Catering question

Nine bucks a head....I couldn't make any money like that.
May have been a friend of a friend type of deal......

Bill, what was the quality of the que?

John

bill,
i think kinsman hit it on the head. sure sounds like a friend of a friend deal.
only other way money could be made is if the wedding party provided the food and the cook provided equipment and labor only
jack

$9.00? Not for that spread. Weekends are to valueable to me.

Maybe the pulled pork OR the chicken and 250-300 minimum guests for $9. Plus 15% tip, tax and beverage.

"They must know what their job is worth" is a saying I heard some time ago, and is worth remembering.

Good topic, Bill!

Roger

They were just walk in's to the rib shack. Apparently this is a regular price there. John, this is the rib shack on FT harrison and East bay drive.
Anyway, they supplied the food, plates, plastic. The wedding party supplied the drinks.
The chicken was ok, pulled pork was dry, ribs were good as were the beans and salads.
I know they took a bunch of food away with them.

That is who I thought it might be. I know they have taken over the small place on West Bay in Downtown Largo and I thought they taking over the old Fleming's location on Gulf to Bay also but all the signs have been taken down of such. Maybe they got too agressive in their expansion.

I stopped in at the FT Harrison location one day and got some ribs to take and have lunch with one of my clients. All I can say is that my belches tasted like wood all afternoon. Not a fun thing.

I also see them in Sam's all the time picking up their supplies there.

John

Maybe they are just trying to get their name out. It sounds like they are trying things out, too.
John, I hope your belches got better. Better a wood belch than a propane one!
Best of luck to them!
It sounds like they are just starting out and wanting not to charge too much to me.
Peggy

I had heard they were opening the one on gulf to bay too.
They have been in business for a couple years so I would think they have a set price.
I do know that they get around $20 for a slab of ribs to walk ups. Burp

So, do you think it was too much smoke? Or do you think you guys got propane burps? Both of you are burping, now!
Peggy

It's smoke, And I like smoke! They have a massive woodburning trailer.

There has been 3 differnt Q joints in the East bay building. Each time one goes under I mull over opening up there. It's about 1.5 miles from my house and less to my office. The first one was too early in the bay drive expansion, second one was working on a shoe string but had good Q. This guy I dunno....... Maybe the 4th times a charm....

bill,
before you take the plunge pick up a copy of "kitchen confidential" by anthony bourdain at your local barnes and nobles. it is without a doubt the best book on the real story of resturants. see the part about the smell of death before you jump on this one
jack
ps. everything he describes in this book i have seen wiff me own lil eyes

Jack,

Seems like we have the same reading list too. Bourdain's book made me laugh out loud in some places. I think we worked with some of the same people.

You should check out "Staff Meals from Chanterelle" by David Waltuck. It's a cook book, but it brought back a lot of memories too, plus the recipes were great.

I've got a whole new spin on this, I figure I will stay in the back smoking and counting my great $$$ while my scantily clad wait staff and line cooks take care of the business

todd,
peggy says that i remind her of the quiet chef since i love to do the food cost math,ect. but the funny part is every exec i worked for says i fit the description of a good sous chef "the heart of a pirate and the thinking of a master thief".
thanks for the heads up on the chanterelle book, sounds like it would go nice with my old lutece book.

bill,
heck man all the fun is in the back!!!!!
especially if you are the sous chef!!!!
all the line stopping power of the exec but no hassels with the front of the house
jack

Thanks Guys, I'm off to amazon books...............

Kitchen Confidential is a great read and should be required by anyone that feels the urge to get into this crazy business. I too have worked with some of those cassic kitchen types and had some others as instructors in school. The restaurant world is certainly full of gypsies who will jump ship in the middle of service for an extra quarter an hour... keeps it exciting.

And all this time I thought you were in Melbourne!
Many people ask me when I'm going to open a Q joint. I tell them if I could just Cook Q and not have the other head aches maybe, but having a pizza/sports bar 10-12 years ago dumped on me I fast learned the above statement to be a fact.
Ah the solitude of opening up in the morning to find your walk in was off all night..........

"Chef Tom" may be in Phoenix but "Tom" is in Melbourne.

John

Ah the solitude of opening up in the morning to find your walk in was off all night..........
-------------------------------------------------

Or to find that the plastic lid to the mayonaise that you couldn't find yesterday fell off the back of, and into the fan on your 2 week old sandwich unit, thereby frying the compressor. The $675 compressor. Oh what joy!

to this day the funniest thing i can remember is a dishwasher watching me struggle cleaning a 3 foot by 6 foot tilt skillet. man i had all the chemicals and a grill brick too boot!!!! dan says here fancy cooking school grad watch this. whereupon he took a bottle of sysco's worst lemon juice and a green scrubbie and cleaned it in about 4 mins tops!!!
ever since that occured 15 years ago i remember two things
1- a good dishwasher is sent from heaven
2- never get too far above your raisin'

jack
ps. when i made exec chef guess who my sous was??!!

yep Jack, In my first block of school our chef instructor made us burn some stuff to to bottom of a sauce pan, he bet us that if anyone in the class could clean it before he cleaned his we could leave early (by about 5 hours) it was a Friday night and we all wanted out. so 17 students grabbed their pan and headed for any sink they could find and any scrubby they could grab. five minutes later we were all scrubbing and he walked over the the chateu le box wine and dumped about 5 oz into a screaming hot pan and swirled it around rinsed it in the sink and we stayed till 10pm. The lesson on deglaze was learned.

quote:

Originally posted by prisonchef313:
[qb] bill,
before you take the plunge pick up a copy of "kitchen confidential" by anthony bourdain at your local barnes and nobles. it is without a doubt the best book on the real story of resturants. see the part about the smell of death before you jump on this one
jack
ps. everything he describes in this book i have seen wiff me own lil eyes [/qb]

I agree.

I borrowed the book from the library when I was looking at starting a restaurant. What an eye opener. It certainly scared me straight.

Hey Bill, great to see you started such a good topic and interesting thread to read!!!!
By the way everyone, I had the pleasure of eating some of Bill's Q when I was in Spring training in Clearwater, it was fantastic. Great meal with some really good people, and lucky for me the chance to make some new friends.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to get to Rib Dog's team dinner on my last Saturday in town. John if you see this, my apologies once again.
I have a question along these lines:
I'm working on a new menu for my bar here in Taiwan. I've been going through all my plate costs, pretty much got everything figured out down to the gram. What is the best way to figure out the other costs such as kitchen labor, gas, electric, etc that go into the overall costs per plate? Or how are they factored into the cost per plate? Thanks to anyone for helping out here. Hope everyone's well, regards, Steve in Taiwan.

Usually labor cost is figured as a percentage of daily sales, which you could then break down into a plate cost if you wanted too, but I suspect it really won't produce a useful number if you think about it. Better to have a good idea what your average sales are by day of week, and then have a target labor cost for that day based on prior data.

As for electric, gas, etc, we always considered those essentially a fixed cost because they varied so little with volume, so again, it was really a question of dividing cost into business days for us. There may be a better way, but this worked.

Todd, thanks for the info. I'm going to stick this question in a new post to make sure everyone can see it.

Howdy Steve! We all had a great time! Sorry I don't know anything about your question, But I did drive by a holiday inn express yesterday.