat at fine dining places only?
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My husband is a refrigeration engineer (kitchen mechanic). I have a list of places we're not "allowed" to go to. He will verify the ice machine stories.
What did I get from reading this thread? Never have cold drinks with ice. Lucky me. Grew up in England where warm beer is drunk and ice just dilutes the good stuff. Thinking back to ice freezers in cheap hotel corridors when our kids were little. Omg.
What's up with the downvote trolls? Save the downvotes for comments that are actually hurtful, not just inane or something you don't agree with.
After reading this post, I am so effing glad I rarely eat out. I can't remember the last time I was in any kind of restaurant. Most times I just don't feel well after eating out. I don't enjoy "dining experiences", the prices are obscene, and I often want to kick other diners in the nuts after listening to their overly loud conversations. And anything a restaurant serves, I can do MUCH better at home.
These were not the "secrets" I was expecting, but good to learn anyways.
That's why no one felt sorry when these cr.ppy "businesses" broke during covid pandemic.
« Restaurant secrets » but there is not a single restaurant on this list. Fast food chains are NOT restaurants.
Definition of restaurant : a business establishment where meals or refreshments may be purchased Source: Marian Webster
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Here's one: Wood chips and saw dust make great disinfectants. In the old days, they used to keep butcher's floors covered in them. Eventually, they'd get full of meat juice (which is not actually blood), and you'd have to replace the chips, but you'd be surprised how long businesses went between such cycling. Supposedly this was done away with for food safety, but it was actually safer than what replaced it. There were *other* reasons they did away with this.
No, they're not. My husband repairs commercial/restaurant equipment. These are mild examples by comparison.
Load More Replies... What's the lesson here? Go eat at the local mom and pop restaurant. Nothing is mass quantity and the food is almost always so much better because it is homemade.
No, because that one person said they were the dirtiest. But then all those other people said fast food was gross too, so I guess eat at fine dining places only?
Load More Replies... My husband is a refrigeration engineer (kitchen mechanic). I have a list of places we're not "allowed" to go to. He will verify the ice machine stories.
What did I get from reading this thread? Never have cold drinks with ice. Lucky me. Grew up in England where warm beer is drunk and ice just dilutes the good stuff. Thinking back to ice freezers in cheap hotel corridors when our kids were little. Omg.
What's up with the downvote trolls? Save the downvotes for comments that are actually hurtful, not just inane or something you don't agree with.
After reading this post, I am so effing glad I rarely eat out. I can't remember the last time I was in any kind of restaurant. Most times I just don't feel well after eating out. I don't enjoy "dining experiences", the prices are obscene, and I often want to kick other diners in the nuts after listening to their overly loud conversations. And anything a restaurant serves, I can do MUCH better at home.
These were not the "secrets" I was expecting, but good to learn anyways.
That's why no one felt sorry when these cr.ppy "businesses" broke during covid pandemic.
« Restaurant secrets » but there is not a single restaurant on this list. Fast food chains are NOT restaurants.
Definition of restaurant : a business establishment where meals or refreshments may be purchased Source: Marian Webster
Load More Replies...
