Exposure III

This is the final part of my obnoxiously detailed anti-exposé on your frozen-ass desserts. Please read parts one and two.

You're being patronized. Not like patron of the arts, pay a sculptor to sculpt some shit patronized.

Patronized like being talked-down to.

You're getting "World's Greatest" chocolate cake slices straight from Sara Lee. You love it because it "satisfies patron cravings for chocolate while adding excitement and variety." Restaurants love it because its "strong visual appeal stimulates impulse sales". Fact. Some of this shit is so utterly fantastic that you, the customer, will think the restaurant "spent hours creating [it]".

Unsurprisingly, Cheesecake Factory is on it too. Unsurprising, because they go ahead and say that they're a factory in the name. So let's say I want to stock Cheesecake Factory desserts and maybe i'm even up front about that fact, but I'm a little shaky about what to do with them once I've got them stored at or below zero degrees fahrenheit. I can't just jam a mouth prop into my customers and force-feed them cheesecake. Can I?

No, you cannot use this to feed your customers.

What's my alternative? How do I make the consumer come to me?

I can pull up the Dream Factory Plating Suggestions and see what exactly they think I should do to make the plates more enticing. I totally forgot to mention;  their wholesale bakery wing is called the Dream Factory. 'Cause they make dreams. Armed with this .pdf I now know to garnish my Carrot Cake Cheesecake with an orange twist or a wafer cookie.

Everyone wins. Except you. 

You lose.

You lose because you're eating the same (the exact same) boring, frozen dessert that everyone else across the country is eating and it's utterly unremarkable. You lose because you're paying a restaurant to move something from their walk-in freezer to their walk-in refrigerator and then several hours later, walk it out to your table. 

Is there a solution besides bitching about the dessert menus and singling out companies who are providing a perfectly justifiable service? There is. 

Option One is swearing at me for wasting your time and going to back to doing whatever you were doing before you read any of this.

Option Two is to just ask if that dessert you're eyeing is made in-house. If it is it'll probably taste good, and you'll make the restaurant feel better for going the extra mile and making their own shit. If it's not, skip it because it will leave you over-charged and under-impressed.

Restaurants: This is what happens when you do it yourself.

This is the last part of the series. Please check out parts one and two if you missed them.