When ordering for a trip, do you order a heap of everything and risk waste, or take a gamble on the niche ingredients?
Placing an order is unique to each chef. You might order X, I might order Y — but over-ordering, well — does that show preparedness or a lack of experience and knowledge of consumption and storage spaces? We’re all guilty of it, so let’s break down the pros and cons.
A chef acquaintance of mine once did a set-up order for the freezer — filling up from scratch, exciting! It arrived in a truck. A proper truck. I can only imagine the panic they felt as that thing pulled up. They ended up having to send two entire pallets back to the provisioner for them to store. A lucky ending, but not always the case.
I’ve had more than two years on this boat, and I have finally got the perfect order down pat. It fills the crates, it lasts about a week-plus (depending on the guests, naturally) and because it’s my default order, I generally don’t miss anything (touch wood).
Frankly, what has also really helped is not having a rotational or temp chef that orders excessively and then leaves the fridge and dry store full of a bunch of crap that you neither want nor use.
It turns into a toxic cycle. You don’t finish the order during the trip and there’s loads left, but you still need a new order because you are going on another trip and it needs to be fresh and able to last the distance. So then you keep acquiring this backlog of stuff that’s a bit past it and likely dumped into the crew chef’s crates. Or it gets turned into soups, stocks or juiced, which takes time and effort, otherwise it gets tossed. This waste of food and money really grinds my gears.
The same can also apply to dry stores. I recently returned to the vessel and was greeted with 13 bottles of cheap “Morrisons” (iykyk) red wine vinegar. If you’ve got 13 bottles but only average one bottle per two weeks, that’s taking up valuable space in your dry store when you have a guest arrive saying, “Oh I smash a bottle of ACV a day” and then suddenly you need space for that.
The other thing, particularly with vinegar, is that I like a certain brand. So when someone goes and buys a random brand, that’s just annoying. (Yes, those bottles of vinegar triggered me to write this.) And let’s be real here, we’re not typically cruising off to isolated islands where the sugar, salmon and Sancerre are scarce — we’re moments away from a call to the agent and a hefty charge to the APA. How stocked up do the dry stores really need to be?
Also, while on this point (this is unique to charter boats), I find it easier for invoicing to avoid the massive pre-season stock-up. Instead, order little bits and pieces along with each order, so that a) I can just have one invoice and don’t have to worry about pulling things from other invoices and b) it’s quick and easy to put away, and I keep track of what’s in stock on board.
Then comes the pro-massive-order-side. Just as I think I’ve got the order perfected, everything fits and there’s still room in the fridge, BOOM, you get guests who hit the fridges hard. We had some recently who rinsed us of fresh produce, as well as almost 50 bottles of Clase Azul tequila. They ate huge meals and loved ordering snacks.
So, do you order a heap of everything to cover yourself, but then also run up the APA and potentially waste it all? Or order an average amount and when they start consistently ordering, say, Caesar salad, and you start running out of romaine, then source through an agent?
I think it’s clear I don’t have the answers here. I’m settling for a middle ground and relying heavily on my shore-based agents. But what I can tell you is that 17kg of tomatoes is perfect for me, and I hope that you feel the same confidence in your order and don’t mistakenly order 500kg of kale like I once almost did. Practice makes perfect, and so does double- and triple-checking your orders.