Food Services

Bonavista lacks a year-round cheap food service. Bonavista has one or two places to eat year-round, but they tend to be “fish and chips” with salads, rather than home-cooked meals.

Home-cooked meals are easy to prepare, because by definition, they are cooked in the home.

Below is a sequence of photographs showing the preparation of five margarine-tubs of turkey stew.

Two frozen turkey thighs were defrosted in the refrigerator on Tuesday (saves money by using the frozen thighs to absorb heat, passively, from the refrigerator). On Thursday the thighs were simmered in a large pot (top-right of this image) for three hours and left to cool (“continue cooking”) overnight.

Now on Friday, the two thighs have been drained in the yellow colander and are being chopped up into one-centimetre chunks. The diced cooked turkey meat is contained in a container that looks quite like the sort of container you would see in a fast-food made-to-order sandwich shop. Funny, that.

In the colander you can see the large chunks of meat that are draining. Passively. The chunks of drained meat are transferred to the cutting board, chopped, and transferred to the plastic tub.

The diced meat has been transferred back into the large pot which still contains the liquor from the simmering process.

Six large potatoes and three large carrots have been peeled and diced, and are sitting in cold water in our plastic tub.

The colander holds four large onions, diced, waiting to be caramelized.

The largest tub holds the beans, twenty-four hours after being set to soak. Passively. The beans have just reached a simmer-point. One could use rice ...

The diced onions are simmering in the frying pan as I type. More passive activity. Once the onions are ready, they, and the diced meat and diced vegetables will be tipped into the very large pot. To this will be added a tablespoon each of ground black pepper, curry powder, and mustard powder.

Also a 375 ml can of tomato paste. The lot stirred in and left to simmer for one or two hours.

After that, Give Thanks that you have been saving margarine tubs for a few weeks, then ladle into the tubs, lids on, let cool (i.e. passively transfer heat to your winter-time house) and then into the freezer with them.

Here are two three-pound and three two-pound tubs, filled with turkey stew.

Not soup, but filling meat and beans and potato and carrot.

One pound of stew is more than I can eat, so twelve pounds of stew is about twenty-four meals for me. Not bad for $20 plus vegetables, eh?

Enough hot meals for a growing lad for a month. Or over a reduced period, for delivery to households. Or for serving at one of the two tables in the kitchen.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, start the next soup of stew. Substitute everything you can – frozen chicken or beef for turkey, Jerusalem artichokes for potatoes, parsnips or Swede turnip or pumpkin for carrots.

Every now and then add some garlic cloves to the onions.

Every now and then puree the stew for people who have recently had dental surgery; or for people who feel that they need to drive and “have no time for eating”. These meals can be sucked from a large sippy-cup, which you might have to buy and supply at cost to customers.

If you are friends with someone who runs a saw mill, pay them in prepared meals to make chopping boards and a kitchen bench. Let customers know that they too can have local timber sawn into chopping boards and kitchen benches.

On the walls of your kitchen hand paintings and photographs of local scenes, produced by local artists. Such images would be subject to wiping clean (fat vapours condense on kitchen surfaces)

(1) Delivery service $5/order regardless of size. Do not sub-contract. If anyone tips for delivery, you want the tip. More to the point you need personal contact with as many customers as possible so that you can inform them of ingredients, next week’s meal, and so on. This strengthens your business presence.

(2) Home-grown potatoes and carrots and onions. Passive. Do not sub-contract. Why pay for potatoes when, in less than three hours, you can plant enough potato eyes to supply yourself with many months of potatoes. Dug on the day you prepare to use them. Now that’s fresh!

(3) Make your own root cellars from 25-litre plastic buckets holding well-rinsed road grit.

(4) Include a suggestion form with every delivery or sale. The form has your web-page URL, email address and telephone number in a visible font. Encourage business by asking for suggestions.

(5) Sample, then buy. You will always have a thawed tub of each stew on hand in the refrigerator. A set of small bowls (half-cup capacity) will allow customers to sit at a table and engage in conversation while you continue your daily task of food preparation and prepare their order.

(6) If you have access to a print service in Bonavista, print your simple, basic recipe on the back of the customer comments/suggestion form and encourage people to save money by cooking-at-home.

Exercise (1)

Visit two supermarkets and record the cost for the ingredients mentioned in the text above (two kilograms frozen turkey thighs; six large potatoes, four large carrots, four medium onions, one pound packet of haricot/navy beans.

On a side list note the cost of ground black pepper, mustard, curry.

Exercise (2)

Make a list of hurdles. An Hurdle is something that you perceive as a delay to progress. A fallen tree in the forest is a hurdle; you can climb over it, or at the very worst, you can walk around it.

Exercise (3)

Make a list of obstacles. An Obstacle is something that you perceive as an block to progress. A five-mile wide river is an obstacle to a pedestrian or cyclist, as is an ocean.

Exercise (4)

Justify each obstacle. Devise a way to convert the obstacle into a hurdle. Then move it from your list of obstacles to your list of hurdles.

Exercise (5)

Find a friend or relation who does their own cooking and food preparation. Discuss with them the benefits of a food service. You will be surprised at how many self-sufficient families will jump at the chance for “something different tonight”

Exercise (6)

Now that you are prepared, convince a friend to go into the Food Service business. Five years later tell yourself, sadly, that you could have done it yourself five years ago, were you not such a coward.

Exercise (7)

Remember these business maxims:-

(a) The answer is always “Yes”

(b) Never lie

(c) Never make a promise or a threat that you are not prepared to keep.

(d) Management Measures (using the four quantifiers)

AND

(e) “If it ain’t written down, it don’t exist”. Hence this document.

Next topic: The easy way to obtain a bank loan of $100,000 to start a business.

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