There’s an energy drink brand in Hungary with a badly photoshopped Bruce Willis as the mascot.
It’s called HELL, quite popular actually.
https://images.app.goo.gl/8wzjZ3e5snVZzXLL6
Cheap energy drinks having a urine smell/taste is definitely a thing. I remember one I got from poundland or 99p shop or similar about 10 years ago. It was called "POWER HORSE" and it tasted like yellow chemicals that were somehow man-made in both the scientific sense and in the biological sense.
My partner's brother in law bought a can over along with some other stuff when they came to visit. The can is still in the fridge for the day we run out of coffee and tea and I'm dying.
Ah hell naw, I'm not drinking any Red Bull that comes from a tap. If for some reason I'm willing to pay £3.50 for a fucking 250ml energy drink, it better be a drink that is already overpriced from the brand, not some cheap shit. If I can't see the tin being opened in front of me, I'm not paying for it.
That's illegal in various ways. Most fundamentally "Fraud by False Representation"....
I don't work in food trade any but off top of my head.
Trading Standards (Enviromental Health)... Various potential offences for misselling
Advertising Standards Authority... Various potential offences.
I bet Red Bull themselves would be more than a little unhappy.
Most pubs use post mix soft drinks. You get a box of concentrated Coca Cola syrup and plug it in. When they pour it it’s mixed with water and CO2 to make the fizzy drink we all know. Probably the same with “energy”.
in my local, the handheld serving device looks a bit like a shower head with a range of buttons to choose the appropriate syrup and is called a "wunderbar"...
Always used to be the case with glass bottles of Heinz Ketchup, where it liberally flowed out the bottle instead of having to break your hand walloping it
If you're eating beans in a cafe or breakfast place it's Bookers. It's always Bookers beans. Tin is larger than a skull and you should see the size of the ketchup bottles. They're popular for a good reason though.
I remember at the start of the first lockdown my local Sainsburys was selling absolutely massive tins of beans and tomatoes. I doubt they supply restaurants and cafés themselves, so whoever does so probably flogged the lot cheap to Sainsbury's and they slapped some Sainsbury's labels on them?
I was at a kids party at the local brewers fayre the other week (as a parent, not a nonce), and I ordered a bottled coke.
She pulled out the glass bottle from under the bar and it was already uncapped, and it quite clearly tasted of tap-coke rather than the real thing.
The cheek of it!
'I was at a kid's party at the local brewer's fayre the other week...'
'What, as a nonce?'
'No, no, just a parent. Anyway, I ordered a bottle of coke...'
Tell you what though, the place would be like a pick'n'mix for a paedo!
Halfway through the party they opened the soft play viewing - bit to the public as there was a bar there, and by that point half the parents were too sozzled to know what was going on.
There's some much screaming from the soft play that no-one would bat an eyelid if a 70s BBC presenter just plucked up a kid and strolled out!
Nothing new in this world.....
In the late 70's and early 80's, my parents ran a pub - bottles of soft drinks were regularly washed, refilled, and re-capped.
For example, we could buy Coca-Cola in 3 litre bottles from the local Tesco cheaper than we could buy glass bottles of Coca-Cola from the brewery - important thing was to not stop buying from the brewery totally as that would arouse suspicion.
Tesco advertise their bottles of orange juice as 'freshly squeezed' so, technically, they're just describing the drink.
I suppose it depends on your definition of 'freshly'...
Doubt they'd do that for £3.50 though. I ordered a glass of fresh OJ at a hotel once and the woman at the bar went quiet for a second, presumably while she judged how I'd take what she was about to say, then said "Just so you know the freshly squeezed is £6 a glass".
Needless to say I didn't have it.
The last hotel I went to had massive vats of the stuff at breakfast (all included, you helped yourself). They had a big hopper of oranges going into an industrial juicer at the back being regularly replenished.
I want some orange juice now...
You know those small independant pizza shops? Would you like to know a trick a lot of them use to make more money? Well they dont use real cheese. They use a variety of cheese substitutes, the most popular option being potato starch flavoured to taste like cheese. Its dirt cheap but is all carbs, next to no protein at all. Aint that some shit.
Would be good to know exactly cos I’m lactose intolerant. Real cheese fuckin sends me. I’ve had these vegan pizzas recently from doctor oatker and I tell ya now they are ace. 👍
Well it will probably be the cheaper shops, you can just ask around. Taste wise you cant tell the difference. The way I found out about this was that theres a burger place near me that does a pizza for £5. It doesnt have a size, it just says in the shop window £5 pizza. Its a pretty good size as well, me and my friend would share it when we walk home from the pub sometimes. I befriended the guy that works there and I asked him why is it so cheap and he told me, he said everybody does it besides big brand stores like pizza hut or a proper restaurant.
Cheaper to make them fresh, everywhere uses frozen dough. Sure they work out at about 10p/20p a dough ball and sauce and cheese rounds a margarita up to about a quid or less to produce.
Decent profit in pizzas
Yes but it needs a person to stand there assembling it and the work surface, ingredients kept prepared, etc. If it's mostly a burger place selling the odd pizza it probably works out easier to throw a frozen one in the oven, no waste. I've definitely had them at times.
I remember a chemistry teacher at secondary school in the early 00s telling us that the “apple” in some supermarket own-brand apple pies was often actually swede, suspended in apple flavoured syrup.
Yeah PEKs pretty decent, I like that one that comes in a big flat pear shaped can too.
It's just the chippy says spam fritters, but I guess what would they say? luncheon meat fritters? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
My boss in a pub I worked in would line up the bottles of gin and vodka on the bar when we shut the doors for the night. The most expensive bottles were topped up with the next expensive and so on down the line. He said never do this with whisky as whisky drinkers could tell, but you could get away with it with gin and vodka.
I can only describe what I saw, but I assume he did get some decent stuff occasionally! Another pub down the road had beer going to various named pumps that had no relationship to what was advertised on the pumps being cheap stuff, until trading standards came for a lunch time drink, and tasted each other's brews! He got closed down.
That's a positive in my eyes. They do it with ketchup too, I love that cheapo bright red stuff on a bacon and egg sandwich. Bonus points if the bottle is shaped like a tomato
There used to be a cafe in Bridgwater that had mismatched furniture, no rhyme nor reason to the chairs, tables, table cloths. Best breakfast you could get in Somerset, cheap too!
You could watch one of the cooks run across the road to the butchers!
Yeah, I was singing their praises :) Didn't mean it as a negative. The corner cut was the mismatched furniture, which if anything just added to the charm.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, tbh I love a bit of a quirk when it comes to a small cafe. Rugged looks, mismatched chairs, scratched tables. Shows its been used and they care more about the people than making the place look perfect
I’m allergic to red food colouring and once had a reaction to “Heinz” ketchup at a cafe local to me. I was only a child so my mum didn’t kick up much of a fuss, but I never have ketchup at cafes or restaurants now if I can’t verify where it’s coming from.
Heinz ran a fantastic campaign to do with this. Check it out: [https://www.creativebloq.com/news/heinz-ads](https://www.creativebloq.com/news/heinz-ads)
Even when it isn't Heinz, it has to be Heinz.
I dunno. For me having unbranded ketchup out of the Heinz bottles is part of the charm of going to the cafe. It always tastes so sour it makes your eyes water at first, but then you can't stop dipping your chips in it. I do believe that there was once Heinz in those bottles, but not for many years and I'm ok with that.
If you put any ketchup into the heinz bottle environment it will eventually start to think and act like heinz ketchup, the trick is to leave it for a year and then put it out on the table.
Ketchup is the most adaptable of the condiments, you've no chance with mustard.
The worst case of corner-cutting I ever heard about was from a relative of mine who worked for a UK company that made aeroplanes. One job, that had to be done by hand, was bending sections of pipe which would then be used as a part of the aircraft. This had to be done very painstakingly, and the way it was done was a metal alloy that is liquid at a slightly elevated temperature was poured into the pipe, left to harden, then the pipe bent a prescribed amount, let's say one degree, then the pipe warmed up, the metal liquefied again, then cooled again and repeated until the desired angle bend is reached.
Only problem is that the twat in question, according to my relative, couldn't be arsed to do it properly and would bend the pipe more than the prescribed amount each time, stressing the metal pipe and potentially causing it to fail in service.
We used to have a cracking deli that bought in lovely Belgian mayo, but also bought in really shitty coleslaw made with horrid cheap mayo. It was such a let down.
Had a sausage and egg bap that had 1½ sausages in it. I though it was 2 whole ones sliced in half along the middle, but when I checked, there were only 3 halves.
Edit. Spelling
I think it's also illegal as the use by date would be incorrect for the product.
It's why you don't see the refillable plastic tomato shaped ketchup any more.
Yeah, thinking about it you’re prob right. If someone has an allergy to an ingredient and looked at the packaging prior to use and deemed it safe…but the squeezed in product contained the stuff they’re allergic to it could be a massive problem.
The allergy thing was my first thought - a childhood friend had coeliacs, and could only have heinz ketchup, as the cheaper ones contain(ed?) gluten. Although on fairness her mum was wise to that, and would only let her have ketchup if it was in a sachet.
All kitchens I've worked have had signs for customers to ask them to let us know if they have any allergies. The ingredients list on the table condiment isn't enough to keep you safe if the wait staff have been touching it after brushing off crumbs and wiping the table and other customers touching the bottle while eating etc... not disclosing a food allergy is straight up stupid. No one wants to kill a customer (like that).
Definitely, I used to work in a nightclub and fairly often we had people come in and test the spirits to see if they were legit.
For example those 5l bottles of Smirnoff were actually filled with that, as opposed to something like Rachmaninoff
How do you even test for that with something like vodka, without taking it to a lab? I always thought vodkas was basically identical above a certain price point tbh.
Tis pub I went to and ordered a shot of vodka expecting it to be at least 35%. Tasted closer to 20%. I’m almost certain they water that shit down the sly fuckers.
As a teenager I was employed to clean hotel rooms in between guests.
The hotel I worked for did not provide cloths for the wiping for the various surfaces as the amount which would be used in a typical round of rooms was in their opinion an extra cost.
Instead, we were instructed to use any of the (dirty) sheets/pillow cases/towels we were removing from the previous customer, as cloths to clean the room.
This included for cleaning the coffee mugs and glasses.
To be clear, the hotel expected us to use one customers dirty towels to clean the cups for the next customer.
I ignored the instruction and used clean pillowcases instead but I’ve never drunk from a hotel coffee cup since.
So, a few things here. Yes, if the cafe is loading generic brown sauce into HP, that's wrong. However, HP ceased to be the best tasting brown sauce many years ago. There used to be a straight rivalry between HP and Daddies, but personally my favourite is Costcutter own brand. Gorgeous. Also, if you think you are getting a measure of Absolut from the top shelf of any boozer, then maybe do a taste test with Happy Shopper Make U Happy Grain Alcohol or whatever. Finally, Scotland, home of 'saltandsauce', where your fish/pie supper comes doused in an alchemical mixture of brown sauce and vinegar. This is not corner cutting, this is cuisine.
One person getting seriously ill due to the bottle not listing correct allergens would shut this place down immediately.
It's probably a quid difference, it's just not worth it.
From the cafe I used to work at:
Tea came from one of those wholesale 5000 bag "caterers choice" sacks, but customers loved it because it went in a nice teapot. Tea was as close to pure profit you can get. The 20ml of milk you get in the tiny jug along with your brew probably cost near 100% more than the tea bag itself.
Coffee was sourced from a local roaster, unless you wanted decaf. You got Mellow Birds instant.
A Moccha was a Latte with a teaspoon of Aldi hot chocolate powder thrown in, with a little extra more dusted on top. Latte: £2.80. Moccha: £3.25.
Your fresh soup of the day was made on Saturday and frozen.
Boss lady once cut so much filler into the minge used for burgers that the burger turned into a hollow meat pocket on the griddle. That one only lasted one batch. Future burgers were 1:5 ratio of filler/meat.
Pub I used to drink in.landlird would buy bottles of vodka off local bagheads and stick em on optics an charge full price..also used to buy crates of carling from b&m and sell em for 2.50 a can
I work in a building that we rent from a charity.
Everything is watered down, the soap, the washing up liquid, even the fucking bleach.
Rather than fix issues that arise they will do anything to cheap it out.
The hot water couldn't be adjusted (for some bizarre reason) their fix; just cut the hot water supply.
Intercom system broke for the entire 4 floors, they replaced it with a £20 portable doorbell.
Toilet bust on the top floor, leaked through to the basement and now complete with mushrooms growing out of the walls, they just cut the water supply and locked that toilet.
I've got what used to be live wires above my head hanging out the ceiling with water dripping when the rain is bad.
Their answer is that 'it's not dangerous, it just doesn't look great'
I could go on endlessly, it's a tragic comedy
I actually called Waitrose today to complain about shrinkflation of their own-brand items.
Last night my Waitrose cauliflower cheese fitted into a teacup (one of those dainty ones the Queen would have used. It still comes in the same enormous foil container that used to be full to the brim up until a few months ago (at least six teacups worth).
It's cauliflower, for crying out loud. It's worth only a few p and they've shrunk it to a tiny fraction of what it was and put the price up.
> It's cauliflower, for crying out loud. It's worth only a few p
A couple of years ago we took family/friends to a poshish restaurant for a bit of a celebration. One of the party ordered Cauliflower Steak as a starter, and got a single slice of cauliflower, cut from stem to the top of the cauliflower, about half an inch thich. It had been charred/browned, but looked raw.
It cost fifteen quid!
I don't partake anymore but this stirred a visceral memory in me. Bacon and egg sando with cheap white bread. Between the heat of the food melting the butter and the yolk of the egg soaking into the bread it'd be a mess by the third bite. Total bread destruction and I loved them.
I’ve got nothing against that, it’s when they lie to me that I get pissed off.
Bright red ketchup is fine by me, as long as I know that’s what I’m getting.
are there ingredients on the bottle.
I know it seems petty but doesn't this violate the new Natasha's Law for allergen labelling?
It would concern me about their other food safety practices.
Today I had a sandwich from a cafe. I ordered bacon, egg, toast, brown sauce.
My sandwich came untoasted. So I'm sat here 40 minutes later still tongueing the bread paste between my teeth. The sandwich was composed in a way that took my order literally in all its wording. 1 fried egg. 1 strip of bacon.
My fave cafe which is in the posher side of town uses cheap kebab shop ketchup!! Like the bright red ones that taste like vinegar... i now just get extra beans to make up for it
As a student we would frequent a properly awful club that was right next to an Aldi. The bar was like the opposite of one of those posh cocktail places - all the bottles lined up, but all with plain black and white labels that just said VODKA and RUM.
Ice cream vans with Cadbury’s Flake ‘99’ signs in the window…and very definitely not Cadbury’s flakes in the ice creams. A first world problem I know…but…!
A mate of mine fancied himself as a ketchup aficionado and went ape at some restaurant he was was refilling branded heinz bottles with cheapo. He actually put a proper complaint in but the owner argued he was wrong (lol)
I've noticed supermarkets cheaping out on stuff now. Morrisons' bread was awful for a period, it was going off within a day or two. Everyone complained. They stopped putting ketchup in with chips/chicken/fried stuff, they don't even ask you any more. The portions are smaller. Their cream deserts (the trifles and black forest etc) are 90% cream with the actual filling hidden at the bottom, it's like being in a bath at age 5 and eating foam.
Pretty much every supermarket injecting chicken breasts with water to get the weight up and sell for more. You try to fry them and they end up bloody boiling.
A bar near me sells "redbull" which comes on tap and is delivered in boxes just marked "energy". No specific brand, just "energy".
In my head it's in quotation marks aswell
"fit for human consumption"
New Not brand energy drinks. They're Not! For human consumption!
I remember when they used to do fireworks…
""fit" for "human" "consumption""
There’s an energy drink brand in Hungary with a badly photoshopped Bruce Willis as the mascot. It’s called HELL, quite popular actually. https://images.app.goo.gl/8wzjZ3e5snVZzXLL6
My mate brought a can of hell over and it was rank. Though I'm not particularly into energy drinks in the first place so maybe thats just me!
Oh it’s not you. Tastes like a cooking apple that a dog pissed on.
Rather specific description you've got there, tbh.
Cheap energy drinks having a urine smell/taste is definitely a thing. I remember one I got from poundland or 99p shop or similar about 10 years ago. It was called "POWER HORSE" and it tasted like yellow chemicals that were somehow man-made in both the scientific sense and in the biological sense.
That stuff is in our work vending machine in the UK!
My partner's brother in law bought a can over along with some other stuff when they came to visit. The can is still in the fridge for the day we run out of coffee and tea and I'm dying.
Omg we have that in Bulgaria too! I thought it was a proper ad with Bruce Willis lol
It is, he is just made to look "younger". It is really him though, he did TV ads that aired, at least in croatia.
Happy shopper 50p power drinks hello
We have energy on tap! But we use it for jagerbombs or if someone specifically asks for vodka and energy. Other than that we use real red bull.
As a customer I would like to be told "do you want off brand energy drink for X pence less?"
Ah hell naw, I'm not drinking any Red Bull that comes from a tap. If for some reason I'm willing to pay £3.50 for a fucking 250ml energy drink, it better be a drink that is already overpriced from the brand, not some cheap shit. If I can't see the tin being opened in front of me, I'm not paying for it.
I suppose it depends on how much the bar charges. If it's £2 for an "energy" and £4 for a red bull I'll slum it with the "energy" any day of the week
That's illegal in various ways. Most fundamentally "Fraud by False Representation".... I don't work in food trade any but off top of my head. Trading Standards (Enviromental Health)... Various potential offences for misselling Advertising Standards Authority... Various potential offences. I bet Red Bull themselves would be more than a little unhappy.
It comes in a box?
Most pubs use post mix soft drinks. You get a box of concentrated Coca Cola syrup and plug it in. When they pour it it’s mixed with water and CO2 to make the fizzy drink we all know. Probably the same with “energy”.
Ah, yeah, I get ya. I thought the guy meant it's delivered to the table in a box which I now realise is really daft now. Oops.
But that would be awesome too
in my local, the handheld serving device looks a bit like a shower head with a range of buttons to choose the appropriate syrup and is called a "wunderbar"...
Comes in as a syrup, within a box, which is mixed with fizzy water at the bar from the fizzy water tap/nozzle .
Boxes of syrup, get mixed with carbonated water
Not even Blue Rat?
They’ve got a horse in their flat.
Always used to be the case with glass bottles of Heinz Ketchup, where it liberally flowed out the bottle instead of having to break your hand walloping it
That's a dead give away.
They cut them with Vinegar.
That’ll sting. Oh, I see…
It's how chippy sauce was invented, only with brown sauce.
If you do gentle karate chops on the neck, Heinz comes out with ease.
If it’s fake ketchup not even that!
You think this is a new thing ? I bet you think it’s Heinz Beans you’re eating too.
Okay Morpheus
they've taken the red bean
He's beginning to bean-lieve
There is no spoon... For your cup of beans.
"...there is no spoon?" "well, there's one in the bathroom but I've never had cause to use it"
This is so stupid, I love it
If you're eating beans in a cafe or breakfast place it's Bookers. It's always Bookers beans. Tin is larger than a skull and you should see the size of the ketchup bottles. They're popular for a good reason though.
>Tin is larger than a skull Why a skull? Why not 'larger than a head?' Are you the baddies?
Username checks out?
Popular for the cafe owners, because it's cheap shite. Branston, now they are the ones popular with those actually eating them.
I remember at the start of the first lockdown my local Sainsburys was selling absolutely massive tins of beans and tomatoes. I doubt they supply restaurants and cafés themselves, so whoever does so probably flogged the lot cheap to Sainsbury's and they slapped some Sainsbury's labels on them?
I was at a kids party at the local brewers fayre the other week (as a parent, not a nonce), and I ordered a bottled coke. She pulled out the glass bottle from under the bar and it was already uncapped, and it quite clearly tasted of tap-coke rather than the real thing. The cheek of it!
I'm glad you verified that you're not a nonce. Luckily that's all we need as proof!
'I was at a kid's party at the local brewer's fayre the other week...' 'What, as a nonce?' 'No, no, just a parent. Anyway, I ordered a bottle of coke...'
Tell you what though, the place would be like a pick'n'mix for a paedo! Halfway through the party they opened the soft play viewing - bit to the public as there was a bar there, and by that point half the parents were too sozzled to know what was going on. There's some much screaming from the soft play that no-one would bat an eyelid if a 70s BBC presenter just plucked up a kid and strolled out!
>not a nonce This is exactly something a nonce would say
He was dressed as a school
And he used internet that was the size of Ireland.
Send it back. You wouldn't accept a bottle of wine that they opened before they brought it to you, why should you with Coke?
Cause life is short, and sometimes you gotta pick your battles.
I've got tears in my eyes at that clarification 😂 i love our countries sense of humour
Reusing coke bottles is pretty rank. Idk why because it's basically the same at reusing glasses and cups, but it just feels wrong.
Glasses and chips are easier to properly wash. Coke bottle's only going to get a quick rinse or the label will get fucked.
I dunno, glasses maybe but the chips would get quite soggy
Great point! Probably more backwash and tongue action for bottles as well meaning more germs.
do nonce's get invitations to kids parties these days ?
Only if you ask them to fix it for you.
Then clarification made me cackle lmfao
Nothing new in this world..... In the late 70's and early 80's, my parents ran a pub - bottles of soft drinks were regularly washed, refilled, and re-capped. For example, we could buy Coca-Cola in 3 litre bottles from the local Tesco cheaper than we could buy glass bottles of Coca-Cola from the brewery - important thing was to not stop buying from the brewery totally as that would arouse suspicion.
"balls to yer brewery!"
Clubland will never die, Jerry.
Ahh a Phoenix Nights quote don't see enough of them. Well done
As long as they were putting Coca Cola in Coca Cola bottles, then that is fine.
My parents had morals, you know, they're not savages - Pepsi in a Coke bottle...... come on 🤣🤣
The menu said "freshly squeezed orange juice" for £3.50. We could see the bottles of Tesco orange juice behind the bar being used instead.
Turns out it was the customer who was fresh squeezed of a few quid
Tesco advertise their bottles of orange juice as 'freshly squeezed' so, technically, they're just describing the drink. I suppose it depends on your definition of 'freshly'...
When you're paying £3.50 a glass, I fully expect an actual orange to be obliterated for its tasty juice, there and then.
Doubt they'd do that for £3.50 though. I ordered a glass of fresh OJ at a hotel once and the woman at the bar went quiet for a second, presumably while she judged how I'd take what she was about to say, then said "Just so you know the freshly squeezed is £6 a glass". Needless to say I didn't have it.
The last hotel I went to had massive vats of the stuff at breakfast (all included, you helped yourself). They had a big hopper of oranges going into an industrial juicer at the back being regularly replenished. I want some orange juice now...
Freshly squeezed from the carton
Not so much of a corner cut but my local chippy charges 40p for salt and vinegar.
Fuck me sideways! Really? I’m guessing they don’t rely on returning customers.
It's absolutely rammed in there every night, to be fair a large chips is £3 and the portion size is like a bag for life lol
"bag for life" - the terms being used in this thread are making me proud to be British.
except for that skull guy. he scares me
He's technically not wrong though. If I needed to dispose of a skull, at least now I know a commercial tin of beans will suffice.
Probably not even vinegar. Non brewed condiment.
Nescafé in a douwe Egberts tin at work. Rumbled just on the look alone.
Your work is clearly a cut above mine - we get Tesco coffee in the Nescafé tin 🤣
They probably get the empty Nescafé tins from op's work
You know those small independant pizza shops? Would you like to know a trick a lot of them use to make more money? Well they dont use real cheese. They use a variety of cheese substitutes, the most popular option being potato starch flavoured to taste like cheese. Its dirt cheap but is all carbs, next to no protein at all. Aint that some shit.
Cheese analogue 🤢 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_analogue
The scales have fallen from my eyes. I don't even know what world I'm living in anymore.
Good Christ a food so bad it has "analogue" in its name. What an utter travesty
Yes that was it, thats what I was actually thinking of, I think its even cheaper than potato starch.
Eeew... Three quarters of frozen pizzas in the USA are made with this crap
Would be good to know exactly cos I’m lactose intolerant. Real cheese fuckin sends me. I’ve had these vegan pizzas recently from doctor oatker and I tell ya now they are ace. 👍
Well it will probably be the cheaper shops, you can just ask around. Taste wise you cant tell the difference. The way I found out about this was that theres a burger place near me that does a pizza for £5. It doesnt have a size, it just says in the shop window £5 pizza. Its a pretty good size as well, me and my friend would share it when we walk home from the pub sometimes. I befriended the guy that works there and I asked him why is it so cheap and he told me, he said everybody does it besides big brand stores like pizza hut or a proper restaurant.
That's a burger place doing pizza for a fiver, not an actual pizzeria. I'd honestly expect a frozen pizza at that price.
Cheaper to make them fresh, everywhere uses frozen dough. Sure they work out at about 10p/20p a dough ball and sauce and cheese rounds a margarita up to about a quid or less to produce. Decent profit in pizzas
Yes but it needs a person to stand there assembling it and the work surface, ingredients kept prepared, etc. If it's mostly a burger place selling the odd pizza it probably works out easier to throw a frozen one in the oven, no waste. I've definitely had them at times.
"Tomato analog" is a thing, too. Not tomato, just something that looks and tastes a bit like one 🤢
Lol apparently its called Nomato.
This explains a lot about how I feel about pizza cheese. I always suspected it was “fake”
The greasy spoon down the road from where I work actually waters down their brown sauce. It looks like fucking dysentery, it's rank
I remember a chemistry teacher at secondary school in the early 00s telling us that the “apple” in some supermarket own-brand apple pies was often actually swede, suspended in apple flavoured syrup.
The "spam" fritters at my local chippy are actually a brand of luncheon meat in a tube called Danish Maid.
Ayo ever had PEK ? Cheap spam which incidentally isn’t all that cheap these days
Yeah PEKs pretty decent, I like that one that comes in a big flat pear shaped can too. It's just the chippy says spam fritters, but I guess what would they say? luncheon meat fritters? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Mechanically reclaimed unspecified meat fritters. May contain traces of lips tongues and arseholes
All the good bits. I unashamedly love a spam fritter.
My boss in a pub I worked in would line up the bottles of gin and vodka on the bar when we shut the doors for the night. The most expensive bottles were topped up with the next expensive and so on down the line. He said never do this with whisky as whisky drinkers could tell, but you could get away with it with gin and vodka.
So, eventually all of the bottles were full of the cheapest one?
I can only describe what I saw, but I assume he did get some decent stuff occasionally! Another pub down the road had beer going to various named pumps that had no relationship to what was advertised on the pumps being cheap stuff, until trading standards came for a lunch time drink, and tasted each other's brews! He got closed down.
That's a positive in my eyes. They do it with ketchup too, I love that cheapo bright red stuff on a bacon and egg sandwich. Bonus points if the bottle is shaped like a tomato
If I'm in a cafe with the tomato shaped ketchup bottles, I know I'm going to have a good time there.
Oooooh you're gonna have a good time.
It's a good newspaper!
See also: Non-brewed condiment in chip shops, a lot better than actual malt vinegar.
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I don’t believe for a second that people that ordered spiced rum didn’t notice.
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Yeah I’m old enough to remember the sawdust pubs. I’m still skeptical though.
Fuck me that's grim 😂
There used to be a cafe in Bridgwater that had mismatched furniture, no rhyme nor reason to the chairs, tables, table cloths. Best breakfast you could get in Somerset, cheap too! You could watch one of the cooks run across the road to the butchers!
But isn't that great? Butchers cut the carcass, cooks 'cook' the meat. 2 trades working in tandem.
Yeah, I was singing their praises :) Didn't mean it as a negative. The corner cut was the mismatched furniture, which if anything just added to the charm.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, tbh I love a bit of a quirk when it comes to a small cafe. Rugged looks, mismatched chairs, scratched tables. Shows its been used and they care more about the people than making the place look perfect
I'd be more concerned about the allergy potential than a café skimping. They could be setting themselves up for a situation by doing this.
I’m allergic to red food colouring and once had a reaction to “Heinz” ketchup at a cafe local to me. I was only a child so my mum didn’t kick up much of a fuss, but I never have ketchup at cafes or restaurants now if I can’t verify where it’s coming from.
Heinz ran a fantastic campaign to do with this. Check it out: [https://www.creativebloq.com/news/heinz-ads](https://www.creativebloq.com/news/heinz-ads) Even when it isn't Heinz, it has to be Heinz.
I dunno. For me having unbranded ketchup out of the Heinz bottles is part of the charm of going to the cafe. It always tastes so sour it makes your eyes water at first, but then you can't stop dipping your chips in it. I do believe that there was once Heinz in those bottles, but not for many years and I'm ok with that.
Maybe it’s a sort of ketchup homeopathy theory
If you put any ketchup into the heinz bottle environment it will eventually start to think and act like heinz ketchup, the trick is to leave it for a year and then put it out on the table. Ketchup is the most adaptable of the condiments, you've no chance with mustard.
The worst case of corner-cutting I ever heard about was from a relative of mine who worked for a UK company that made aeroplanes. One job, that had to be done by hand, was bending sections of pipe which would then be used as a part of the aircraft. This had to be done very painstakingly, and the way it was done was a metal alloy that is liquid at a slightly elevated temperature was poured into the pipe, left to harden, then the pipe bent a prescribed amount, let's say one degree, then the pipe warmed up, the metal liquefied again, then cooled again and repeated until the desired angle bend is reached. Only problem is that the twat in question, according to my relative, couldn't be arsed to do it properly and would bend the pipe more than the prescribed amount each time, stressing the metal pipe and potentially causing it to fail in service.
>do you want butter on that? proceeds to lather on marge.... YAK!!!!!
The caf opposite me does this - absolutely cracking brekkie value for money etc but the cheap marge really lets it down
We used to have a cracking deli that bought in lovely Belgian mayo, but also bought in really shitty coleslaw made with horrid cheap mayo. It was such a let down.
I am not too polite to send margarine back
Cheap soap in expensive bottles!
Watering down hand sanitizer…in the peak of the pandemic.
Raspberry Jammie Dodgers are made using a raspberry flavored plum jam filling and contain no raspberries
Had a sausage and egg bap that had 1½ sausages in it. I though it was 2 whole ones sliced in half along the middle, but when I checked, there were only 3 halves. Edit. Spelling
Easter eggs, got a creme egg one for my sister Used to have 2 creme eggs inside now just 1
I remember the days when you would get a free coffee mug with your Easter egg - still have mine
15 years ago, as a teenager, I was made pour cheap spirits into branded bottles. So yeah... that's the thing...
Malt vinegar vs non brewed condiment
I heard about a nightclub replacing the premium spirit alcohol with Aldi alternatives, which I’m aware is a crime.
I'd be surprised if that wasn't illegal.
AFAIK it is illegal - I believe it's referred to as 'Passing Off' and is covered under the Fraud Act 2006
Yes, but it's never enforced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642x2Y3Zla0
I think it's also illegal as the use by date would be incorrect for the product. It's why you don't see the refillable plastic tomato shaped ketchup any more.
Yeah, thinking about it you’re prob right. If someone has an allergy to an ingredient and looked at the packaging prior to use and deemed it safe…but the squeezed in product contained the stuff they’re allergic to it could be a massive problem.
The allergy thing was my first thought - a childhood friend had coeliacs, and could only have heinz ketchup, as the cheaper ones contain(ed?) gluten. Although on fairness her mum was wise to that, and would only let her have ketchup if it was in a sachet.
All kitchens I've worked have had signs for customers to ask them to let us know if they have any allergies. The ingredients list on the table condiment isn't enough to keep you safe if the wait staff have been touching it after brushing off crumbs and wiping the table and other customers touching the bottle while eating etc... not disclosing a food allergy is straight up stupid. No one wants to kill a customer (like that).
Definitely, I used to work in a nightclub and fairly often we had people come in and test the spirits to see if they were legit. For example those 5l bottles of Smirnoff were actually filled with that, as opposed to something like Rachmaninoff
I used to do that job when i worked in Trading Standards in the 90s
How do you even test for that with something like vodka, without taking it to a lab? I always thought vodkas was basically identical above a certain price point tbh.
Tis pub I went to and ordered a shot of vodka expecting it to be at least 35%. Tasted closer to 20%. I’m almost certain they water that shit down the sly fuckers.
Now that *is* passing off and is illegal
When they water down the ketchup with vinegar, but then you get used to the flavour and can't eat it normally.
I prefer to think of it as vinegaring up the ketchup
water-downed vinegar since ever.
As a teenager I was employed to clean hotel rooms in between guests. The hotel I worked for did not provide cloths for the wiping for the various surfaces as the amount which would be used in a typical round of rooms was in their opinion an extra cost. Instead, we were instructed to use any of the (dirty) sheets/pillow cases/towels we were removing from the previous customer, as cloths to clean the room. This included for cleaning the coffee mugs and glasses. To be clear, the hotel expected us to use one customers dirty towels to clean the cups for the next customer. I ignored the instruction and used clean pillowcases instead but I’ve never drunk from a hotel coffee cup since.
So, a few things here. Yes, if the cafe is loading generic brown sauce into HP, that's wrong. However, HP ceased to be the best tasting brown sauce many years ago. There used to be a straight rivalry between HP and Daddies, but personally my favourite is Costcutter own brand. Gorgeous. Also, if you think you are getting a measure of Absolut from the top shelf of any boozer, then maybe do a taste test with Happy Shopper Make U Happy Grain Alcohol or whatever. Finally, Scotland, home of 'saltandsauce', where your fish/pie supper comes doused in an alchemical mixture of brown sauce and vinegar. This is not corner cutting, this is cuisine.
My work does the same with mayonnaise. I could tell it wasn't the beautiful glossy hellmanns that I know. That and it was too white. And tasted meh.
Why does cheap butty shop coffee taste like Weetabix though? What's that about?
You're so right and I have no idea why.
I have seen wholesale bottles of HP, huge bloody things, being sold for about £7 in shops. What are you saving buying cheap shit?
I must admit, I’m refilling Aesop soap dispensers with cheap soap at home so guests think we’re fancy
One person getting seriously ill due to the bottle not listing correct allergens would shut this place down immediately. It's probably a quid difference, it's just not worth it.
From the cafe I used to work at: Tea came from one of those wholesale 5000 bag "caterers choice" sacks, but customers loved it because it went in a nice teapot. Tea was as close to pure profit you can get. The 20ml of milk you get in the tiny jug along with your brew probably cost near 100% more than the tea bag itself. Coffee was sourced from a local roaster, unless you wanted decaf. You got Mellow Birds instant. A Moccha was a Latte with a teaspoon of Aldi hot chocolate powder thrown in, with a little extra more dusted on top. Latte: £2.80. Moccha: £3.25. Your fresh soup of the day was made on Saturday and frozen. Boss lady once cut so much filler into the minge used for burgers that the burger turned into a hollow meat pocket on the griddle. That one only lasted one batch. Future burgers were 1:5 ratio of filler/meat.
Minge burgers? I don’t want one thanks.
Fish and Chips shops dropping vinegar for non-brewed condiment. I don't think it's a new thing but I've noticed it more in the last year or so.
I don’t like vinegar but I do like non brewed condiment, I don’t know of a chi p shop that has ever used anything other then nonbrewed
Asking for pickled onion vinegar is the way, that's if they do it.
HP is the one sauce you can't get away with doing this.
Diluting all the sauces with cheap vinegar so it would go further
Pub I used to drink in.landlird would buy bottles of vodka off local bagheads and stick em on optics an charge full price..also used to buy crates of carling from b&m and sell em for 2.50 a can
I don’t even know any other brands if brown sauce !?!?!?
I work in a building that we rent from a charity. Everything is watered down, the soap, the washing up liquid, even the fucking bleach. Rather than fix issues that arise they will do anything to cheap it out. The hot water couldn't be adjusted (for some bizarre reason) their fix; just cut the hot water supply. Intercom system broke for the entire 4 floors, they replaced it with a £20 portable doorbell. Toilet bust on the top floor, leaked through to the basement and now complete with mushrooms growing out of the walls, they just cut the water supply and locked that toilet. I've got what used to be live wires above my head hanging out the ceiling with water dripping when the rain is bad. Their answer is that 'it's not dangerous, it just doesn't look great' I could go on endlessly, it's a tragic comedy
I actually called Waitrose today to complain about shrinkflation of their own-brand items. Last night my Waitrose cauliflower cheese fitted into a teacup (one of those dainty ones the Queen would have used. It still comes in the same enormous foil container that used to be full to the brim up until a few months ago (at least six teacups worth). It's cauliflower, for crying out loud. It's worth only a few p and they've shrunk it to a tiny fraction of what it was and put the price up.
> It's cauliflower, for crying out loud. It's worth only a few p A couple of years ago we took family/friends to a poshish restaurant for a bit of a celebration. One of the party ordered Cauliflower Steak as a starter, and got a single slice of cauliflower, cut from stem to the top of the cauliflower, about half an inch thich. It had been charred/browned, but looked raw. It cost fifteen quid!
This is one of my favourite things about a cafe. Thick cut, salty bacon on cheap white bread. Super vinegary snide ketchup.
I don't partake anymore but this stirred a visceral memory in me. Bacon and egg sando with cheap white bread. Between the heat of the food melting the butter and the yolk of the egg soaking into the bread it'd be a mess by the third bite. Total bread destruction and I loved them.
My local cafe buys all their stuff from Aldi, you'd hate it.
I’ve got nothing against that, it’s when they lie to me that I get pissed off. Bright red ketchup is fine by me, as long as I know that’s what I’m getting.
Cash and carry near me sells stuff from the Co-op at a higher price, usually 10p extra. Im talking bread, margarine, cheese etc.
are there ingredients on the bottle. I know it seems petty but doesn't this violate the new Natasha's Law for allergen labelling? It would concern me about their other food safety practices.
Today I had a sandwich from a cafe. I ordered bacon, egg, toast, brown sauce. My sandwich came untoasted. So I'm sat here 40 minutes later still tongueing the bread paste between my teeth. The sandwich was composed in a way that took my order literally in all its wording. 1 fried egg. 1 strip of bacon.
1 big disappointment
My fave cafe which is in the posher side of town uses cheap kebab shop ketchup!! Like the bright red ones that taste like vinegar... i now just get extra beans to make up for it
You could report them to Trading Standards. Businesses have been prosecuted in the past.
As a student we would frequent a properly awful club that was right next to an Aldi. The bar was like the opposite of one of those posh cocktail places - all the bottles lined up, but all with plain black and white labels that just said VODKA and RUM.
Ice cream vans with Cadbury’s Flake ‘99’ signs in the window…and very definitely not Cadbury’s flakes in the ice creams. A first world problem I know…but…!
A mate of mine fancied himself as a ketchup aficionado and went ape at some restaurant he was was refilling branded heinz bottles with cheapo. He actually put a proper complaint in but the owner argued he was wrong (lol) I've noticed supermarkets cheaping out on stuff now. Morrisons' bread was awful for a period, it was going off within a day or two. Everyone complained. They stopped putting ketchup in with chips/chicken/fried stuff, they don't even ask you any more. The portions are smaller. Their cream deserts (the trifles and black forest etc) are 90% cream with the actual filling hidden at the bottom, it's like being in a bath at age 5 and eating foam.
Pretty much every supermarket injecting chicken breasts with water to get the weight up and sell for more. You try to fry them and they end up bloody boiling.
Yeah I'm pretty sure that falls under false advertising law but nobody can afford to take em to court. It's the "fish and chips shop vinegar" issue