Hand cut fries vs frozen shoestrings on a busy Friday night - I picked wrong

Mistake number one was thinking I could prep 80 orders of hand cut fries during the dinner rush. I had this idea they'd taste better and impress the regulars, so I went with it. By 7pm I was drowning in spuds and the fry station was backed up 15 minutes. The owner finally yelled at me to just dump the frozen bag in and save the shift. Ended up with half the tickets comped and a bruised ego. Anyone else try to get fancy on a busy night and totally regret it?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_harris142d ago

A specific thing I've noticed is that "better" usually means "more work" when you're trying to impress people on a deadline. In my experience, the mistake is thinking hand-cut fries are just about taste when really they're about having an extra 20 minutes you don't have (which is never on a Friday night). It applies to so many things, like trying to bake bread from scratch before a party or making your own pasta sauce when a jar would have worked fine. We get this idea that taking shortcuts is cheating, but there's a middle ground where a quality frozen product is actually better than a rushed homemade version. At the end of the day, the customers just wanted hot fries. They didn't care if they were from a bag or a potato (I learned this the hard way too).

lindagreen2d ago

Have you ever tried those frozen fries that are par-cooked and you just finish them in the oven or fryer? @evan_harris14 nailed it with the middle ground thing, I keep a bag of those on hand for busy nights and nobody ever notices the difference. What frozen shortcuts do you swear by?