Do Restaurants Make Food From Scratch?

When restaurants make their food, it is usually done by the decisions made higher up in the company from individuals that rarely appear in the restaurant. They usually decide how all the food will be made and where it comes from. This means that it varies on whether or not the food will be made from scratch.

This much is true though, that most restaurants do actually make certain foods in their restaurant from scratch. The foods that are made from scratch, no matter what type of restaurant it is, is usually the ones that have a secret recipe in it. Sometimes restaurants will pick one or two food items to do this with and make it from scratch.

These food items end up being specials or customer favorites. In some cases, the thing that is made from scratch will be a sauce that goes on all the other foods for example. Sauces or dressings are one of the most common things that restaurants will make from scratch if they do make anything on their menu from scratch.

For instance, a restaurant may have 15 different sauces and dressings to choose from, but choose to only make 2 to 4 of them from scratch. This has been seen done more often then a restaurant deciding to make every sauce and dressing from scratch.

These 2 to 4 items will be customer favorites, while the rest are added for variety for example. The rest will come from other distributors. Most of the time restaurants can get away with doing this without the customer ever asking. Usually if they ever do ask anything, it is to know whether or not the food contains certain ingredients for a diet or an allergy.

The restaurants that make more of the food items from scratch, are usually also more expensive too. If all the prices on their food isn’t raised because of this, then they will raise the prices on those specific foods to pay for the resources and the labor. The restaurants that do this are often not fast food restaurants. However, fast food restaurants will often decide to make a few of their food items from scratch too.

The amount of labor required for any restaurant to make all their foods entirely from scratch is too great of an effort in time spent for most restaurants to consider doing that. The restaurant would make no profits, as too much time would be spent on making every single thing from scratch. This would result in the restaurant going out of business if people weren’t willing to pay for the efforts.

When these foods are made from scratch, money has to also be spent on the ingredients needed to make them. Restaurants order these ingredients in bulk from other food distributors. This also means that they would need a lot more shelf space than what is available in the building.

More equipment would be needed as well to make some of the foods they have on the menu in order to make it completely from scratch.

This isn’t counting the beverages that are served either. Some restaurants will actually make specific beverages from scratch too. This might be lemonade or orange juice for example, instead of the artificial lemonade/orange drinks from the fountain drink dispensers.

Making lemonade from scratch can take hours to prep for customers ordering it frequently all throughout the day. It is easier and more efficient for restaurants to make the better judgment to buy from multiple companies that specialize solely in making one type of food or beverage.

A restaurant specializes more in buying these products from other distributors to make great meals. They specialize in preparing, seasoning, cooking, and the presentation of these goods to feed their guests.

This is why there are large companies that focus solely on making only one or a few specific food types from scratch. It takes a lot of manual labor and physical work for these foods to be made without the use of heavy equipment and machinery. To fulfill the demands of their guests, restaurants already have to use commercial grills and other commercial equipment just to cook the food in time to feed their guests.

The restaurants that are making most of their food from scratch will have to have a really large facility just to hold all the equipment needed to do so, plus more space to house their large staff. There are restaurant facilities like this, but as stated, they are much bigger, well paid, with ten times or more cooking/prepping staff. These establishments are usually built alongside other large businesses to feed their mega population of employees throughout the day.

Restaurants like this are constantly getting paid from the hard working employees that have almost a necessity to do so, because of the nature of the work. The location of the work may be out in a more rural secluded area away from urban areas.

Almost all of the equipment at a restaurant will break down and need repairs eventually. In order for the restaurant to maintain its equipment, they have to pay for it to be fixed. These repairs could be very taxing on the restaurant, especially if the repairs are more frequent. They have to make important decisions on which equipment is important for them to invest in without driving the establishment into debt. Restaurants have to compete with other restaurants in the area.

Food plants and distributors can sustain themselves easier when making food from scratch. They are paid constantly from restaurants and other businesses just to continue to mass produce common foods, like bread for instance. Bread can come in many forms (breadsticks, buns, loaves), to suit a restaurants needs, that would be more valuable for them to pay for other individuals to do it, rather than do it themselves.

If a restaurant is making these food items from scratch, usually they will have a personal bakery located elsewhere where everything is picked up from and distributed to their establishments. However, this isn’t what some individuals would classify as ‘made from scratch’, since it wasn’t made in-house.

If you are looking for establishments that make most or all of their food from scratch, it is easier to find by possibly going to a local bakery, a pizza place, or the more expensive dine-in restaurants to name a few. Fast food restaurants and casual dine-ins will do some of their foods from scratch, but rarely all of them. The restaurants that have a limited menu that only focuses on one type of food, will be more prone to creating their food from scratch.