Catering is a different business from a restaurant. In a restaurant demand fluctuates and is estimated; in catering the order is known in advance. That makes frozen planning far more calculable — but it does not make planning unnecessary.
Where should planning start?
Most businesses start from the menu. It should start from capacity.
Three capacities get measured: freezer volume, thawing space and cooking capacity.
The smallest of the three determines how many portions you can produce in a day. However large the other two are, the answer does not change.
In practice the bottleneck is usually thawing space. Oven capacity is adequate, freezer capacity is adequate, but the shelf area you can thaw on at two degrees is limited.
A menu plan built without that calculation jams on the day of service.
How is thawing capacity calculated?
There is a simple method, done once.
First measure the net shelf area of the refrigeration allocated to thawing. Write it in square metres.
Then set the product weight per tray. For frozen product on a standard gastronorm tray, 3 to 5 kilograms is a reasonable range.
Thawing time varies by product: sliced meat eight hours, whole pieces twenty-four, bakery twelve.
Those three figures give you the total kilograms you can thaw per day. Divided by portion weight, you have your cover count.
Leave twenty percent headroom. A plan using the full capacity collapses on a single delay.
| Product group | Thawing time (2-4 °C) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sliced meat | 8-12 hours | Single layer on tray |
| Whole cuts | 24-36 hours | Measure core temperature |
| Bakery (raw) | 10-14 hours | Can be combined with proving |
| Bakery (par-baked) | No thawing | Straight to the oven |
| Vegetables and potatoes | No thawing | Cook from frozen |
| Cakes and desserts | 6-8 hours | Keep packaging closed |
Which products are used without thawing?
This distinction directly affects capacity and most businesses miss it.
Frozen vegetables, frozen potatoes and par-baked bakery are cooked from frozen. They consume no thawing space.
Raising the share of those products on the menu widens the thawing bottleneck directly.
On a four-hundred-cover menu, for instance, choosing a frozen vegetable garnish frees the shelf area needed for the main course.
The same logic applies to desserts. Par-baked frozen desserts go into the oven on the day; thawed desserts occupy space from the day before.
Why track stock turnover?
Frozen product does not spoil, but that does not make stock limitless.
Product held a long time picks up frost, dries at the surface and loses quality. Even at minus eighteen degrees, quality life is not infinite.
Reasonable quality life by group: bakery six months, vegetables twelve, red meat eight, poultry six, ready meals three.
Calculate turnover monthly: average stock divided by monthly usage. If that figure exceeds the quality life of the group, you are holding too much.
Physical organisation has to support it. First-in-first-out breaks easily when new product goes at the front of the shelf; date labels and shelf discipline prevent that.
How are menu and product matched?
Not every dish suits frozen product, and forcing it lowers the result.
Sauced dishes and oven-baked dishes work well with frozen product. The sauce masks the small textural differences that thawing creates.
In directly cooked items such as grills and sautés the difference is more visible. There, product quality and correct thawing become critical.
In salads and cold mezes frozen components are used sparingly. Frozen fruit and frozen pulses are the exception.
Take service time into account when building the menu. Dishes that will hold for a long period call for more robust products; dishes plated at the last moment can carry delicate ones.
How is the transport stage managed?
In catering there is a distance between production and consumption, and that distance is part of the plan.
Hot food has to travel above 63 degrees. A thermobox alone is not enough; the food has to enter it above 75 degrees so it does not drop below 63 on the way.
Cold product has to travel below 5 degrees. When carrying with ice packs, distribute them beside and above the product rather than only underneath; cold air falls.
Transport temperature should be recorded. Measuring at departure and arrival is both a legal obligation and evidence when something goes wrong.
If the journey exceeds two hours, an actively refrigerated vehicle is required. Passive insulation will not hold the limit that long.
How is waste reduced?
In catering, waste arises in two places: preparation and service.
The way to cut preparation waste is to use portioned frozen product. Buying whole and cutting looks cheaper, but the gap closes once trim loss and labour are added.
The way to cut service waste is to cook in batches. Splitting production to follow the service flow, rather than cooking everything at once, reduces what is left over.
Product that has been thawed but not used cannot be refrozen. There has to be a plan for using it the next day; otherwise it is waste outright.
Keep a waste log. Track which product is lost, at which stage, and how much, for three months, and the menu and order quantities correct themselves.
What should be asked of a supplier?
Delivery temperature is the first condition. Ask to see the vehicle's temperature record; minus eighteen degrees belongs in the contract.
Pack size is the second. A twenty-kilogram case is wrong for a business using ten kilograms a day; an opened case picks up frost.
Delivery frequency is the third. Two deliveries a week require less storage space than one and improve stock turnover.
Ask for the product specification in writing: portion weight, thickness, coating ratio, thawing instructions. Those figures are the basis of your menu calculation.
Finally, keep an alternative supplier. In catering there is no luxury of postponing an order; working from a single source turns that supplier's stock problem into your cancellation.
