New customers who sit down to dine at The Cheesecake Factory immediately notice one fact above all else. That’s because the menu is huge.
Prices at popular chain restaurants are shocking. 20 pages or more, featuring examples of dishes from around the world, including appetizers, entrees, sides, and (of course) desserts. The wide variety of food makes this a true Disney World-style tour.
Content creator NoodleWinter (@noodleWinter) needed to know how this was possible, so he asked his audience on a TikTok he posted on March 17th. The video currently has 11,300 views and counting.
“Have you ever wondered how you can make all these things?” she asks in the video. “What’s the kitchen like there?”
“Not only can you get salmon, you can get grilled salmon. You can also get herb batter. You can also get miso,” she pointed out as she photographed the menu. After she films a book-like menu spanning several pages, she poses a question to viewers at the end.
“If anyone has ever worked at the Cheesecake Factory, please tell me what the kitchen was like,” she implores.
In 2019, Cheesecake Factory Chief Culinary Officer Donald Moore said: today About the chain restaurant’s hearty menu.
Moore said he gets quite a response when he brings other chefs to the Cheesecake Factory. “They look at the menu and say, ‘I’m just crazy to buy so many ingredients to try to make them so fresh.'” It takes 700 different ingredients to make all 250 items. and everything you need, including over 160 sauces and dressings. Made in restaurant kitchens.
– today
according to voxAs he told Thrillist in 2018, the expansive menu “came about because owner David Overton didn’t want to compete with other restaurants in the area.” I didn’t want to take away my business.” Someone started adding whatever they wanted to order. The more dishes they added to the original 26, such as Mexican food and different types of pasta, the more people responded positively. ”
This goes against conventional wisdom regarding restaurant menus.According to industry publications rest lab“A small menu allows customers to order faster, saving them a lot of time and energy. They don’t like large and confusing service.”
Overton told Box, “If I had known more about the industry and how restaurants operate, I never would have made the menu as big and expansive as it is.”
Brandon Cook, Executive Chef of Culinary Research and Development at The Cheesecake Factory, told Box that the secret to the extensive menu is simple: lots of employees and lots of training.
He said he picked up a recipe book that was “two inches” thick on his first day of work. He thought this was for the entire restaurant. He thought it would be a daunting task to memorize it, but it was doable. Unfortunately for Cook, it was just a recipe book for his particular unit, the saute station.
He said he trained for three weeks before being allowed to cook. He also described his first training at his restaurant.
“At my station alone, there were five cooks running just 16 burners,” Cook told Vox about his first experience on the phone. “One guy would call in the guests and start cooking. One guy would finish and decorate all the food, and three guys would just cook. It was just one stop.”
The Daily Dot reached out to The Cheesecake Factory for a statement via email.
Noodle Winter’s video quickly drew negative comments from viewers who were convinced the chain relied on frozen foods and pre-mixed sauces.
Allisonlee_lovely (@allisonlee_lovely_) wrote, “I’ve always been told that the bigger the menu, the more frozen food. The smaller the menu, the fresher it is.”
Another viewer simply commented, “Microwavable.”
Another added: “Everything is frozen and pre-made.”
But many former factory workers told Noodlewinter that this was not the case.
“Former cheesecake factory worker. There’s a huge prep kitchen in the back where there are literally tons of workers preparing sauces and other things by hand. There are six different cooking stations on the line,” says Kristen (@k_sanch_ ) wrote.
Another viewer trusted Vox’s reporting, writing: Literally everything is fresh, nothing is bagged or frozen. The kitchen has 30 cooking stations, all working shoulder to shoulder. ”
“There are eight stations in the kitchen, usually visible through the window,” added another. “It’s all too fresh food. There’s a huge prep room in the back.”
Furthermore, Mr. A said: My ex was a server there and the training was about 3 weeks. He had to memorize the entire menu. I don’t know about the kitchen, but what we needed from our server was great. ”
2018 buzzfeed The article, titled “What I learned after a day working in a cheesecake factory’s prep kitchen,” explains that the restaurant’s extensive menu is made possible by a large staff of staff who create many recipes from scratch using fresh ingredients. It seems to support the viewer’s claim that it is the result.
“Everything is inspected and sampled to ensure consistency within guidelines,” the article states. “Every detail is explained, right down to the freshly squeezed lemon juice. The screen also categorizes seemingly simple items, like ‘grilled asparagus.’ ”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Noodle Winter for further comment via direct message on TikTok.
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