Happens here too … Taoranju, a national chain of Sichuan-style restaurants, origins in Chengdu. I went there one evening, invited to meet the boyfriend of one of my best students (he had flown up from S’pore). For various reasons it was just before 8 p.m. which I admit is a bit late to start dinner for the Chinese – 6:30 is more like the mark – but hey, this was a big restaurant with seating for maybe 200 and was not very full … anyway, it turned out that the kitchen could not produce one single one of the pretty standard dishes we ordered! We had to have alternatives much less to our taste.
We had the misfortune to travel in England in the fall of 2000, during a “national petrol strike.” They had loads of petrol, but the truck/lorry drivers wouldn’t haul it. In two days, the national cupboards were bare.
I was told there’s a practice known as Just In Time Delivery, meaning most stores keep on hand only two days worth of bread, milk, meat, produce or other perishables.
It’s probably a sensible custom, until a small group wants to give the country an economic heart attack. Don’t know if that’s the problem with Pizza Hut, though. Glitches happen, everywhere.
It happens very often at a small pizzeria where I like to go, on the nearby mountains. They have a very limited number of clients during winter, so if some more people arrives for a week-end, they run out of dough quickly. Making more than expected would mean wasting the fresh dough.
The last time it happened, I had to be happy eating home-made pappardelle with wild boar sauce. Sometimes, you must do a sacrifice.
At least, you know they use dough and not something else!
I thought the chain pizza places used frozen dough so running out should not be a problem just defrosting.
If it was a bespoke pizza place whats so hard about putting flour, oil and water into the industrial blender ?
Its not like you need yeast to rise then knock back the risen dough to rise again.
I was in a pub with no beer last week. I blame it on the Con-Dem government.
I can see how that might seem the case, given the latest trend in the U.S. (and who knows elsewhere) of using a sheet of waxpaper beneath the toppings and calling it dough.
I can honestly say I’ve never experienced this problem. And I lived for 12 years in the five-college town of Burlington, Vermont, where there seemed to be a pizza joint on every block! I did one time find a Band Aid in my pizza – needless to say I didn’t order from that place again. Maybe that’s why they didn’t run out of dough.
Thats going back a bit, init? :open_mouth: Obviously, that was before the rolling out of the, "Lets keep sex sex safe!! Wear a condom!!" bandwagon.
vic
In the food preparation industry, cut injuries are quite prevalent, as you can imagine. This requires the injured to wear non flesh coloured (dark blue) BandAids, so loss of same, will (should), be noticed by wearer, and a search for offending protective barrier can be started, and hopefully, it will be found. All of which has absolutely nothing to do with fact that, with the initial exponential proliferation of condom usage, you`re lucky a BandAid, is all you found in your pizza.
Just a thought that came to mind.
Vic
Had you lived anyplace other than a college town I bet you would have seen this. It seem to me that most college areas (5 mile radius from campus) have more successful food establishments per-capita than NYC. Since most of them are of the “take out” variety, those living within 10-15 miles of campus benefit. which is probably why my hole on the wall take out chinese place (excellent food if you can get over the old building crumbling down around them) keeps running out of tofu, fresh spring rolls, and black bean sauce. They are the only place with in a 20 mile radius and only get a delivery of non-vegi once a week. Although Jerry told me yesterday that if I will promise to come at least twice a week he will order extra (his wife slapped him and pointed out that we are there three times a week now, I like her).
But anyway. I think this is more an issue with the JIT methodology that has started to become the primary principal in business/delivery models. Too bad it makes service blow.
Depends on how you define “service that blows.” I’d rather my favorite sushi bar ran out than served other-than-fresh fish. Not all foods are as time-sensitive as that, but it’s still a tough balance. Order too little, and you run out. Order too much, and you throw money away when it doesn’t get eaten fast enough. Given the state of the economy, I wouldn’t want to carry excess inventory either.
Unless my memory`s on the blink, JIT was a well established stock level maintenance/management concept, in use where I worked at Massey Furguson, over twenty years ago.
JIT is a simple concept, but the problems arise with bad/sloppy implementation, enduserwise
Vic
