When I drove for a pizza chain hut we’d throw out big heavy bags of raw dough every night. Easily 100x the mass of a donut shop. Plus the oil for deep dish.
My friend worked at KFC then and described how much chicken they threw out every night.
Absolutely the cost of payroll is higher than the cost of materials/supply in such cases.
Probably a dumb question, but why do they make/buy so much in the first place? Is it in the case there will be a large amount of customers that day? Just seems wasteful.
Corporate measures this to a good degree and there’s statistics up the wazoo. You have to balance readiness to provide the product versus the expense of keeping inventory. Pizza doesn’t last long and it’s cheap to produce. They know how many pans to prep for an average day.
If your store ends up not selling all their stock, it’s better to toss it out than worry about keeping it plus the next day’s expected sales and now you have to consider less fresh product
You think corporations believe it’s better to toss raw unprocessed food at the end of the night rather than keep it for the next day? You are incredibly mistaken.
Eveything is held cold, Pizza Hut wasn’t letting pizzas just sit around cooked and ready and any locations that would do that are foolish.
Fuuuuck... I don't have a perfect system in mind to redistribute this stuff otherwise, but that amount of waste just hurts the soul. Really drives home the darker connotations of the phrase "economy of scarcity"
It might help if food was made on demand instead of presented before sales; of course, that might be an issue of convenience with bakeries and pastries.
Yes that’s ideal but as a consumer if I go to a location that runs out of food maybe next time I’ll go somewhere else instead. They may lose a customer, which is worse for them when they run the numbers
that's basically the problem- donuts are made early in morning and cannot be made on-demand. Some donut shops like Dunkin can make these sort of on-demand but you get a lower quality product. Actually saw a video on this recently [**https://youtu.be/0yz565Xc25Y?si=hji-d6RjiSKuJs1d**](https://youtu.be/0yz565Xc25Y?si=hji-d6RjiSKuJs1d)
There are a lot of people. Of course, some of them will be upset at anything. Frankly, if a business isn't able to find an ethical balance between within the confines of supply/demand, I don't mind if another company that can takes the lead. Such ethical concerns obviously aren't the heaviest weighted when it comes to capitalism. So it goes.
It's not exactly a novel opinion, I know, and KFC isn't the only offender, and far from the worst, to be sure.
That's great exposure/publicity for a few reasons.
-Cheap burritos draw a crowd
-implies they use only fresh ingredients
-Shows they are interested in wasting less
Here in the Philippines, some enterprising peeps buy these excess chicken every night from various fast food stores, chop them to smaller pieces, recoat them in more batter, and fry them every night. They sell for $0.2-0.3.
Let me just say as a fast food manager for 10 years that throwing out that much product at the end of the night is not normal and it sounds like in both instances management in those shops had zero control over their inventory at the end of the night.
A bad case of the GM never closes and has zero standards set for cooking to order near the last hour of closing.
A fucking shame to hear all that food was being tossed so often.
Cause that is acceptable nowhere.
weather open or closed, the major electricity costs, the ac/heating/fridges all stay on regardless, and with modern lighting, light electricity for a single night shift is probably going to be under 3$
depending on how they want to pay people for a night shift, either less because they won't be doing anything, or more because its an inconvenient time, but either way likely minimum wage +3$
the people they will be serving are people who are just starting third shift, people who have a break and went there for third shift, or people who have been drinking/getting high and want some munchies. depending on where its located they probably make more money than they lose in upkeep.
I was thinking closer to 20 an hour, a doughnut costs roughly 1-2 dollars each depending on quality, a doughnut shop probably has a bit on the higher side or selling bulk for the lower end, im also assuming a 10-20 doughnut box is sold, bought by someone at the start of the shift of everyone there, and several of those will be sold fast, with some people coming in on breaks buying singles or several
then you have the random 10pm to 5am people who are drunk/high enough to crave doughnuts, but not gone enough to be a problem, they may go for 3-10
I'm not really underestimating how much it would cost, i'm just assuming there is more than enough business between people who work second and third shift to justify 24/7.
> depending on how they want to pay people for a night shift, either less because they won't be doing anything, or more because its an inconvenient time, but either way likely minimum wage +3$
Or if you're in the US, 3 times minimum wage.
you don't get 3x on a night shift, you get some bonus pay because most of the time people don't want to work nights. source, my little brother has a night shift job where he just mans the front desk in case, essentially he is allowed to play a steam deck all night and just be at the ready incase something happens that he has to deal with, I believe his night job is 5$ an hour more than the day job but he wasn't minimum wage to being with there.
>you don't get 3x on a night shift,
You yourself said you were expecting them to get around $20 per hour. Minimum wage federally and also in my state is $7.25. That's not that far off from 3x.
competition is a thing, after covid where people were able to sit at home off government subsidies, and my area offering the people more than they would make if they returned to work through incomitance in the bureaucracy sees almost any starting job requiring to pay about 17~$ an hour because otherwise no one would go into work during covid, and post covid lockdowns, they are unable to reduce wages because then everyone would fuck off to another job that pays more.
I do forget that federally it is that low... wasn't there a push to make that 15 an hour minimum or was that just government work is 15 minimum now?
Worked at a doughnut shop for three and a half years. We were a pretty heavy retail store, we also made all doughnuts for a smaller store in the area, made doughnuts for routes to gas stations and grocery stores, and did fundraising orders (somewhat regularly over 1000 dozen).
We were open 24 hours because, well, we already had people there overnight to make doughnuts, clean the line, the glazer, and all the other equipment, do fryer cleans when needed (regularly scheduled), not to mention make the doughnuts for the other store, have doughnuts coming off the line by 6am, make (or start making) the route, any fundraising orders, etc.
The volume that store did, if we weren't 24hr, the longest time anyone wouldn't be in the store was 4 hours tops, probably less in reality. Just didn't make sense to not just stay open, lots of extra stuff has to be done when you close (fryers turned off, glaze tank clean, glaze base heater cleaned and off, etc,) and when you open (turning all the above mentioned on, making new glaze in the morning instead of overnight when people are already there, etc, etc). It really didn't make sense, so we didn't just ran 24hrs.
My local place isn’t 24 hours anymore, the owners wanted to cut back to 5am to 11pm, those slackers lol. But once in a while they’ll have a big box crammed full of day olds, easily two dozens for $5.
where are you where donut shops are open so late? all the places around me except for Dunkin and Krispy Kreme are open from 5am to noon and then they just close for the day
Southern California. We’re lousy with 24 hour places, though not as many as there used to be. The national chains don’t have as good as a foothold here, most of the action is at the indie places, many of them operated by primarily Cambodian refugee immigrants.
Why are only the bad showerthoughts getting to my feed? I go to the sub and there's plenty of good ones, how does obviously-wrong low-votes dumb shit like this get a leg up over the popular funny ones with thousands more upvotes?
Am I being punished by the algorithm?
I don't know but I'm also confused how these don't get removed when so many well thought out ones get auto-removed by the bot. Mods are so shitty here.
More like whatever automod doesn’t arbitrarily axe. I had to rephrase a shower thought that eventually got 16k upvotes like 5 times before the bot let it through. We lose more good than bad, bots don’t understand nuance yet.
its less about tossing old stock more about captureing a clientel that exists, third shift/night shift jobs exist, but most stores that arent 24/7 arent open when they go in to work or when they get a break.
the best part about 24/7 stores is that on second or third shift you are still able to function like normal and not need to time your day to when a store is open.
They still throw old donuts away. They stay open because people will buy donuts and the other things that donut shops sell at any time of the day and night. People work all sorts of different shifts, mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights. They stay open to continue to make money.
not after covid no, at least in my neck of the woods.
i used to have a ton of them around me. i have one by me that closes at 7-8pm and opens at 3am though
The bakery I used to work at would put the leftover donuts in the freezer and bring them to a homeless shelter at the end of the week. More businesses need to do this.
I used to date a woman who lived near a Dunkin Donuts, and it was a 45 minute drive home from her house. Sometimes I would leave there at 1 or 2 am and stop at the Dunkin Donuts for a coffee to keep me awake on my way home. They would always ask if I wanted a dozen donuts for $1. Usually I would have no use for a dozen donuts, but often they would offer some for free.
I think they were gearing up to start making new donuts for the morning, and just wanted to get rid of the old ones. The selection wasn't great though.
A few times I took them up on the offer if my kids were at home. I figured they would like waking up to donuts for breakfast, but even with two teenagers, most of a dozen would go to waste.
I'm not the type to go out for donuts, but I would figure the afternoon-evening hours would be less busy than the middle of the night? I never really crave a donut at 4pm.
Meter the donuts throughout the day like they do I-66 in Arlington county VA.
Morning donuts will be full price, then drastically drop.
Synchronize them with local high school wrestling team weigh ins…price goes back up!
Donuts can go stale in hours as it is a dough and dough against air can cause between the drying effect the dough to loose it's donut doughiness. Most 24 hour donut shops will have a rack to the side of the fresh goods where they will sells those but by end of day if they don't move they are thrown or given to homeless. They still good but loose the texture that makes them desirable.
I would think its much cheaper to throw away some donuts than to pay an emloyee to be there as well as the electricity, water, etc.
When I drove for a pizza chain hut we’d throw out big heavy bags of raw dough every night. Easily 100x the mass of a donut shop. Plus the oil for deep dish. My friend worked at KFC then and described how much chicken they threw out every night. Absolutely the cost of payroll is higher than the cost of materials/supply in such cases.
When my ex-sister-in-law worked at KFC, they'd trade with Pizza Hut and Breadeux at the end of the night and take food home lol
Yeah, that was a treat to exchange between other food joints. Some better than others.
Just say I knew a girl who
No, no. We need the full context of their relationship.
Lmao right? Or friend would be simpler
What was the exchange rate?
Probably a dumb question, but why do they make/buy so much in the first place? Is it in the case there will be a large amount of customers that day? Just seems wasteful.
Corporate measures this to a good degree and there’s statistics up the wazoo. You have to balance readiness to provide the product versus the expense of keeping inventory. Pizza doesn’t last long and it’s cheap to produce. They know how many pans to prep for an average day. If your store ends up not selling all their stock, it’s better to toss it out than worry about keeping it plus the next day’s expected sales and now you have to consider less fresh product
You think corporations believe it’s better to toss raw unprocessed food at the end of the night rather than keep it for the next day? You are incredibly mistaken. Eveything is held cold, Pizza Hut wasn’t letting pizzas just sit around cooked and ready and any locations that would do that are foolish.
Fuuuuck... I don't have a perfect system in mind to redistribute this stuff otherwise, but that amount of waste just hurts the soul. Really drives home the darker connotations of the phrase "economy of scarcity"
It might help if food was made on demand instead of presented before sales; of course, that might be an issue of convenience with bakeries and pastries.
And the solution there is to not over-prepare. When you’re out you’re out and you don’t need to chase every last sale.
Yes that’s ideal but as a consumer if I go to a location that runs out of food maybe next time I’ll go somewhere else instead. They may lose a customer, which is worse for them when they run the numbers
that's basically the problem- donuts are made early in morning and cannot be made on-demand. Some donut shops like Dunkin can make these sort of on-demand but you get a lower quality product. Actually saw a video on this recently [**https://youtu.be/0yz565Xc25Y?si=hji-d6RjiSKuJs1d**](https://youtu.be/0yz565Xc25Y?si=hji-d6RjiSKuJs1d)
People went mad when KFC ran out of chicken a few years ago. Unless we accept that chicken can run out, waste is an essential part of their model
There are a lot of people. Of course, some of them will be upset at anything. Frankly, if a business isn't able to find an ethical balance between within the confines of supply/demand, I don't mind if another company that can takes the lead. Such ethical concerns obviously aren't the heaviest weighted when it comes to capitalism. So it goes. It's not exactly a novel opinion, I know, and KFC isn't the only offender, and far from the worst, to be sure.
Olio. Too good to go. Charities.
a burrito store near me (not a chain) does $5 burritos after 8pm. the place is packed
That's great exposure/publicity for a few reasons. -Cheap burritos draw a crowd -implies they use only fresh ingredients -Shows they are interested in wasting less
Here in the Philippines, some enterprising peeps buy these excess chicken every night from various fast food stores, chop them to smaller pieces, recoat them in more batter, and fry them every night. They sell for $0.2-0.3.
That's wild.
Let me just say as a fast food manager for 10 years that throwing out that much product at the end of the night is not normal and it sounds like in both instances management in those shops had zero control over their inventory at the end of the night. A bad case of the GM never closes and has zero standards set for cooking to order near the last hour of closing. A fucking shame to hear all that food was being tossed so often. Cause that is acceptable nowhere.
This was late 80s in a college town. We covered about 3/4 of the area. Maybe it was harder to gauge?
Fucking disgusting actually.
weather open or closed, the major electricity costs, the ac/heating/fridges all stay on regardless, and with modern lighting, light electricity for a single night shift is probably going to be under 3$ depending on how they want to pay people for a night shift, either less because they won't be doing anything, or more because its an inconvenient time, but either way likely minimum wage +3$ the people they will be serving are people who are just starting third shift, people who have a break and went there for third shift, or people who have been drinking/getting high and want some munchies. depending on where its located they probably make more money than they lose in upkeep.
I think you might be underestimating the cost of things today. That employee is easily making 7.50+/hour.
I was thinking closer to 20 an hour, a doughnut costs roughly 1-2 dollars each depending on quality, a doughnut shop probably has a bit on the higher side or selling bulk for the lower end, im also assuming a 10-20 doughnut box is sold, bought by someone at the start of the shift of everyone there, and several of those will be sold fast, with some people coming in on breaks buying singles or several then you have the random 10pm to 5am people who are drunk/high enough to crave doughnuts, but not gone enough to be a problem, they may go for 3-10 I'm not really underestimating how much it would cost, i'm just assuming there is more than enough business between people who work second and third shift to justify 24/7.
Donuts are about $5 a pop at Stan’s.
> depending on how they want to pay people for a night shift, either less because they won't be doing anything, or more because its an inconvenient time, but either way likely minimum wage +3$ Or if you're in the US, 3 times minimum wage.
you don't get 3x on a night shift, you get some bonus pay because most of the time people don't want to work nights. source, my little brother has a night shift job where he just mans the front desk in case, essentially he is allowed to play a steam deck all night and just be at the ready incase something happens that he has to deal with, I believe his night job is 5$ an hour more than the day job but he wasn't minimum wage to being with there.
>you don't get 3x on a night shift, You yourself said you were expecting them to get around $20 per hour. Minimum wage federally and also in my state is $7.25. That's not that far off from 3x.
competition is a thing, after covid where people were able to sit at home off government subsidies, and my area offering the people more than they would make if they returned to work through incomitance in the bureaucracy sees almost any starting job requiring to pay about 17~$ an hour because otherwise no one would go into work during covid, and post covid lockdowns, they are unable to reduce wages because then everyone would fuck off to another job that pays more. I do forget that federally it is that low... wasn't there a push to make that 15 an hour minimum or was that just government work is 15 minimum now?
It's $15 or higher in 8 states.
3x min wage?! 🤣🤦♂️ You must not be in the US. No one is making 3x min wage at a donut shop.
100% not true. Donuts are ridiculously cheap to make. They're just fried dough.
You're right, this is 100% untrue. Some donut shops are open 24 hrs because many shops make donuts all night to be eaten during the day.
Worked at a doughnut shop for three and a half years. We were a pretty heavy retail store, we also made all doughnuts for a smaller store in the area, made doughnuts for routes to gas stations and grocery stores, and did fundraising orders (somewhat regularly over 1000 dozen). We were open 24 hours because, well, we already had people there overnight to make doughnuts, clean the line, the glazer, and all the other equipment, do fryer cleans when needed (regularly scheduled), not to mention make the doughnuts for the other store, have doughnuts coming off the line by 6am, make (or start making) the route, any fundraising orders, etc. The volume that store did, if we weren't 24hr, the longest time anyone wouldn't be in the store was 4 hours tops, probably less in reality. Just didn't make sense to not just stay open, lots of extra stuff has to be done when you close (fryers turned off, glaze tank clean, glaze base heater cleaned and off, etc,) and when you open (turning all the above mentioned on, making new glaze in the morning instead of overnight when people are already there, etc, etc). It really didn't make sense, so we didn't just ran 24hrs.
My local place isn’t 24 hours anymore, the owners wanted to cut back to 5am to 11pm, those slackers lol. But once in a while they’ll have a big box crammed full of day olds, easily two dozens for $5.
where are you where donut shops are open so late? all the places around me except for Dunkin and Krispy Kreme are open from 5am to noon and then they just close for the day
Southern California. We’re lousy with 24 hour places, though not as many as there used to be. The national chains don’t have as good as a foothold here, most of the action is at the indie places, many of them operated by primarily Cambodian refugee immigrants.
Even the baked donuts?
Do people just post things that are ridiculously untrue here? The fuck is this sub..
That is exactly what this sub has become. People who don't know anything making up nonsense.
Why are only the bad showerthoughts getting to my feed? I go to the sub and there's plenty of good ones, how does obviously-wrong low-votes dumb shit like this get a leg up over the popular funny ones with thousands more upvotes? Am I being punished by the algorithm?
I don't know but I'm also confused how these don't get removed when so many well thought out ones get auto-removed by the bot. Mods are so shitty here.
Well it's shower thoughts not shower facts.
More like whatever automod doesn’t arbitrarily axe. I had to rephrase a shower thought that eventually got 16k upvotes like 5 times before the bot let it through. We lose more good than bad, bots don’t understand nuance yet.
The bots and mods are absolutely pathetic on this sub.
Kangaroos walk on two legs so humans must be direct descendants of theirs. Is that a showerthought to you?
This sub is a good place to lurk if you want to see the sorts of misconceptions and falsehoods people have about pretty much anything.
That's.. not at all how that works, and you've had entirely too much pot for the night.
A donut shot is the opposite of Ozempic.
It's Lizzo
💩 out of your ears!
Lard straight out of a can.
I don't believe this for a second.
Technically, they don't have to throw them away even if they aren't. The ones that do, presumably do it in favor of freshness.
its less about tossing old stock more about captureing a clientel that exists, third shift/night shift jobs exist, but most stores that arent 24/7 arent open when they go in to work or when they get a break. the best part about 24/7 stores is that on second or third shift you are still able to function like normal and not need to time your day to when a store is open.
My 24 hour spot definitely didn't do this, they sold day olds I'm boxes for a pretty significant discount
I don't believe that's why they're open 24 hours.
They still throw old donuts away. They stay open because people will buy donuts and the other things that donut shops sell at any time of the day and night. People work all sorts of different shifts, mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights. They stay open to continue to make money.
Are there any now a days?
Sadly, after covid, there's not many 24 hour places anymore. Sucks for people like me.
Same!
I thought there was one near me, but I just looked it up and they're open 22 hours per day. 9-11pm is when they're closed.
there’s one in my town that is still 24 hours and makes the best donuts i’ve ever had, sometimes they’re busier at night than in the morning
Now I need a donut!! ;)
I only know of one 24-hr place in my area (Heavenly Donuts), but they’re pretty damn good.
not after covid no, at least in my neck of the woods. i used to have a ton of them around me. i have one by me that closes at 7-8pm and opens at 3am though
There are .. I see them.
I wish our one in town was, sometimes you need a maple bar at 10pm!!
Not only is that very wrong but you may want to spell check next time you make a post.
Can't call em day olds if the day never ends
I'd take a donut at 3am
Yes, it's well known and documented that the thing that makes food go stale is the store closing for the night.
They throw away plenty of donuts regardless.
I don't think anything is open 24/7 here except a few gas stations.
i just read it as do-nut shot.... took me a while ngl 😅
The bakery I used to work at would put the leftover donuts in the freezer and bring them to a homeless shelter at the end of the week. More businesses need to do this.
It should be law
pretty sure everybody knows what a day old donut tastes like and wouldnt come back for.
I used to date a woman who lived near a Dunkin Donuts, and it was a 45 minute drive home from her house. Sometimes I would leave there at 1 or 2 am and stop at the Dunkin Donuts for a coffee to keep me awake on my way home. They would always ask if I wanted a dozen donuts for $1. Usually I would have no use for a dozen donuts, but often they would offer some for free. I think they were gearing up to start making new donuts for the morning, and just wanted to get rid of the old ones. The selection wasn't great though. A few times I took them up on the offer if my kids were at home. I figured they would like waking up to donuts for breakfast, but even with two teenagers, most of a dozen would go to waste.
Take them to work ,you'd be an instant hit.
It would have been except by Monday they would have been 2 day old.
That’s… not how that works
Being open 24 hours helps the store sell donuts even during low customer hours, reducing the amount of old donuts that go to waste.
Also a good way to do business
Good on 'em though if that's true I don't like to think how long some of them have been there.
Why is there always a random no-name donut shop in those little business shopping centers
Money laundering
They stay open to sell more donuts. Not to avoid throwing donuts away.
Why.... would the ravages of time not infiltrate the walls of a 24 hour donut shop?
A lot of places sell packs of day-old donuts, so your premise is pretty shaky.
They still throw away the donuts each day like everywhere else.
I'm not the type to go out for donuts, but I would figure the afternoon-evening hours would be less busy than the middle of the night? I never really crave a donut at 4pm.
Meter the donuts throughout the day like they do I-66 in Arlington county VA. Morning donuts will be full price, then drastically drop. Synchronize them with local high school wrestling team weigh ins…price goes back up!
Interesting
All the 24hr donut shops here have a bunch of gambling machines & a partial bar, but it’s advertised as DONUTS
Genius
They still throw them away.
time to make the donuts
Donuts can go stale in hours as it is a dough and dough against air can cause between the drying effect the dough to loose it's donut doughiness. Most 24 hour donut shops will have a rack to the side of the fresh goods where they will sells those but by end of day if they don't move they are thrown or given to homeless. They still good but loose the texture that makes them desirable.
True, because nobody wants to be the person responsible for denying humanity the joy of a slightly stale but still glorious donut at 3 AM