In-Line Digital Scales

T

thebigcheese

New member
I would love to know how everyone is incorporating the use of scales for portion control at the make line. Bench scale off to the side? In the middle of the make table? Multiple scales on the line? Under speed rails? I would love to see a pic of your set-up. A picture is worth a thousand words!
 
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Thanks for bringing this topic up! I have been meaning to ask this - we currently don’t use scales on our make-line, but I really would like to see how the rest of you do it!
 
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…at a pizza place i worked at…they had about 5 scales across the make table…set the pie on the scale…zero it out…add topping #1…zero out scale…add topping #2…zero out scale…etc etc…pretty fast and consistant…btw…the printer prints the tickets with the weights of each ingredent and in the order they are to be put on
 
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We use a Avery Berkel scale to weigh our cheese. We grind our cheese in house with a palazolo shredder and we have a chart above the make line and weight the cheese on each pizza. Portion cups work ok but you can cheat the cups and you are limited to what you can do. We have several sizes of pizzas and depending on the amount of toppings you order the cheese weight can vary from just a cheese pizza. We don’t weigh our vegetables, they are basically so inexpensive, weighing them just slows things down, especially on a busy night.

Lets face it we buy cheese by the pound, so weighing it per pizza makes all the sense in the world.

Tony
 
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ironoxide1:
…at a pizza place i worked at…they had about 5 scales across the make table…set the pie on the scale…zero it out…add topping #1…zero out scale…add topping #2…zero out scale…etc etc…pretty fast and consistant…btw…the printer prints the tickets with the weights of each ingredent and in the order they are to be put on
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Sounds like Donatos Pizza
 
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I have a single digital scale that sits between the sauce/cheese and meats. Instead of putting the pizza on the scale, we use plastic bowls. Since the bowls are tared at zero, it’s pretty easy to weigh out the toppings quickly and accurately.
 
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I tested out several of the digital scales out on the market. Some of them were upwards of $600 and none of them could hold up to the abuse for more than 3 months. After forking out several thousands of $$, I stumble across this one about 6 months ago,

http://www.wasserstrom.com/restaurant-s … 42545759-2

and so far its worked out really well. I’ve had the power supply go out on 1( replaced it for $10).
It has really quick response time, zeros out well, and seems to hold up under the abuse. And best of all it was only $300.
I think its a Chinese import, which explains the cost.

We weigh out only the items that come up short the previous week so it doesn’t slow things down too much. If nothing comes up short then the crew doesn’t have to weigh anything so they always shoot for that goal. All topping portions print out on the tags.

David
 
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pizzapiratespp:
I tested out several of the digital scales out on the market. Some of them were upwards of $600 and none of them could hold up to the abuse for more than 3 months. After forking out several thousands of $$, I stumble across this one about 6 months ago,

http://www.wasserstrom.com/restaurant-s … 42545759-2

and so far its worked out really well. I’ve had the power supply go out on 1( replaced it for $10).
It has really quick response time, zeros out well, and seems to hold up under the abuse. And best of all it was only $300.
I think its a Chinese import, which explains the cost. David
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I have that same exact Taylor Pizza Scale in both my shops. I have gone through 3 of them already (company replaced). They work great but after a while, when you turn them on, the LCD will just show 4 circles (looks like the top half of the number 8) and you can’t do anything with it. I have one scale that is still working great (replaced 1 year ago) and the other is doing the same thing again. I have to keep turning it on and off while lifting the corner of the scale up to get the LCD display to work and not show the circles. I tried returning this one but had no luck. As long as it is not turned off, the LCD display will work fine.
 
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I have that same exact Taylor Pizza Scale in both my shops. I have gone through 3 of them already (company replaced). They work great but after a while, when you turn them on, the LCD will just show 4 circles (looks like the top half of the number 8) and you can’t do anything with it. I have one scale that is still working great (replaced 1 year ago) and the other is doing the same thing again. I have to keep turning it on and off while lifting the corner of the scale up to get the LCD display to work and not show the circles. I tried returning this one but had no luck. As long as it is not turned off, the LCD display will work fine.

Yes, I have gotten that too. So far just a reboot and we were up and running. The way I look at those scales though is that they save us about $300 each week in food cost, so if the scale survives 8 days it was profitable. Since I have implemented these scales about a year ago we have reduce food cost by about 2%. Thats about $50,000 in savings. Who wouldn’t spend a couple of thousand to make fifty?
 
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I had Detecto scales and they were absolute garbage. None of them lasted past a year and they weren’t exactly cheap. They were also very difficult to zero using the hands-free sensor and the footswitches all broke within a couple of months. I had to repair a footswitch at least once per week.

They also had a very small tolerance for any motion when you zeroed them. If somebody was making a pizza next to you they would have to stop any motion on the table so the scale would be still enough to allow it to be zeroed.

I gave up on scales because of it but maybe I’ll try one of these Taylors you guys are talking about. We use shredded cheese and the portioning just isn’t great with a cup.
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pizzafanatic:
I have a single digital scale that sits between the sauce/cheese and meats. Instead of putting the pizza on the scale, we use plastic bowls. Since the bowls are tared at zero, it’s pretty easy to weigh out the toppings quickly and accurately.
Click to expand...
Now that’s a darn good idea. Genius!
 
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We tried weighing before just to see how it went… thought it was a PITA so I decided to take the Papa Johns route and get a bunch of measuring cups and put the 3 different sizes (cause we have 3 different size pizzas) into the ingredient bins.
I thought it was working out well but the wife didn’t like it for some reason so it got ixnayed.
Only thing we could not use the cups for was the pepperoni and sliced tomatoes, I just posted how many pieces were to go on each pie.
Apparently all those cups and counts got to confusing for the kids. Cause ya know, they can’t count higher then 3 ½ the darn time.
 
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I had Detecto scales and they were absolute garbage. None of them lasted past a year and they weren’t exactly cheap. They were also very difficult to zero using the hands-free sensor and the footswitches all broke within a couple of months. I had to repair a footswitch at least once per week.
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They also had a very small tolerance for any motion when you zeroed them. If somebody was making a pizza next to you they would have to stop any motion on the table so the scale would be still enough to allow it to be zeroed.

I gave up on scales because of it but maybe I’ll try one of these Taylors you guys are talking about. We use shredded cheese and the portioning just isn’t great with a cup.

Steer way clear of those scales. They also don’t like the fluorescent lighting. I bought 3 of those scales ($1800) and they are all in the landfill now.
 
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