How Can You Tell if the Food Served in a Restaurant is Fresh?

By  //  February 26, 2021

The issue of food freshness is very important both when shopping in stores and when visiting a restaurant. When deciding to have a family dinner at a local restaurant, no one would like to receive a meal that does not look appetizing and, on top of that, is unpalatable. How to avoid this?

The importance of fresh food in a restaurant

When going to a restaurant, each customer has different expectations. For some the most important thing is a low price of the meal, for others a large portion proportional to the cost, while for still others the quality of the food or the ingredients of the dish is extremely important.

Restaurant owners should take each of these preferences into account. A customer who pays attention to the quality of the food served will immediately notice that the dish is not fresh.

The consequences of a restaurant guest discovering a bad food can be far-reaching. In the best-case scenario, the customer is dissatisfied and asked to replace the dish with one that does not contain questionable ingredients.

A slightly worse scenario is that the customer refuses to accept the dish, leaves the establishment and then informs their friends and family that they cannot expect healthy and tasty food there. Ultimately, a poor quality dish may lead to health problems for the customer, and the establishment may even be held criminally liable.

According to Reward Catering, the freshest food that is served actually comes from food trucks.

How to check the freshness and quality of food?

There are at least a few ways to estimate the freshness and quality of food at a restaurant. One of the simplest is to talk to the waiter about the meal. If the guest has doubts about a particular dish, then the person serving them is required to inform them about the source of the ingredients or how long they have been stored.

If the waiter does not have such information and would like to give an answer quickly, they can use the solutions offered at https://orderingstack.com/.

One of them is a special software that displays on the screen of the device used by the staff of the restaurant the exact information on when the given ingredients were delivered to the restaurant. More demanding customers can ask to speak with the cook or chef responsible for preparing the dish.

Another way to judge the freshness of a dish is to simply look at and smell the meal. A dish that is bad or made with poor quality ingredients will not look or smell appealing.

If a customer has doubts about a meal, he or she can refuse it or ask for a new meal to be prepared using better ingredients. It also happens that dissatisfied guests ask people at other tables if they have any complaints about the contents of their plates.

Any such situations should be a signal to restaurant owners that their attempts to make the food as good as possible require more effort.

How can restaurateurs ensure high-quality food?

Taking care of the best possible ingredients is undoubtedly one of those factors that should be crucial for every restaurant. Tasty, fresh and healthy food for many catering facilities is enough advertisement for customers to visit them and recommend them to their relatives or friends.

It is therefore extremely important that the employees responsible for supply, as well as the chefs themselves, pay great attention to the freshness of the products. The key here is to keep a constant check on stocks and to report immediately when the expiry date of a particular product is approaching.

Restaurant owners, wishing to serve large groups of customers and keep them satisfied, should ensure that the ingredients used in their establishments are stored in appropriate conditions.

Some of them must be stored at a lower temperature, others must not be put in plastic containers, and still others should be kept only for a short time. In many establishments, separate employees are assigned to such inspection, whose duty is solely to evaluate the quality of food.