Bad food storage is often disguised as a quick, easy way to store your food. You might think you’re saving time by using the easy way out, but it’s really costing more time, money and product in the future. Encouraging the right behaviors now paves the way for true savings later. Start storing smarter and see all the areas bad food storage was needlessly costing you:

1. It’s costing you food

If you’re wasting food in any capacity, it’s important to look at the most basic level of food storage first: containers. If you’re not holding food in the right containers, food will go bad much faster than you want it to. Using metal pans might work for some applications in the kitchen, but there is no benefit to using them to store your food.

Joulia Kallah, co-owner of Green2Go, was having problems storing their organic chicken. After opening their vacuum sealed chicken, they were prepping it and putting it into metal pans while it waited to be cooked. The chicken was oxidizing and turning green. The food wasn’t spoiled, but it looked spoiled, and no customer would want to eat it. Chicken was being wasted frequently and if the chef wasn’t paying attention, it could have ended up on a customer’s plate. In a time where Yelp and reviews are everything, this bad food storage could have ended up costing this restaurant their reputation. To keep their chicken out of the trash and any potential public relations nightmares at bay, Green2Go switched to Camwear Food Pans and Seal Covers. Their chicken began keeping its color and chefs could still easily get to their prepped product.

2. It’s costing you time

The incorrect food storage practices can make your employees waste valuable time that could be spent on other activities. Drooping lettuce was causing Green2Go employees to spend an extra hour shocking it with cold water, washing it again and then spinning the water out in order to make the lettuce look fresh and green. They took out this extra hour-long process by switching to Cambro’s Food Pans topped with Seal Covers. These lids, designed with an inner seal, allow foods to retain nutrients, flavor and appearance by keeping out air and additional moisture. Seal Covers help reduce premature spoilage and have been proved to extend the shelf life of your food by two to three days.

In addition to her lettuce prep, Kallah was able to change the time it took to prepare their guacamole. Avocados are a prized yet finicky food. Give them too much air and they brown up in an extremely appetizing way. Previously, Kallah prepared their guacamole in small batches and stored it in metal pans covered with plastic wrap. Plastic wrap is hardly impermeable, and as you can imagine, the guacamole would turn brown fairly quickly. Employees would have to scrape the brown part into the trash in order to get to the bright green guacamole at the bottom and continually make more guacamole throughout the day. However, with the power of Seal Covers, employees can prepare larger batches of guacamole in the morning without having to make more multiple times throughout the day.

3. It’s costing you money

Produce can be an expensive food product to purchase for your kitchen and it is probably the hardest to preserve. When you throw away unused and spoiled produce, you might as well have thrown your money straight in the trash. Oftentimes, this waste could have been prevented with the correct method of food storage. Keep delicate foods like prepped tomatoes, lettuces and fruits fresher for a longer period of time with Camwear Colander Food Pans and Camwear Drain Shelves. Using these products will change the way you think about the shelf life of food. Colander Pans and Drain Shelves keep drippings away from food so that it stays dry and uncompromised. Prior to these products, Green2Go was preparing less food ahead of time to prevent spoiling, but their tomatoes were still becoming ruined halfway through lunch service. Those tomatoes ended up in the trash every day. After using their new Colander Food Pans, the restaurant was able to prep everything in the morning  without having to worry about their produce getting ruined halfway through the day.

When this restaurant switched to the correct food storage practices, they were also able to decrease the amount of labor they used. The time they saved was then devoted to other activities that were profitable, like catering. Click here to learn more about how Green2Go was able to Save the Greens. For more information on the products mentioned, contact your Cambro sales rep.