Start a fake restaurant and then order directly from Sysco.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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I really liked the giant pretzels at a brewery near me. Sat near the kitchen until I saw the box they pulled them out of. Learned I could buy 75 online for the price of 5 there.
This is the shit I love to hear. Got a link for a fellow pretzel lover?
I am sad now. I cannot find it anymore.
Even just the frozen food at your normal grocery store is really good. I'm pretty sure some of it it sourced in the same place these restaurants get their food. (I'm pretty sure I can get McDonald's hash browns at my local Kroger.)
If you tend to buy in bulk, you might want to check out restaurant supply places like GFS. If I am doing bulk baking or cooking, I will sometimes pick up a few things from them. They are open to the public and sell a lot of stuff that restaurants use, too.
I got a deep fryer for mozzarella sticks they're straight 🔥
What mozzarella sticks do you buy? I bought some in the US and it was powdery crap. In Germany it was real mozzarella
Our food is garbage compared to Europe food because our government has actively hated us for decades and completely sold out our health for big business interests. But, the kind I usually get is FarmRich I think. They're pretty decent.
I've tried one brand in the past but the cheese waa grainy, probably made from a powder or something, it was awful. Stumbled upon Trader Joes mozzarella sticks, it tastes like and has texture of an actual mozzarella
Yeaaa! why run or order something to overpay, when you can have a deep fryer a home? Preheat and ready to go! I get you man!!
Sometimes I deep fry shit that has no business being deep fried. Weird shit. It's a problem. But I get all the mozz stix I can eat which is... also a problem 😅
When I visited Scotland, I had a deep fried Mars Bar. It was okay.
The other day I fried a banana that was actually surprisingly decent
Pisang goreng enters the chat...
The next time Mrs Bizzle calls me a degenerate for my deep fryer experiments I'm going to bring this up, wow. I'd never heard of this.
In France and Sweden we have Picard who sells frosen high quality food.
Some of the stuff in the freezer section is pretty high quality. I recently got a shrimp entree on sale that could easily pass for restaurant quality.
Also, don't sleep on frozen vegetables. The quality is second only to fresh and you can also get "restaurant" versions covered in cheese, butter, and even roasted.
Seconding frozen veggies (and fruit). They're frozen at their ripest. Makes for amazing roasted veggies in those cold winter months where I'm not feeling soup.
I use frozen berries to flavor my proats. They cancel out the weird tang from the protein powder. So far the only thing I've found that works and healthier than sugar anyway.
Schwan's is basically this. I haven't seen one of their trucks in forever, but I think COVID really helped their business model.
Fucking LOVED them. They sold unbranded softstix in bags of like 50 and it made me so happy. Now I have to buy them in boxes of 12 at giant. Bitch that's a snack for two days maybe.
My mom loved Schwann's mostly because she liked the driver. Then they changed their delivery model, and she quit.
The stuff was pretty good, but it was about the same quality as the frozen stuff in Publix, and Publix is about half the price. I'm glad she stopped buying from Schwann's, and is saving money. There's still a lot of stuff in the freezer, some we'll never eat - why would she order frozen fried rice? She hates Chinese food.
I had a catalogue once from a convenience food supplier for commercial kitchens. It was a very interesting read. Imagine chicken broth powder in buckets of 10kg, no idea how much broth this makes. Frozen stuff of all kinds, up to "grilled fish" of some sort, to be regenerated in a warm water bath, complete with fake grill stripes. Absolutely crazy stuff.
Well, some of the foods at chains like that are made by either their own food factory, or under contract to a company that does it. I can't tell you what chains and what foods in specific because it's been too long since I discovered this.
But, it means that you've got a couple of options.
The most realistic is you just hope that the chain sells their stuff in grocery stores. Some do. Iirc, tgif sells a goodly number of its appetizers that way. I wanna say Applebees does too, but I don't really pay attention to that section of the freezer aisle.
Less realistic, but not impossible, is to check at the restaurant. Some of them will actually sell the products like that. It's pretty rare, and you'll pay the full retail price, but you can then take it home and heat it up yourself.
And, sometimes, you'll find employees stealing the stuff and selling it. No bullshit, it happens. Happens in fast food as well, for that matter. Used to know a guy that would take requests from burger king. You catch him on the right day, you could get a giant box of the whopper patties for twenty bucks. He'd just pad the waste reports over a few days, and afaik, nobody ever caught on.
But, yeah, pre cooked chain restaurant food is usually produced in bulk at a factory, same as your typical frozen foods ata grocery store. Just with bigger packages. Have a cousin that used to work at one, though I can't remember which chain it was.
Semi-related, you can buy anything at an Olive Garden. Like, anything. Art off the wall, the chair you're sitting in, the cheese grater. They will sell it to you if you ask.
The ones sold in supermarkets are not the same as what are distributed to restaurants. Plus, you don't have the right equipment to make it the same way as the restaurant.
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