Is Sysco Ruining Restaurants?

I have nothing against free enterprise, but is Sysco ruining the restaurant experience? The food at most restaurants tastes the same because they all buy from Sysco. It seems to be a force against creativity: just unbox and cook.

quote:

Originally posted by Yada123

I have nothing against free enterprise, but is Sysco ruining the restaurant experience? The food at most restaurants tastes the same because they all buy from Sysco. It seems to be a force against creativity: just unbox and cook.

I think it's a stretch to say that they all buy from Sysco. There's a number of food service companies.

I believe the people that buy the sysco,gfs,cheney bros brand food may seem to be the same bland menu. But, if you took a several chefs and gave them the same generic brand food they would all come up with unique menus.
I can only get vienna beef hot dogs from sysco way down here in Key West, FL.
So I have to have them or I will fail with my food concepts.

If youre just unboxing and serving it you should not be in the business. All my food gets my own touch everytime. Sysco is a good company that will be your best freind if you let them.

quote:

Originally posted by spud
If youre just unboxing and serving it you should not be in the business.

Now that is correct.

quote:

Originally posted by spud

Sysco is a good company that will be your best friend if you let them.

LMAO that's so funny.
Jack

SYSCO will warehouse specialty items for you, just like they do for your proprietaries. They build this service into the price.

Otherwise, your choice is to have a dozen or so specialty vendors or, better yet, get up before dawn and go to the wholesale food markets and pick and choose the best of what's available that day (with a wad of $100's in your pocket while wandering through high-crime hoods).

So, SYSCO performs a service and also provides you a one person rep/obudsman for quality issues. All they ask is to be paid in a timely fashion - not an easy task for the restauranteur!

My ex wife works part-time for Asian Foods. They're owned by Sysco. They supply many of the Asian restaurants around Chicago. Sysco is big!

quote:

Originally posted by Yada123

I have nothing against free enterprise, but is Sysco ruining the restaurant experience? The food at most restaurants tastes the same because they all buy from Sysco.

I don't know where you eat, but I don't find the food tasting the same at the various restaurants where I eat. That doesn't include fast food chains.

Sysco offers quite a variety of items and quality to choose from. It is up to the restaurant to decide the correct balance that goes with the recipes they have and the price segment they what to be in.

Does Sysco do the 21 shrimp in a basket item?
Never 20 nor 22, it's 21 and usually cooked to a fair-thee-well, never a good choice.
When I see that on a menu, I get real nervous as it usually means bad pre-breaded food, straight out of a box. Drive-in places like an A & W, bad diners, or the bar where the owner serves food only because his competition does, seems to be the type that offers that horrible product. If I can't make a getaway or my choices are limited, I'll go with a BLT or Club and pray it doesn't come with minced onion rings, another vile product.

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread but when I was thinking about Sysco, those 21 stupid shrimp popped into mind.

Sysco carries many excellent products; I know their strip steaks can be outstanding but they have the low end market covered too. Caveat Emptor

quote:

Originally posted by Yada123
I have nothing against free enterprise, but is Sysco ruining the restaurant experience? The food at most restaurants tastes the same because they all buy from Sysco. It seems to be a force against creativity: just unbox and cook.

I think a better way to make the same point is: There are far to many restaurants that buy from Sysco or some other distributor and merely deep fry or grill the box stock items with no creativity, and never really produce a product worth eating.

The following was mentioned, (get up before dawn and go to the wholesale food markets and pick and choose the best of what's available that day (with a wad of $100's in your pocket.)

I LOL that’s what I do almost every day. Run here and there and pick up everything I need paying cash and then I beat feet back to the stand and go to work.

But on the Sysco being your friend there is no way. They have a terrible habit here in my area of carrying a product that I like and then all at once “Oh we have a house brand that is exactly the same, at slightly better price). But then you find out it doesn’t make the mark on either account.

You have to watch them all because there prices tend to creep up until you notice it and then they go back to the agreed to price but in 3 or 4 months it all happens again.

So never think any company that supplies you with a product is your friend, the salesman may be come a friend but if the company can save a penny and you lose a little quality they don’t care. Well they only care if you stop dealing with them and then only a tiny bit. They do the same thing as Sam’s Clubs, someone behind the scenes makes a decision that effects the guy working his ass off trying to prepare a really good product for his customers. And you have to raise hell with them and go find a new supplier for the same product.

Jack

I have nothing bad to say about Sysco. I've been in the restaurant/chef/purchasing biz for nearly 30 years. You get what you order. And if you don't like it, you send it back. No questions asked. I would NEVER, EVER buy my fish, seafood, meat, vegetables from Sysco for obvious reasons. But "10 cans of diced tomatoes, I have no problem with them.

The bottom line is this: as with all chefs, have more than one purveyor for any given good, get prices at the beginning of the week and then order accordingly.

i have very little GOOD to say about sysco. they have grat "imperial label" products(their brand name). but, as a business partner, i would rather have a snake!
sysco did me wrong, and cost me thousands. i dont think i will ever forget that lesson.
refresher; we were using sysco, for alot of our goods. but not all.
we were also obtaining specialty items, which we advertised on t.v. to thirteen months. thats alot of cabbage. well, sysco rep came in my place, saw other food venders boxes, and freaked out. hey, its still a free country, right? not with sysco. t he next week, as i was attempting at placing my order, the salesman said sysco 'dropped' me a a customer. made up some lame excuse like they were only going to deal with 'million dollar' companies as part of their 're-structering' process. no notice, no nothing, no apology, no nothing. thousands of dollars wasted in advertising, plus i am sitting with no food products, and no vender!
whew! i hate going down this road. why dont we just erase any future thread, started by some blind guy who likes getting ripped off by a "snake-in-the-bush' company. no offense to anyone who uses them, but hey, i went through hell with them, and my lesson was learned. we are here to learn from others right??? well LEARN ABOUT SYSCO FROM ME!
PEACE OUT
MIKE

Back in 2003, the New York Times ran an article about the issues that Mike discussed. SYSCO's CEO admitted to the Times that his company monitored how much profit they were making off individual accounts. So it seems to me that SYSCO works like the big supermarkets. They put out a flyer with a bunch of cherry picking specials, but make their profit off the other things customers buy during a visit. But if you pay cash and give phony names when you sign up for those "club cards" and shop all the supermarkets in your area, they can't figure out how much you are cherry picking. Food wholesalers can. So, the trick is trying to figure out how hard you can strongarm SYSCO before they drop you. The CEO further stated that prices are negotiated by sales reps, so low balling is a possibility here.

I have also seen articles around here revealing individual restaurants who buy ready-to-serve food from SYSCO and just open, heat, or defrost it. This is both good and bad. It is probably better and safer to eat premade SYSCO food at a bowling alley snack bar than risk what the kid working there will make for you from scratch. But as others here have posted, restaurants that do this don't deserve your patronage. Germans have an expression for this; I don't know the spelling, but phonetically it sounds like "inda" or "enda" and is a derogatory term. People know something is wrong, but quite can't put their finger on it. Most of the food (except the fresh chickens) at Boston Market falls into this category.

The chain delivery pizza industry, which now uses cheap ingredients, does give some credence to original poster Yada123's statement. Economic conditions in certain locations may force all the restaurants to go the least cost route.

I don't think the restaurant industry could survive without firms like Sysco and Cheney Bros. Unless you are fortunate to have your restaurant near a Farmer's Market, you need these types of firms to bring many of your eseential ingredients to you.

Most of these firms do an incredibly good job. If you have a good salesperson, who calls on you each week or every other week, did you know one of their "unwritten" responsiblities, if they want to keep you as a customer, is to assist in times of need. If you are missing a key item over the weekend at your restaurant, a good sales person will come to your aid and bring it out, if at all possible. I'd go so far as to say they must be considered part of any restaurant's operational team.

If things taste the same, blame the chef...not Sysco. Incidently, some of their generic items and even some of their convenience items are very, very good.

Unfortunately, the poster of this thread is in a rut. Food tasting the same in ALL restaurants? Maybe at McD's but NOT at the restaurants that I eat in! Sysco PROVIDES a restaurant with all kinds of food. It's up to the chef to do the purchasing and then do the cuisine. I used to buy PHEASANT from Sysco. Yes! I cut them in half and served them on a chiffonade of Savoy cabbage with an apple cider sauce. Sysco sure didn't ruin my restaurant.