Continue to Site

Comparing Ingredients

Daddio

Daddio

Moderator
Staff member
I am sure that most of the members here have had a supplier come and want you to switch to their house brand. I just went through such an experience with pineapple and thought I would share the results.

I currently use a well known brand of pineapple which I purchase from one of the wholesale club stores in my city for pricing reasons. I was sent a sample of my supplier’s house brand in an effort to get that portion of my business.

I did a blind taste test with all my staff and several of my customers. The results were 100% preferred my current selection. Now here is where it got interesting. In order to determine the actual cost difference between the products I weighed the contents of the cans and found the house brand contained nearly one pound less product.

I then looked at the cost per pound and discovered the house brand would cost 26% MORE than my current choice.

The moral of this story is don’t assume cans of a product are equal across brands. Find out the actual yield of an ingredient when you are calculating your costs.
 
Last edited:
You will notice I left all branding out of the post. This was deliberate because the point of the post is make sure you are comparing actual yield when doing a comparison.
 
Last edited:
I understand that I was more interested in who supplies you out there as I am Canadian, nothing to do with pineapple lol my apologies
 
Last edited:
We have found meaningful differences in yield for everything from sauce to pepperoni and sliced sausage.

Ever notice that sliced sausage sometimes gets thicker over time and grandually over time you are using 4 cases where it used to be three?

Notice home some tomato products will take a can or more of water in a batch of sauce and other products none at all?

Artichoke hearts, black olives, jalapenos all have the same issues Daddio reports with pineapple.

Got to keep looking at all these things… all the time…
 
Last edited:
I deal with this exact same problem on almost a monthly basis. The only difference is that they don’t even tell me they are switching (even after repeatedly telling them to give me a heads up). I also usually do not have a choice…they quit carrying the brand I had been using entirely in favor of their “house brand”.

The reason they give me is that they want to save me money by producing their own brand.

What they really mean is that they want to make more money themselves by packaging generic or lower quality products under their own name. I also typically find less quantity as well.

They have done this with pineapple, parmesan cheese, red peppers, pepperoni, etc. and it really pissing me off.

I deal with Food Services of America. My only alternative, due to our remote location, is Cisco, and I don’t hold them in any higher regard.

For those of you who want decent paremesan cheese packets, red pepper packets or other spice packets, I suggest going to:

http://www.pizzapacket.com/index.php/pizza-packets.html

They are cheaper and have been quality than what FSA or Cisco delivers in our area.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that link. I pay 16.90 for a box of crushed red pepper flakes from FSA, saves me almost 2.00 a box plus free shipping if I order 5 boxes.

I love replacing house brand misc items. I make an effort to do so when I feel I’m being ‘pushed’ in that direction.
 
Last edited:
Daddio,
You bring an incredibly useful concept to the forum. In my early days, I am sure I got jobbed by this problem. Learned my lesson, and now I obsess over YIELD of any given product. Chicken and pork raw products are infamous as well. Raw muscle meats are not all the same as there are all “watered up” to increase pack weight . . . . and effect final yield.

No substitute for getting samples and doing extensive testing and weighing to get real life % yields and cost per unit of useable product. AND do random esting a couple times a month for ongoing quality controls. Hate to do it, but it is needed these days for fine tuning finances and costing.
 
Last edited:
Toooooo funny hubby and I just had a conversation about this. I suggest a 5 gallon pepcini bucket instead of 4 gallon case…He said yeah is the yield the same per gallon? I thought he was nuts…looks like I owe him an apology. LOL

Thanks for the post…still learning after all these years!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top