WHO IS THE VILLAIN IN FOOD SERVICE

in this four part series we look at who everyone thinks the villain in the food service industry. In part one we look at food service manufacturers and what role they play in the issues facing operators in the industry.

Local Eats are the Best Eats!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning. It's the 11th of May 2026. And straight from the Highly Caffeinated studio, this is the Mad Food Critic, and this is episode number one. So I'll be your host. My name is Will Bryce. I've got over 40 years in the restaurant industry. I have been in every single job category that you could possibly imagine. I've been everything from the growing side, the broker, sales rep, restaurant owner, restaurant designer. I've done there's just not anything in food service that I haven't done. It does not make me an expert by any means. I promise you, you could be in that business for a hundred years and still not be an expert. But what I am is a voice of reason and a voice of truth. Now, the one thing that you'll learn about this podcast is that I'm not out to make any friends. I'm not out to make any enemies. I'm not out to point out who's the villain or point fingers in any way. You'll never hear me use any names of any company or any person. This is strictly about revealing some of the truth into the food service industry and some of the problems that there are. And maybe some way between you, me, this podcast, that we can figure out how to fix some of these issues. Because if we don't talk about it, if we just keep sweeping it into the cooler and shutting the door, it's eventually gonna grow mold and it's not gonna do anybody any good. So the first truth that I would like to talk about on this first podcast is who is the villain in food service industry? And I'm gonna be real honest with you. There's not one person, there's not one thing in particular that is broken. It's a lot of different things, it's a lot of different components because there's a lot of moving pieces when it comes to food service industry. But when we're talking about the restaurant, and we're talking about the changes that we see in the restaurant industry, and whether we see the changes from being a patron into a restaurant, we see that service has declined, we see that cleanliness has declined, we see that portions have gotten smaller, we've seen that prices are going up. If we're talking about it from a restaurant owner's perspective, we're we would point fingers at food service companies and salespeople that they're the they're the blame because everybody can point fingers at somebody. So in this first episode, let's identify where the system has some issues and some breakdowns, and then in upcoming episodes, we'll break down each one of those issues into a more digestible. What could we do? Basically, let's look at the root cause of what's going on. I'm gonna start at the top, and that's strictly because we're gonna start at the top and work our way down, and by the top, I mean food manufacturers. So food manufacturers are going off of their intel that they get from the food service distributors, which get their intel from restaurants, and restaurants get theirs from the patrons. So you see, we're starting at the top. So food service manufacturers hear through the grapevine, being aka the food service distributor, that a lot of restaurant owners are struggling with labor and food costs. Two biggest things, right? So for a food manufacturer, they put it on a whiteboard and go into a room and they start talking about how can we help? How can we help this situation? Restaurant owners are are struggling to survive because they have issues with having enough labor and consistency and uh food costs. Oh, did you see what happened there? Now they're it's starting to unravel, and I'm not blaming again, I'm not blaming anybody because it's not a one-person problem. But we're gonna look at now they're starting to okay, they're unraveling food costs, and they're unraveling the issue that restaurants have with having enough labor, and then they start talking about consistency, they start building in the value-added product personalities. Here's what I mean. A lot of restaurants used to, and some areas of the country call it chicken fried steak, some areas of the country call it country fried steak, whatever you call it, doesn't matter. They usually breaded their own in the back of the house, and this is what set them apart from the guy down the street. And we're gonna we're gonna use this analogy a lot. There's five restaurants in town B, and it is nothing but those five restaurants in the entire town, and all of them serve this chicken fried steak or country fried steak. So the food manufacturers say, okay, we need to develop a product. Problem number one, we need to develop a product that helps out with the food with the labor. Well, okay, so if we gave them a pre-breaded product, that would help. It would save uh labor, it would save consistency, uh, it could save money because they're not having to use labor to bread it. And their thought process is we're saving labor, so we're saving money. It's a money-saving product. Understand that when you take away the hand breading and the handbreaded signature of that dish, you're taking away a lot that you don't realize. I've had this argument with food service manufacturers for so many years I can't even count. I've had them, I was working as a salesperson for a very large national food service distributor. I was called to go up and help with a demonstration. Three of us salespeople were. They wanted us to bread a chicken fried steak right there in front of the rest of the sales force. And they had the fryers already hot. They wanted to prove that we could not bread these consistently. I had already done this for 12 years. I could do it blindfolded. They handed me a cutlet, they handed the other two contestants a cutlet. I breaded it, the other two contestants had never done it before. I breaded mine, they breaded theirs. It was horrible. I handed them mine and they said, Oh, this looks pretty good. But once we fry it, you'll see that the breading doesn't stick. Guess what? The breading stuck. They had me bread two more just to prove that they were right. Guess what? They were wrong. Do you how many chicken fried steaks I've breaded on a Friday or Saturday night at our restaurant in Texas? I lost count years ago. There's a secret to it, but it gives you, it gives that restaurant that signature breading that the guy down the street, the other four restaurants in that town, don't have. They can't duplicate. But when we buy that pre-breaded cutlet that they have, and most of the time it's not a true cutlet, it is has soy added or it has some other ingredients added. And they say, well, it makes for a better bite. Not if you're looking for a chicken fried steak. Because when I think of steak, I don't think of hamburger. I don't think of biting into deli meat. I think of it having a bite. That's why it's called steak. But you take away that hambreaded signature from all five of those restaurants in that town B, guess what? You're left with the same identical product that the guy down the street have. What sets you apart? That's my question that nobody will ever answer. They just look at me and like a tree full of baby owls and cannot answer that question. What set you apart? You have the same thing. If you use a pre-breaded chicken fried steak, if you use a pre-made hamburger patty, what sets you apart from the guy down the street? What sets you apart from the guy next to you in the in the restaurant across the street? Nothing. Nothing sets you apart. That's why this didn't work. I get their thought process. I get it. That it was a great idea on paper that, hey, we make this product. And if you notice, I keep saying product. When I go out to eat, I don't want a product on my plate. I want creativity and I want quality. That's what I want. And that's what other people want. The other part of this that they don't tell you is you see these restaurants that are buying into these pre-breaded products, these pre-done products. And they say, Well, you're going to save labor. Now it's going to cost you a little more because it's a value-added product. And we've already built the value added. We have a whole list of here of value added. Because it's consistency, it's this, it's that. I've heard the whole gamut my whole life. But what you don't understand is when you walk into a restaurant and the dining room, or you own a restaurant, and you have a dining room that's half empty. What did you save? Those few pennies that you saved on labor, I'm sorry. That doesn't make up for the other half of that dining room being empty. If you got a hundred seats in your dining room, you need a hundred butts in those seats because that's the only way you're going to survive. And you're not going to have a line out your door if you're selling pre-breaded product. That's not what people are looking for. Oh, sure, they'll come eat it. And they may not say a word. Let me tell you the worst thing you can hear from a customer, a patron that comes to your restaurant. How is your meal? It was fine. If someone told me, if I serve someone some food and they told me it was fine, I would take it as an absolute insult. Because fine is the bare minimum. And you cannot have creativity and set the bar in your town on pre-made product. It will not happen. So are is the am I saying that the food service manufacturers are to blame? No. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is is they a cu a problem was communicated to them that the restaurants were having. And this was their answer to it. So I'm saying that the food service manufacturer is not to blame. It was their answer this to blame. For this first one, we're going to talk about the top. And this is the top. This is where the problem was communicated to. And this is your first line of defense to solve that problem. Then we start talking about cost. This is a whole different issue than the labor. So they take that product that they made, that pre-made chicken fried steak, that may have started out being a true cutlet. But now they're getting a different conversation from the food service distributors. And they're saying, well, they're having trouble with cost too. We gotta lower the cost because the one that you came out with is too expensive for my customer's menu. So we need something that is cost effective. So this the food service manufacturers say, Okay, we we hear you. We go back to their room, go back to their whiteboard. All right, how can we take this product and make it make it less costless? How can we how can we do that? How can we make it cheaper? They don't want to use the word cheaper, they want to how can we do it at a better cost for the operator? That is the lingo. So they get off their whiteboard and they start throwing ideas and putting putting them up on the board. And guess what? Now, if we use something that we call TVP, do you know what that is? Textured vegetable protein. Doesn't that sound delicious? No, it does not. What does it do to the product? I'll tell you, it lowers the cost because now we can take this textured vegetable protein and add it in with the meat, and then it makes it have a better bite, is their one of their value-added uh ideas, but it lowers the cost. If you want to know why, go Google TVP, and you'll understand. I'm not gonna get into it on this podcast. It's not tasty. Oh, you'll never even know it's there. Really? I'm gonna tell you something. After 40 plus years in the industry, you can blindfold me and give me a bite, and I will tell you, I will pick out. You give me five different chicken fried steaks in front of me, and only one having the TVP, and I don't I don't care what the percentage is, I will pick it out every single time. I've done it and I've proved it time and time again. I'm not preaching on something that I don't know about. I am telling the truth on this. Now they may not want to admit it. So they come out with their product, right? We've lowered the cost. So now we can take that back and put it in front of the food service distributors and then in front of the food service salespeople, and we train them on how to go and sell it. We give them all of our value-added pluses to go and sell this product, and they do, and they go out and they sell it. Restaurant owners, they put it on their menu, but they stand back and they're all right. Let's see what happens. So they send it out. They'll ask people the register, how is your meal? It was fine. Now, what you should really be asking if you own a restaurant, hey, I got a question. I see you had the chicken fried steak. How was it? Now, this is a restaurant that used to bread their own. So if this is a regular customer and they're honest, they're gonna come back and say, Well, it was fine. It's not quite what you used to have, but it was fine. Fine doesn't fill dining rooms. If you don't believe me, just walk into any restaurant in the US and look at their menu and look at the food that they serve, and you will 100% understand why you didn't have to stand in line to get into that restaurant. Period. You can quote me on that. Again, I'm not angry at anyone, I'm not pointing fingers, I am simply talking about the truth. I am trying to get to the root cause of the problem that we have in the restaurant industry. I'm doing this podcast, I'm bringing this out, I do the TikToks, I do the Facebook, whatever the case may be. I started this mad food critic strictly to talk about the truth and get to the bottom root cause so that we can maybe come up with some solutions and fix these things because I care about this industry. Locally owned restaurants are very near and dear to my heart. Hence, that's why I have Culinary Highway. I highlight the best of the best, I highlight the people that are doing it from scratch, that are doing it the hard way. And guess what, folks? It's working for them, not selling products. Creativity and imagination and hard work. I can assure you, any job that you have in food service, it automatically comes with hard work. But it is also very rewarding. So we start at the top, we see where the how the problem got to the top, and we haven't really found any solutions that have fixed the problem. But now we understand part of the root cause. Next week, we're gonna step it down, we're gonna go from the point of view of the restaurant owner, and then part three we'll go to the part of the patron. And somewhere between all of these pieces, by the time we get to the final episode of this series, maybe we can put in some kind of solution that we didn't know was there before and fix this so that we can rescue some of these restaurants that are going by the wayside. Because let me tell you, putting in a restaurant, I don't care how small or how large, it takes immense amounts of blood, sweat, tears, and money to do it. And I can promise you, I don't want to ever see any restaurant go out of business because that's a lot of wasted money and a lot of heartache that you can only imagine. So until I talk to you again next week, have a great day. Stay hungry and don't forget, local eats are the best eats. Bye bye.