Food musings

[chefross]

So, as you may know I'm a produce manager in a small rural grocery. With 46 years of cooking and being a Chef I can't help myself sometimes.

For instance, the other day I got in 25 Lbs. of Brussel Sprouts. I could immediately tell they were harvested from the bottom of the plant making them "mini" cabbages. They had a lot of leaves and stem still on them.
I decided to make a chart of how much waste I got when I cleaned them.
I tray my veggies, then wrap them in plastic, and weigh them. I cost most items 40% markup to cover the overhead, the tray, plastic, labor etc...
I went through the 25# in 3 days. I got 2 .5# of waste at $1.72 cost per pound. Retail is $2.89 a pound. Anyway, doing all the math, at the end, we made approximately $4.40 profit on that 25# box of product.
Markup in grocery stores is as small as a restaurants margins. Food for thought.

 

[Seoul Food]

Markup in grocery stores is as small as a restaurants margins. Food for thought.

Tell that to places like Wegmans and Whole foods lol. But yes, I would agree in a place like where you work the profit margin may not be as big, especially with fresh produce. It's hard enough to get people to buy fresh ingredients instead of frozen and charging an arm and a leg for it won't help. Some profit is better than none if you have to throw it away in the end.