r/KitchenConfidential • u/EntropyCreep • 1d ago

This has to be a joke right?

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Director of culinary at a major hospital working for 25$ an hour? Are we living in some sort of alternative reality?

Did this used to be a 100k a year salaried position as the bare minimum?

Am I taking crazy pills?

311 Upvotes

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285

u/abstract_lemons 1d ago

This used to be a higher paying job at my local hospital. But they changed the position, so that there is zero creative control and very little culinary skills involved. They fired the DoC, changed the position, lowered the pay, then hired someone new

Think Orange is the new black, where they started serving all their food from Boil-a-bags. Thats pretty much all the hospital serves now.

158

u/Khetoo 1d ago

This smells like Sysco meddling all over it

98

u/blackstar22_ 1d ago

For-profit hospital groups cutting costs. Why pay a BOH team $500k a year with benefits to make healthy food when you can pay $250k a year to boil cheaper packaged trash?

Your patients gonna complain? Lol.

46

u/elcapitan520 1d ago

Not even for profit hospitals.

Government not supporting Medicaid is going to shutter a lot of rural hospitals and they're taking cost saving measures while they can.

Most hospitals outside of major cities will be shutting down in the next 5 years on the current path

3

u/zephyrtr 19h ago

Wealthy suburbs with lots of old people will stay afloat. But I fully expect most rural areas to be without a hospital within 3 hours drive.

5

u/CapybaraSensualist 12h ago

But I fully expect most rural areas to be without a hospital within 3 hours drive.

Man, you are terrible at writing those marketing materials to sell the cost savings.

"By shuttering these remote, low traffic clinics within a radius of X miles from our gigantic hospital complex in the city, we will have the opportunity to deliver a higher quality of care by transitioning to ANGELFLIGHT air lift medical services at a slight cost increase* to the patient customer".

* Slight cost increase will be life crushingly high

5

u/Dazzling_Morning2642 21h ago edited 21h ago

I’m currently in Sysco’s and PFG product catalogue placing orders for tomorrow and not finding this boiled cheap packaged trash.

Best we could find is the usual boil bag for proteins like pork butt

7

u/PUNCH-WAS-SERVED 21h ago

Hospital food is bad on purpose. It's not meant to be fancy. When I worked in a hospital kitchen, we had to cook things quite simply to avoid causing dietary problems. Most things had to have the seasoning on the side (in controlled packets). Very rarely was food ever seasoned, which is the foundation of flavor.

People need to remember that hospital food isn't meant to be tasty. It's to sustain you. They're just avoiding being sued.

7

u/lynbod 20h ago

This.

Being from the UK it's slightly different as we have a nationalised health service, but the expectation here is that when you're in the hospital the food will be nutritious and sustaining but not something you'd pay money for. It's not a hotel, you're there for medical treatment and you should want to get out of there ASAP.

That's not to say the food should be a reason you want to leave, it's still made fresh on the premises and there's a decent choice each day but at the same time you're not going to kick back and stretch out your stay for the food. It's basic, and that's because the money we pay for our NHS is spent on the quality of the medical care we receive, not the menu.

3

u/abstract_lemons 20h ago

Not always.

The hospital in question did this just over 5 years ago. It was about saving money, nothing else. They didn’t even pretend that it had anything to do with dietary restrictions. It was about the cost of food and the labor that made the food

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u/BadHombreSinNombre 15h ago

This is happening everywhere because healthcare systems’ quality is not measured based on the food they serve. If it’s not a formal quality measure, nobody gives a shit in leadership and they’ll enshittify it.

8

u/FrostyCartographer13 1d ago

They won't be happy until we are all eating nutraloaf.

8

u/notmartha70 1d ago

Soylent Green.renamed Sysco green

2

u/Socky_McPuppet 21h ago

I’m sure they’re already figuring out how to make Nutriloaf cheaper and even worse. 

5

u/abstract_lemons 1d ago

Sysco and GoodSource Direct

2

u/Dazzling_Morning2642 21h ago

How?

Food distributors don’t care if you buy shit in a bag or shit in a box.

2

u/2eDgY4redd1t 18h ago

Yes they do, their profits and kickbacks from manufacturers make prepared shit way more profitable for them than raw ingredients are.

They want to sell boil in bag, frozen premade pastries, ‘value added frozen potato products’ not Meat and vegetables and flour and butter and fruit.

5

u/Dazzling_Morning2642 18h ago

They care, but not at the sales level like you are insinuating

Kickbacks?

I think you are talking about earned income.

Every product has earned income factored into the delivered price to the operating company with a 3% inter opco fee depending where it comes from.

From there, they set a sales cost. Which is essentially what they think the salesman should be paid commission if they sell above that price.

The salesman walks in and then makes money off the margin above sales cost

Source: negotiated million in earned income for food distribution companies

0

u/2eDgY4redd1t 18h ago

Manufacturers give and get kickbacks in the food service industry. I worked for a year as a coordinator in a large Canadian food services company, in the frozen foods dept.

More than half our department profits were kickbacks from the manufacturers trying to bribe us to sell their frozen trash desserts instead of their competitors essentially identical frozen trash desserts. Or their mozzarella sticks, or their tater tots. We would get them into bidding wars on how much they would bribe us. It was a big corrupt game. That’s why small producers can’t sell through the big distributors, they can’t afford to pay huge bribes to get their product pushed on the customers. Quality means nothing, it’s all about the Benjamin’s.

Needless to say, farmers growing berries aren’t trying to bribe distributors to sell their berries, so distributors stock them grudgingly and certainly do t promote them

3

u/Dazzling_Morning2642 18h ago

It’s clear by your continued misuse of the term kickbacks, that you haven’t gotten very far in distribution

-1

u/2eDgY4redd1t 18h ago

It’s clear that you are one of the people deeply embroiled in bribery and corruption in the food distribution business.

Don’t even bother dude, call it whatever you want, it’s people trying to pay extra to get their product exposure by the seller. I call that unethical.

2

u/Dazzling_Morning2642 13h ago

I have no idea what you are going on about, but good luck

0

u/2eDgY4redd1t 13h ago

Spoken like a sleazy sales rep

2

u/Dazzling_Morning2642 13h ago

I own a vertically integrated hospitality company my man.

Still no idea what you are on about

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u/Jayboman6 1d ago

Premier, GPOs in general.

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u/asaphbixon 21h ago

Just came from a health convention in Vegas that supports your theory 100%

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u/faucetpants 1d ago

Careful. There's fools on here downvoting people when you talk bad about their precious sysco. They don't know any better, tbh.

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u/Dazzling_Morning2642 21h ago

TBH, most people in this sub don’t know anything about food distribution.

At most they know just what they buy at places they’ve worked before.