The Case of The Condiment & The Hole In The Toast

Lets set the seen for you…..

“It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, the sky is blue without a hint of a single cloud in the sky. For the first time you’ve gotten up & you are not feeling tired in the least. Because it’s such a nice day out you decide to treat your self & your partner to breakfast at your local café.

Sitting at said café you cant resist the smells in the air of freshly ground coffee, eggs being fried, a mushroom & onion mix being sautéed & fresh banana bread being toasted. For yourself you order fried eggs with smoked salmon & Hollandaise Sauce, sautéed mushrooms, grilled tomatoes & multi-grain toast. Your partner can’t resist the freshly made & toasted banana bread. Both of you order your skim lattes.

The two lattes are served first, followed by both of your meals being brought out at the same time. Fresh Hollandaise sauce is placed in a pourer on the site of your dish, along with individual serves of butter/margarine either packaged in single serves, or placed in an individual serving bowl or demy-cup. You both go to put butter on your respective meals only to find that it is rock solid & stone cold! You try your hardest to spread the condiment over your meal before the warmth disappears & all hope of melting vanishes….

What sits in front of you now is piece of banana bread, or a piece of toast, with a large hole right through the middle of it as a result of your efforts in trying to scrape your rock hard condiment over your once warm & beautifully presented meal! Bet you’re feeling pretty good now!”

This is the case over and over again in a lot of cafes that are not adequately prepared for their customers. What is supposed to be an enjoyable, lighted hearted, easy experience often ends in frustration.

Yes it can be argued that the condiment is served on the side of the dish so that the customer can use as much or as little of it as they wish. This is not something that I would argue against. But if this is your argument as a café owner, then why not make it easier for your customer? There are a couple of very easy things that you as a café owner could implement in your establishment:

1. Turn up your fridges! Milk products and refrigerated perishables should be stored below 4 degrees, so why set the fridges to a colder temperature?
2. While keeping perishables such as margarine or butter in the fridge, try and place them in such a way that they are in fact away from the fans within the fridge. Try keeping products such as these in the front of the fridge, not the back. The further into the fridge the products go, the harder it will be when it comes out of the fridge again

Nothing beats having a fresh piece of banana bread or fresh toast and spreading your condiment over it and having it actually melt into what you are eating. The only food that should come with a hole in it is a doughnut!