1y ago

What is a well known 'public secret' in the industry you work in that the majority of outsiders are unaware of?

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Supermarket employee here. We have a "fresh" fish counter selling stuff like whole mackerels and raw salmon fillets and the like.
Each and every one of these has been frozen at least once - this is a mandatory health hazard prevention thing (to kill off parasites etc) and also basically the only food-safe way to transport them in great quantities over long distances without them going bad. They get delivered frozen solid, get thawed behind the scenes and then put on display / on ice for customers to buy. And then they're lying there all day long until someone happens to buy some .... people still treat the pre-packaged fish from the frozen foods aisle as a second choice, even tho those have NOT been lying around half-thawed in the open air for 10 hours straight.
Long story short, "fresh" fish from the counter is less fresh than the frozen stuff, despite customers commonly believing it to be the other way around.
- Hold up, you mean that market in the middle of nowhere (like Kansas) with “fresh caught” fish was not caught by my local fisherman.
  Shocked, I tell you 😂
  
  Oh you'd be surprised ... by the way, the same goes for literally everything at the bakery counter. Heard a customer complain once that she won't ever buy pretzels in the store again because they weren't actually freshly made, the employees just tossed prepackaged frozen pretzels ino the oven yadda yadda ... uhhhm lady, do you really think they're kneading dough behind the scenes?! Never wondered why your croissants, bread rolls and the like always have the same shape, size and weight? It's almost as if they were made in a factory or something ...
  ....yet these, too, are treated like first choice over the frozen bread rolls you can bake at home, because "a real baker made them" ...
  
  The bakery part hits me especially hard, I'm living in germany, where many people are proud of the bread culture, and you basically need to look for artisan bakeries to get stuff they actually made themselves instead of having frozen stuff delivered and just baked in the store. The saddest part is most people don't realize, while still writing comments online about how "american bread is just sugar"
  
  If you're ever in San Francico there's this hole in the wall Bob's Donuts on Polk Street, go there after 8pm and order whatever was just made. Eat a five-minute-old donut.
  Bob's supplies most of the cafés and donut shops in San Francisco, and tapping the source is a fast way to becoming a donut snob and addict.
  
  The Bay Area is actually pretty good for fresh made food. You can watch someone take the crab off the boat and then make it for you.
  Most of the US is not like this.
  
  On top of that the Bay is also close to central valley farms for fresh fruit & vegetables
  
  Hear, hear. Another bullshit part about this is that they often explicitly ask for baker apprenticeship and/or certificates in the job description, and you still end up just tossing factory-made frozen dough clumps into an oven. Why do you first need to prove that you can make cakes and doughnuts and the like from scratch, in order to be allowed to toss frozen clumps from a factory into an oven? It makes no sense.
  
  Just a guess, but marketing and truth in advertising laws. They can then say they have real bakers preparing the products and not be lying.
  
  I have a micro-bakery (I run it completely alone) where I make everything from scratch, and every day I get customers who enter and immediately leave disappointed because I only have 6 or 7 different breads at most, when the big-name franchise store in the main street has literally dozens of varieties. Once one woman asked me why I wasn't baking fresh baguettes every hour like them. I don't know, lady... maybe because my baguettes take more than 3 hours just to do the first proofing, while they simply have to put industrial made ones in the oven?
  
  Please tell me more. I'm obsessed with good bread. Where are you based? Do you have to work mad hours to survive?
  
  Sorry for replying late.
  I am in East Asia. I work about 11 to 12 hours a day, every day. And it is NOT worth it, we survive because we are fortunate enough that my SO has a well paid job.
  If you really crave good bread, I can give you this advice: find yourself a copy of "Bread" by "Jeffrey Hamelman", get a nice baking stone (pizza stone?) for your oven, and bake it at home. It is incredibly easy (really, you will be amazed), and really satisfactory.
  
  I am eating a kaiser roll that was baked in my local grocery store at 3 am today.
  
  If they're by a creek, then maybe!
- In the UK that's not true here. I work at a supermarket distribution centre and fish comes in chilled not frozen.
  
  Given that the UK is largely surrounded by the ocean and is a mere smudge in comparison to some American states (Texas, California, ...). The logistics of the fish coming in chilled is feasible. As you move more inland in the United States (Arkansas, Tennessee, Kansas). Freshwater fish coming in chilled is just not possible or safe, unless shipped via overnight plane (very expensive!)
  
  Some fish in the UK is still frozen because it comes from outside of UK waters. Like tuna. But that's good, that means it's safe to cook a tuna steak medium rare.
  
  Ah, forgot to mention where I work ... Southern half of Germany. To get to the coast, you have to either drive through all of Germany to the "other side", or cross the border to France or Poland or whatever. Sea-dwelling fish like Mackerels just aren't "fresh" here.
- Along with this, just because you are going to a shoreline restaurant, doesn't mean you are getting fresh seafood. The same frozen fish that gets deep fried in that quaint shore town is the same frozen fish served 6 hours inland.
- Yep, I always ask for the bag of frozen shrimp, and smack my husband upside the head when he buys the thawed stuff. I've TOLD you, over and over, get the frozen bag!!
  
  Hit him with the frozen shrimp bag, maybe he'll remember for the next time.
  
  That's what I pictured when I read it
  
  and smack my husband upside the head when he buys the thawed stuff
  Is that considered a form of foreplay in your house?
  Otherwise, ouch!
- I have an allergy to a bacteria that grows on fish during the freeze/thaw process. I can definitively say that if you don't catch it yourself, or witness it being caught and prepared, then it's been frozen. I've tried a few "fresh" fish places, and the result is always a sleeve of benedryl and being itchy for 3 days.

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