We eat almost 450,000 lunches a year
In the long run, the number of boarders decreased as the number of employees of U. S. Steel Košice decreased. The so-called "meals" in our country have long ranged from 50 to 55%, depending on the month of the year. The absolute numbers are interesting. The canteen in the Entrance Area serves 60,000 lunches a year, the ÚMD canteen 170,000 lunches and the canteen at DZ Studená valcovňa another 50,000 lunches, which are prepared in the kitchen in the Entrance Area, which is a total of 280,000 lunches. Plus 167,000 servings of chilled food.
10 tons of food are thrown away
Will we eat everything that the cooks serve us on our plates? "Last year's organic waste, i.e. what came back from the plates, what people did not eat, weighed 10.2 tons, which means that approximately 18 grams are thrown away from one serving, which is not that much. We are trying to stop or significantly reduce food waste. Sometimes a little is enough. It is enough for a weaker eater or a less hungry customer to ask the cook to give him fewer dumplings or a smaller portion of food. In order to stop or reduce food waste, this is also the purpose of our novelty, which we have introduced in the canteen in the Entrance Area and which customers praise very much, and that is warm counters. The customer pays for the weight of the food, so we assume that he will only take as much as he eats. From today, we also have such warm counters in the ÚMD canteen and soon they will also be in the Repre restaurant," explains Vladimír Balog.
News has taken hold
Among the innovations introduced last year and which are very popular is the central production of baguettes and salads, which will gradually be joined by bakery products such as baked buns, steamed buns and cakes that people like. They will also continue in the so-called gastro calendars, hosting chefs from Slovakia and abroad. When compiling the menu, they also think of those who have some intolerance to gluten, to milk....: "If we wanted to prepare such dishes, we would have to have separate premises in which we would prepare them, special chefs... Which is not possible in our conditions. But we can always meet everyone's needs. When a customer comes who says that he has an intolerance to gluten, for example, the cooks tell him which dishes do not contain flour, or he gets soup without pasta.... This is also solved by a warm counter, where you can always find, for example, vegetables - baked, stewed, grilled..."
Feedback via QR code
They get feedback via a QR code. We were interested in whether and what people write, what they are satisfied with, what they are dissatisfied with. Vladimír Balog said: "It is very gratifying that the number of those who will thank, for example, for "heaven in a mouth", a fabulous dish, has slowly begun to rise. However, those who were not satisfied with something, that they had undercooked potatoes or overcooked rice, or criticize that we do not have something very special on offer, write more. However, we must focus on the widest possible group of boarders to accommodate as many people as possible. Or they criticize us for not having pizza on the menu. It's all about people, when, for example, a good pizza maker drops out due to illness or vacation, we prefer not to offer pizza on that day. It's definitely better than putting someone at the oven who doesn't know how to make pizza and people would be even more dissatisfied."
Why are buffet prices high?
They have been facing criticism for prices in buffets for a long time. People complain that compared to the prices in the city, those in our buffets are much higher. Why is that? "The basis of our work is to provide U. S. Steel Košice employees with hot food. We cannot compete with retail chains in terms of sales volume in buffets. And that's why the prices correspond to that. When a retail chain sells, for example, 500 kilos of flour per day in its stores, and in our cafeterias barely 3 kilos of flour are sold, it is clear that the retail chain can fight for lower prices from the manufacturer or supplier than we do. It's like that with everything – coffee, yoghurts, salami...."
Only new cutlery disappears
We were also interested in one piece of information. Our diners sometimes tend to "forget" to return the cutlery. What is the "trend" in this area? We learned that 80 cutlery sets are "lost" per month. It is almost a thousand a year. "Disappearances" always occur after the replenishment of new cutlery, and "mysteriously" only the new, not yet "shabby" ones are lost.
The catering company Delirest has been satisfying the hungry stomachs of ironworkers since 2013, although in the meantime it has changed its name three times, the people in the kitchens and cafeterias have remained almost the same. Have our eating habits changed? "We focus more on warm food, which is much more beneficial and financially advantageous for health. Have a soup, main course, vegetable salad and a drink for €4.65 for lunch, or some mayonnaise salad, salami and rolls at a similar price? It is clearly more advantageous and healthier to head to the dining room instead of the buffet," says Vladimír Balog.
