For restaurant owners, making menu choices can be difficult at times. The preferences of your potential customers will depend on their ethnicity, their preferences, and their budgets. Fortunately, some food items seem to please crowds no matter where they come from. Pie is one of these foods. Savory pies like chicken pot pies, curry pies, mince meat pies, and deep-dish pizza pies make excellent offerings for lunch or for dinner. For dessert, lemon meringue, chocolate, coconut cream, blueberry, cherry, sweet potato, and pumpkin pies can all be delicious.
Savory pies and sweet pies can both making appealing menu items, but it is important to make sure that you have the means to produce them as well. That is why it is important to use the right commercial ovens and other restaurant equipment items when making sweet or savory pies at a restaurant. Your new menu offerings are sure to please new customers and regulars alike, as well as any potential critics from local newspapers, magazines, or websites.
Savory Support for Your Menu
Savory pie can be sold at restaurants by the slice or whole. Some customers might like to buy whole pies to go to serve to their families for dinner or to bring to potluck events. Chicken pot pie is probably the most classic, traditional savory pie but there are a wide variety of other savory pies that can also be prepared. Deep dish pizza pies contain crowd pleasing assortments of vegetables, meats, cheeses, and sauce. Your restaurant may wish to serve a slice of savory pie alongside a cup of soup or a small salad as a daily lunch special. You can also offer whole pies family style for dine in or to go service. Pay attention to sales and make sure to prepare enough pies in advance before service each day.
Sweet Sugary Closure
A slice from a sweet pie makes the perfect ending to any meal. When people think about pie, the sweet varieties can often be the first varieties that they think about. Pie can be served warm from the oven, at room temperature, or cold. It can be served whole or by the slice. Pie is especially delicious when served to customers freshly baked and topped with homemade whipped cream or homemade vanilla ice cream. Consider serving a wide variety of different pie options on a rotating basis in order to determine which are your customers favorites. You may want to serve blueberry pie, chocolate cream pie, coconut cream pie, lemon meringue pie, key lime pie, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and apple pie, as a few options. Some sweet pies are especially delicious during certain seasons or times of year. For example, customers are likely to indulge in sweet potato or pumpkin pie around Thanksgiving time. Around Christmas time, you may sell lots of apple pies to go. Pies can be appetizingly displayed to customers in a variety of classic ways. Some diners and bistros have dessert cases up front, filled with appealing pies, cakes, cookies, tarts, and other sweets. Others use dessert carts after dinner service.
Baked-In Considerations
When adding pies to your restaurant menu, it is important to make sure that you are working with all of the right equipment. It is essential that pie making does not disrupt any of the other important work that your kitchen staff completes in the back of the house. Make sure to purchase commercial ovens that are adequately sized to meet your needs. These ovens should also reach high temperatures quickly and efficiently in order to keep up with demand. If you do not have enough room in your ovens to prepare and bake fresh pies daily, it may be time to upgrade. Adding sweet and savory pies to your restaurant menus can help you to generate new business and get great reviews. Pies are also time and cost efficient to prepare. Up-selling guests to add pie to their meals is a great technique to add a few dollars to each ticket while still keeping customers happy. If your ovens cannot keep up, then you will miss out on this potential business revenue.
Taste Buds Are the Real Winners
In the debate between savory pie and sweet pie, there is no clear winner. For restaurant owners, the best bet might just be selling both. Savory pies are great for lunch and dinner, while sweet pies make for the perfect snack or dessert. Selling pie can benefit your restaurant whether pies are sold in house or to go, sliced or whole. What is most important is that you have the means to keep up with all of your new customers. When people hear that your restaurant is the best place in town to go for savory or sweet pies, you just might see a boost in business. If your ovens cannot keep up, neither can you, so make sure you’ve got a solid commercial oven around.
