Cindy’s Slant On: Pink Slime

H&M Wagner Sales Manager Cindy Barnes is weighing in this week on the recent Pink Slime controversy. In this blog, she examines the facts, and reacts to some of the questions your cooks and customers may be raising.

Wow, “Pink Slime”, a product which has been used for years and years is the talk of the foodservice industry.

Pink Slime is a derogatory term which sounds awful, but it is not based on facts!

Should we be scared of the slime??  NO!

The controversy of Pink Slime began with an interview by ABC, of a couple of scientists who were formerly with the U. S. Department of Agriculture.  They referred to the beef product as pink slime, and there you have it, bring on the negative commentary.

Here are some facts I researched;

• Pink Slime is NOT scraps which planned to be used in pet food.  It is federally inspected and approved beef product also known as lean, finely textured beef (LFTB).
• Craig Letch, director of food safety and quality assurances with Beef Products Inc., (BPI) the world’s largest processor of lean beef processed from lean trimmings does a great explanation….
• Letch explains that the product is from beef trimmings. The trimmings come from a process of removing fat and lean beef from many cuts of beef.  BPI uses a centrifuge process to separate the lean from the fat, resulting in a product which is about 95 % lean.  The process changes the product similar to fine ground beef.  Blended (ground) beef products carry a higher risk of food borne pathogens because microbes, if present, are distributed though the product.  BPI uses interventions to reduce the possibility of microbial contamination.
• During processing, the company uses ammonium hydroxide, which is a natural product, to elevate the pH of the LFTB, which he says is extremely effective in killing any microbes.  It makes no physical change to the product, nor has an effect on the taste or texture. The resulting product is pink, Letch says, because it is pure beef, with a little fat.  This LFTB product is used as an ingredient in hamburger, sausage, ground beef and many other foods.
• Ammonium Hydroxide is natural.  It is found in almost all foods and in the human body.  Its role is helping the body maintain a balanced pH level, according to the American Meat Institute. It is not the kind of Ammonia used in making fertilizer or household cleaners.
• In most countries Ammonium Hydroxide is considered safe by food safety authorities which include the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.  It ‘s purpose is to kill pathogens in meat and other food products and is used as a antimicrobial food additive in baked goods, dairy, chocolates and other confections, according to the International Food Information Council Foundation.
• In 1974 the FDA approved the use of Ammonium Hydroxide in food processing and considers it safe after an extensive review of the science and rule-making.

Lastly…..If you are still cautious, we’ve got the answer for you.

Our fresh grinds and cuts are delivered to us daily from Fells Point Meats.  Fells Point Meats’ products do not contain LFTB (pink slime). They never have and never will.

Ask your sales representative about our”Just In Time” (JIT) program, start up your grill and leave the cuts and grinds up to us.

Cindy

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

Achieving the Perfect Service, with H&M Wagner

It’s 10 minutes before seven, and your bar is packed with customers waiting to be shown to their tables. Bussers are sprinting through the restaurant, desperately trying to clean up after that reservation that showed up 20 minutes late, and the guests are starting to get annoyed. You’ve just finished comping a meal that the new cook messed up when a timid-looking server tugs on your sleeve and mumbles that the dishwasher just shut down for the third time tonight. Your path to the faulty machine is cut short by the inexperienced bar-back sprinting through the hall with an armful of fruit for the overworked bar.

You can feel that headache creeping up already, can’t you?

When H&M Wagner & Sons was founded – over 50 years ago – we delivered poultry and eggs to homes throughout Baltimore. Our mission was to save people time and money by bringing fresh food directly to them. It is a philosophy that we kept when we began servicing the restaurant and hospitality industries. For restaurant owners and operators, a packed dining room is both a blessing, and a curse. Nothing will make your restaurant’s weak points and inefficiencies more clear than a few hours of dinner rush. Here are just a few ways that H&M Wagner products help alleviate those problem areas.

Remember your over-worked bar staff? With Wagner’s Passion Bay drink mixers, even the most complex cocktails and frozen drinks become a simple affair. We offer a variety of fruit juices, bag-in-box soda syrups, and frozen drink mixes that come with free system installation, and 7-day-a-week quick response service.

Our Dish Doctor repair and maintenance service is a one-call solution to almost any problem your warewashing or laundry systems could face. You won’t have to rely on temporary fixes and unreliable repair companies any longer. Even your cooks will be happier, when meats, sauces, and fresh produce from H&M Wagner are reducing the time they spend sorting through low-quality ingredients.

We want to help make your restaurant a source of profits, not headaches. You’ve got enough problems to deal with every day; your food supplier shouldn’t be one of them.

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

What Can the ‘Pink Slime’ Scandal Tell you About Consumers?

This is not a blog post about ‘Pink Slime,’ at least, not directly. This is a blog post about how consumers react to the media, and how that can affect where they spend their money.

In case you have somehow missed the media frenzy, ‘Pink Slime’ is the inaccurately-descriptive term that media writers are using to refer to boneless lean beef trimmings. According to some of these reports, it is the after-product of a lengthy chemical process that uses dangerous ammonia-based chemicals to convert unusable and inedible beef into something that can be sold as food.

Of course, those of us that actually work in the food industry realize that much of this hype is exaggerated, if not blatantly incorrect. In reality, boneless lean beef trimmings are simply the small bits of meat left on fat that is typically removed from larger roasts and steaks. Until recently, there was no efficient method of retaining and using those small scraps, so it was considered a necessary loss. Now, processes have been developed to trim those meat remainders from the beef fat, so it can be ground and incorporated into larger batches of ground beef. As far as the ammonia, the process of using ammonium hydroxide (a combination of ammonia and water) has been the standard method of treating beef to kill bacteria since the mid-1970’s.

However, as is too often the case, phrases like “Pink Slime,” “low-grade filler,” and disgusting beef by-product, are more interesting than the truth. The result is an army of consumers that are convinced that your restaurant is poisoning them with “slimed” meat. Consumer protest has already lead to a large number of grocery stores, restaurant chains, and distributors scrambling to cut the ‘slime’ from their products, and it doesn’t look to be ending any time soon.

So what can you do, when your customers are demanding to know what is in your ground beef, or where it came from? Clearly, you won’t win many friends by dismissing their claims. Few chefs in the world have the clout to win an argument against CNN. Instead, be prepared to answer their concerns honestly.

If your restaurant stocks its freezers with food from H&M Wagner & Sons, you already know that your meat is being sourced from local producers. Anyone can provide you with mass-produced meat, but by choosing Wagner, you are choosing a company committed to providing the highest-quality products, free of filler and unnecessary chemical treatment. You can approach your customers with the knowledge that everything you’re serving them originated in the North-East United States, and is as fresh, natural, and delicious as it can possibly be.

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

Photos from the 2012 Food and Beverage Festival

We just got back from the wonderful Ocean City, Maryland, and we have a whole pile of photos from the 2012 Food and Beverage Festival! We hosted the festival at Seacrets Night Club, immediately following the close of the 38th Annual HMRA Spring Trade Expo.

We were happy to show off the latest in our line of Aunt Peggy’s Desserts. The line features a variety of cakes and pies to meet the demands of any restaurant’s customers. We have to say, this was one of the most popular areas in the entire festival!

The club floor was packed for the entire event, with dozens of attendees sampling the latest and greatest in the industry.

We had some of our favorite Wagner representatives welcoming attendees to the event, and talking about our favorite selections from H&M Wagner’s Passion Bay drink mixes.

If you missed the festival, or just want to see even more photos and stories from the event, stop by our Facebook page. We look forward to seeing you all there next year!

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

What Did 2011’s Restaurants Do Right?

It is well known that the restaurant industry is one of the most competitive business markets. With a documented 25% failure rate, very few people have the fortitude and confidence to enter the industry. Over the past two weeks, two lists of restaurants have been published. The first was a list of failed businesses, while the second celebrated the 20 most successful. We thought it would be worthwhile to explore exactly what differences lay between these groups. What made some businesses succeed where others failed? Was it luck? Location? Timing? As it turns out, all of those factors, and some much more controllable ones, are responsible.

In 2011, there were approximately 16,000 restaurant closings. Businesses from every level of the industry – fine dining, fast food, even food trucks – felt the economic crunch. But is it enough to blame the poor economy for their closing? According to published statistics, many of the closed restaurants fell into what is called the ‘steak, seafood, and fish’ category. Better known as typical fine dining restaurants, these are the so-called institutions that everyone eats at a few times a year. While we can’t prove any real conclusions from the data given, we can draw a few assumptions.

Unless you are looking at the upper minority, fine dining restaurants are known for three things: traditional food, high prices, and slow service. These are all things that consumers are moving away from. As consumers become more educated about food, they are looking for more exciting things. Ethnic flair, organic ingredients, and local specialties are at the top of mind today. Perhaps even more importantly, consumers want a faster, more affordable meal. Something they can enjoy with family after a long day of work, rather than something that will take up a few hours of time, and a week’s paycheck. Meanwhile, you can capture a local audience by featuring ingredients sourced from local food producers, a promise that H&M Wagner always maintains.

This trend can be seen easily by looking at the twenty top-performing restaurants. The 11 best performers are all fast-food or carryout restaurants. Bonefish Grill is the lone standout on the list, at number 12. Does this mean you should pack up the dining room and start selling frozen burgers and fries? No, but it does mean that, if your past few years haven’t painted an optimistic picture, you may need to re-strategize.

Try adding on a few smaller, faster menu items or specials. Appeal to working families that only have a few hours a day with their kids. If you show people that you have unique, innovative food that won’t eat up an entire day, they’ll have a reason to come back every Friday. Bear in mind, we’re not trying to tell you how to run your business, but at Wagner, we’ve seen a lot of restaurants come and go, and the ones that stick around are generally the ones that keep an eye on their competition. Also, be sure to ask your H&M Wagner representative to explain how our products can help add innovation and flair to your menu!

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

The 38th Annual Spring Trade Expo

H&M Wagner & Sons is happy to announce that we will once again be attending the HMRA Spring Trade Expo in Ocean City, Maryland on March 4^th and 5^th! This trade show is one of the best expos for hotel and restaurant managers in the North East, and is an excellent opportunity to network with other owners, and to experience all of our newest products first hand!

This year, we will also be sponsoring the third annual Spring Food and Beverage Festival, immediately following the trade show on March 4^th. The festival will be held at Seacrets Night Club from 5pm to 9pm, and is shaping up to be the talk of the show!

You can register for the HMRA Spring Trade Expo here, and you can register for our Spring Food and Beverage Festival at http://www.hmwagner.com/events. We look forward to seeing you all there!

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

The Wagner Way: Do You Have a Teen Menu?

Capturing a loyal audience is one of the largest successes a restaurant can hope for, and often, the battle for customer loyalty starts young. But what can a restaurant do to ensure that the youth of their area see them as a hip, interesting place to go?

Technomic and C3 have pooled their efforts to release a recent report on teens’ and tweens’ attitudes about dining out. While opinions vary among the surveyed population, the report did find a few consistent trends, which were published in a press release on PRNewsWire.com. Here are a few of their findings, with some more information from us.

Teens may be suffering from fast-food or brand fatigue; new and exciting foodservice concepts are most likely to appeal to them.

For better or worse, fast food and convenience foods have become commonplace for our nation’s youth. Along with the expedience of these foods comes bland repetition. Teens can get bacon cheeseburgers and French fries in a thousand local restaurants, so why would they come to yours? Teens present restaurant owners with a unique opportunity. Winning their loyalty now ensures that they will become life-long customers later. Innovative, youthful, fun menu items can make a big difference in their eyes.

Appetizers, tapas, and small bites menus could be very popular with an after-school crowd looking for a place to hang out with friends and study. Teens are becoming more affluent and high maintenance than owners may realize, and presenting your late lunch menu as a classier option may be a unique hook that your competition isn’t offering. Teens haven’t changed much in the past thirty years; “the mall” is still a perfectly acceptable hang-out spot. An affordable, but dressed-up, snack menu may be the inspiration kids need to get out of the food court and in your dining room.

Because the attitudes and behaviors of tweens and teens reflect specific life stages, foodservice operators and suppliers may find success by tailoring menu offerings and marketing strategies to fit these stages.  As an example, the majority of tweens report that they wish restaurants would provide a separate menu for kids their age.

Is a large section of your customer base too old for the 3-12 menu, but too young to appreciate your other menu options? When a family is deciding where to go for dinner, the constant complaints of a thirteen-year-old that doesn’t like your menu can be a deciding factor. It may seem unrealistic to offer a children’s menu, a tween menu, and a standard menu, but try coming up with smaller portions, or less complex variations of existing menu items. Restaurants in the suburbs may win over young families if parents know their tween kids will have something to look forward to.

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

H&M Wagner & Sons Announces Agreement with the Annapolis Produce Company

H & M Wagner & Sons, Incorporated, is very proud to announce that we have entered into an agreement with the Annapolis Produce Company, located in Annapolis, Maryland. The agreement considers all phases of the current day to day operations of the company.

Effective January 16, 2012, all orders being processed for delivery will be handled by your current Wagner Sales Representative, or where appropriate, you will continue with your current Annapolis Produce Sales Representative. All daily deliveries of dry, refrigerated and frozen product will be made to your establishment via our new fleet of state of the art, (3) zone, temperature controlled trucks.

This agreement will afford you a tremendous opportunity to increase efficiencies in your purchasing process. Wagner offers more than 9,000 different products at our warehouse in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

We look forward to earning your continued business and feel confident that our agreement will benefit all involved.
“From the back of the house to the center of the plate, H & M Wagner is the Broadline Foodservice Distributor of Choice.”

Sal Furno
Vice President of Sales

The Wagner Way: The Statistics of Dining Out in 2011

At the start of summer, many restaurateurs worried that the economic recession would spell poor profits, but it seems that 2011 turned out OK after all. Popular coupon site LivingSocial and the Mandala Research team put together some statistics culled from a survey of 4,000 Americans. Here is some of the data, and what it means for your business strategy.

• Americans ate an average of 4.8 restaurant meals per week (including dine-in and take-out).
• Lunch is the most popular meal to eat at a restaurant, with 2.6 meals per week. Dinner is in second place at an average of 1.4, and breakfast brings up the rear with less than 1 meal per week.
• 35% of respondents classified themselves as ‘experimental eaters,’ and 25% classified themselves as serious foodies.

The popularity of food television, and the rapid growth of an internet presence for food discussion, has helped open the door for more exciting cooking. A surf-and-turf special may not delight consumers as it once did. It’s true that the most popular restaurant meals are usually quickly eaten lunch-break affairs, but restaurants in affluent or off-beat locations could draw foodie attention with unusual cuisine.

• Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and Pizza were the most popular restaurant types in 2011, with Thai, sushi, Greek, and Indian cuisines making up surprise favorites.
• Low-calorie and vegetarian fare is not as popular as some might think, with 18% of respondents claiming to be health nuts, and only 5% responding as being either vegan or vegetarian.
• In contrast, 45% classified themselves as meat lovers, and another 19% as fast food junkies.

Offering low-cal or vegetarian meals is always a good idea, and it is obviously unrealistic to throw out your grandmother’s corn bread recipe to make room for the new sashimi menu. We aren’t suggesting that you re-invent your restaurant to match last year’s trends, either. What you can take away from this information is that restaurants are being given a customer pool that is open to experimentation. It might be time to let your chef come up with some creative specials, or to promote those regional Irish classics that no one was willing to try in 2009.

Stop by FoodPro for the full list of statistics, and tell us in the comments which facts impressed you the most!

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.

The Wagner Way: Hitting the Right Notes

Restaurant owners know that the dining room can make or break a business. Expertly-crafted food and a flawless staff will keep loyal customers, but a gloomy first impression may keep those guests from giving your menu a chance. Everything from paint, to lighting, to table cloths can affect that impression, but it is often the smaller things that add up.

Restaurant customers are smarter and more cautious than they used to be, and more options are opening up every day. It is more important than ever to ensure that every subtle detail is working in your favor.

Charles Areni and David Kim, researchers at Texas Tech, studied customer behavior in reaction to music, and came to some surprising conclusions. An article published by RestaurantOwner.com shared some results.

They played either classical or “Top 40″ music in a wine store and found that shoppers bought more expensive wine when classical music was playing, suggesting that the highbrow connotations of Mozart, Vivaldi and Chopin were a better conceptual fit with high-quality wines than the musical stylings of Rush or Fleetwood Mac. A British team found similar effects of classical music in a restaurant: Classical music led to greater spending than when the management played either pop music or no music at all.

Don’t rush out to stick ‘The Best of Beethoven’ in the CD player just yet! Other studies have found that classic rock can bring higher spend from baby boomers, and current hits are more likely to open the wallets of college students. If you want to encourage customers to stick around for a good meal when they step in to check out the menu, you need to make sure that the environment you’re selling appeals to them. That means reading your local customers.

An owner also needs to ensure that music doesn’t stick out from the theme of the restaurant. An intimate room that serves classical French food probably shouldn’t be playing college radio, no matter how young their clientele is. Music, silverware, and linens should be part of the subconscious atmosphere of your dining room. If your customers are commenting more about those things than they are about the food, something is probably wrong with their dining experience!

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H&M Wagner and Sons, inc. is a food distribution company committed to quality, customer service, and family values. We have been growing for over 50 years, and serve over 2,500 restaurants and institutions across six states. Visit http://hmwagner.com/index.php or call 800-492-4571 for more information.