Dairy Queen hours reduced due to supply issues

BillyGr
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Re: Dairy Queen hours reduced due to supply issues

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: August 15th, 2021, 1:38 pm Difficult decisions need to be made as a result of these labor shortages.

For a place like Dairy Queen, they should probably only sell hot food during certain hours. In the evenings, Dairy Queen seems to do a very high volume of ice cream business and then 1 in about 15 orders have some kind of a hot item. These orders cause the entire line to stop since no hot food is made (not enough volume to cook and hold) so it has to be cooked. You either have to dedicate an employee to hot food who is standing around most of the time or pull someone else to handle it further causing an efficiency loss. It isn't worth it.

These businesses need to make some serious changes to their operation, to make things more efficient, to survive these labor shortages. It is clear that increasing wages to $15/hr, offering sign on bonuses, etc. is not helping them attract enough staff to move back to normal operations. Increasing wages is helping them at least attract enough staff to stay open in some form/limited form at all...
No reason to stop the line - just have the customer wait for the food off to the side and continue serving everyone else their ice cream. Or just have a line for anyone who wants food and another for just desserts/drinks.

Also easy enough to have an employee who does mostly ice cream and then goes over to cook as needed - it would slow the ice cream filling a tiny bit, but not that much.
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Re: Dairy Queen hours reduced due to supply issues

Post by storewanderer »

BillyGr wrote: August 17th, 2021, 7:58 am
No reason to stop the line - just have the customer wait for the food off to the side and continue serving everyone else their ice cream. Or just have a line for anyone who wants food and another for just desserts/drinks.

Also easy enough to have an employee who does mostly ice cream and then goes over to cook as needed - it would slow the ice cream filling a tiny bit, but not that much.
Older Dairy Queens had the system you described with separate lines for food and for drinks.

Any time you move an employee from Task A to Task B and back to Task A again you lose efficiency. Also working with hot food requires a few different motions, by the book. Moving from ice cream to hot food- let's say someone orders a burger and fries. Off with the gloves being worn for ice cream, and need to wash hands to go into the cooler and get the raw meat patty. Throw it into the grill and wash hands again (from touching raw meat) and change gloves. Wait the 3 minutes for the burger to cook and prep the bun/lettuce/fries etc. in the mean time. Wrap the burger up, grab the fries, and put it on the line to serve. Change gloves (and wash hands...) again after you leave burger prep and go back to ice cream prep. Those tasks easily take minutes over the course of a shift and turn into hours over the course of a year.
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Re: Dairy Queen hours reduced due to supply issues

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: August 17th, 2021, 6:14 pm Older Dairy Queens had the system you described with separate lines for food and for drinks.

Any time you move an employee from Task A to Task B and back to Task A again you lose efficiency. Also working with hot food requires a few different motions, by the book. Moving from ice cream to hot food- let's say someone orders a burger and fries. Off with the gloves being worn for ice cream, and need to wash hands to go into the cooler and get the raw meat patty. Throw it into the grill and wash hands again (from touching raw meat) and change gloves. Wait the 3 minutes for the burger to cook and prep the bun/lettuce/fries etc. in the mean time. Wrap the burger up, grab the fries, and put it on the line to serve. Change gloves (and wash hands...) again after you leave burger prep and go back to ice cream prep. Those tasks easily take minutes over the course of a shift and turn into hours over the course of a year.
Not sure which book that is - obviously washing and changing gloves when handling raw meat makes sense but some of the other not so much.

Do they even have to have gloves for ice cream (unless they actually touch something - isn't that why most places use a napkin or similar for the bottom of the cone)? Everything else you are handling machines/utensils/cups and not the actual ice cream or toppings. Maybe some do, but I can't remember seeing that at most ice cream places.

Perhaps pre-stage the meat patties so that one could "grab" one with a utensil (thus not actually touching it) and put it onto the cooking surface? Same to grab anything to be fried (tongs for pieces of chicken like strips for instance). That means one less washing, just gloves to handle the actual food.
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Re: Dairy Queen hours reduced due to supply issues

Post by storewanderer »

BillyGr wrote: August 18th, 2021, 4:12 pm
Not sure which book that is - obviously washing and changing gloves when handling raw meat makes sense but some of the other not so much.

Do they even have to have gloves for ice cream (unless they actually touch something - isn't that why most places use a napkin or similar for the bottom of the cone)? Everything else you are handling machines/utensils/cups and not the actual ice cream or toppings. Maybe some do, but I can't remember seeing that at most ice cream places.

Perhaps pre-stage the meat patties so that one could "grab" one with a utensil (thus not actually touching it) and put it onto the cooking surface? Same to grab anything to be fried (tongs for pieces of chicken like strips for instance). That means one less washing, just gloves to handle the actual food.
Some places have local health regulations that require the use of gloves when preparing food. This would apply to the ice cream as well. Other places may just require hand washing between tasks and no gloves.

If they moved from one station to another they should wash their hands and change gloves. Part of this is also due to the "moving" from one station to another. Do they touch a wall along the way, inadvertently touch their face/hair, pull up their pants, etc.?

Pre-staging the meat is fine but then that utensil needs to be cleaned as well. You shouldn't have a utensil sitting out there all day being used once or twice an hour without being cleaned that is being used to touch raw meat (that would need to be cleaned between uses... of course cleaning it requires more hand washing and time). However when they go into that cooler, when they touch that bag or box or wrap that has the raw burger or the raw chicken strip that is again contact with raw food so there needs to be some hand washing after that before they go touch a bun or touch the lettuce, etc...
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