toby1234abc:
Doing the night shift for super market multi drops for milk bottles in steel cages, the last driver that tipped there left hundreds of empty cages for me to collect,
And it still happens. 
Ken.
Waco:
Done two years as drivers mate in the early 80’s out of Spillers on Newcastle Quayside, best job I ever had. Nothing tastes better than a free pie or 2 fresh from the oven.
Spillers was on the Gateshead side.
Sorry to be pedantic, but being a Gateshead lad, I needed to let you know your map was wrong. 
Ken.
When I was a spotty yoof, I had a Saturday job at one of the local depots of a national bakery company as a van lad, and my driver had this lovely knack of pulling out of date bread from the big shops on the round, and changing the colour codes on the neck (Remember them?) and then giving the bread a squeeze to create that ‘just out of the oven that day’ feel, and then selling it to the multi cultural shops he served.
Ken.
Quinny, I think you will find that Waco is correct when he says spillers in Newcastle. You are thinking of the rank hovis macdougal mill on the gateshead side, I worked there in the early 70s. Now reborn as the Baltic arts centre.
Slackbladder:
Quinny, I think you will find that Waco is correct when he says spillers in Newcastle. You are thinking of the rank hovis macdougal mill on the gateshead side, I worked there in the early 70s. Now reborn as the Baltic arts centre.
Must be having a senior moment. 
Ken.
When I was a baker I would give the delivery drivers a pie or something I didnt have time to watch over them .Its not a bad sign when a food place uses mouse traps or such like as rodents are attracted to those places.
alamcculloch:
When I was a baker I would give the delivery drivers a pie or something I didnt have time to watch over them .Its not a bad sign when a food place uses mouse traps or such like as rodents are attracted to those places.
Yeah but some places are so disgusting, the rats ignore them!
I thought environmental health visit these places?
Delivered to thousands of kitchens over the years and I wouldn’t eat in many of em! The problem on food service is that ‘we’ see the parts that others punters cannot reach…the kitchens and storage areas! Some of these pubs all look very nice. But it’s when you get round the back things change…frozen food that has been left in the open for hours on end, crawling in flies or left near the wheely bins that have leaked all sorts of ■■■■ over the years…and the smell of some of them is unbelievable! I used to do a few pubs/restaurants in a large shopping centre locally to me…obviously no names mentioned but one of them used to defrost 3 big joints of different meat in 1 big metal bucket full of hot water so it could be cooked off for lunch and the other one used to have the frozen (4 or 5 pallets) still out in the sunshine at 3 in the afternoon from a 7am tip until they had made enough space in the freezers to throw it back in to re-freeze it! I’ve also seen trays off fresh chicken get spilt on the deck and rebagged! I very really eat fast food and normally, if you can ‘smell’ the chicken being cooked in one of The Colonels outlets, it’s normally being reheated from the previous night…and never go for an early pub lunch, as most of it may well be from the previous serving…have you ever seen the Beans in a Bain Marie…normally just a big orange mass of gloop until someone comes in and throws a bit of ketchup in the mix. One place I will recommend in Reading is Sweeney Todds Pie Shop…very strict on H&H regs and everything was made fresh in the morning…more flavours than you could shake a stick at and some nice Real Ales on tap…all hand pulled. Here is a nice, fresh Steak & Kidney…nice and deep and packed with proper chunks of meat
You can’t expect much from food outlets that do “main meals from £3.99” though, can you?
Quinny:
Waco:
Done two years as drivers mate in the early 80’s out of Spillers on Newcastle Quayside, best job I ever had. Nothing tastes better than a free pie or 2 fresh from the oven.Spillers was on the Gateshead side.
Sorry to be pedantic, but being a Gateshead lad, I needed to let you know your map was wrong.
Ken.
No it wasn’t, that was Rank Hovis, from another Gateshead lad 
Muckaway:
You can’t expect much from food outlets that do “main meals from £3.99” though, can you?
No, all cheap processed crap.
1 chain that does decent deals got their meat from Uruguay when I delivered for them, and when they knock out Steak n Chips for around £7 then you know its not gonna be great, but folk still because they keep on growing.
As some of you may know I’m a multidrop driver for 3663 and can confirm some kitchens and toilets in restaurants are disgusting.
I certainly know which places to eat and which places I would use the loo in.
We deliver to a very posh golf club daily and they have rows of rollcages outside the kitchen door filled with black bin liners full of rubbish and stinky rotten food,the kitchen floor could be used for dancing on ice,and I only ever once used the loo there and it stank of ■■■■,loo roll all over the floor,filthy bowl and no soap to wash your hands!!
I’m guessing this is the norm as all our drivers have mentioned it.
From the outside its a real posh mansion type building and I’m guessing its a fortune to join/play/eat there.
On the flip side the majority we deliver too are immaculate,usually privately owned restaurants cafes etc… And these always give you something to eat and drink and have even given me heavily discounted meals out with the family.
Although foodservice is hard work these little things make it bareable. I like muckaway used to be a tipper driver and actually enjoy this work more…most days lol
Londons’ Turkish bakeries appear to be doing the same offer this week; “■■■ ash in bread for free, boz?”
I work for a firm delivering to takeaways. You see things from guys helping you unload dusty dirty boxes whilst smoking to going back behind the fryers without washing their hands.
You see tiny access paths, either up the side of shops or through narrow counters whilst your trying to carry a bag of batter mix. Then there’s places where you never have anywhere legal to park, or it’s 300 metres away from where you can park and they’ve got half a ton. Then there’s the ones who want that half a ton upstairs.
The defrosting thing is seen all too often, but a lot of deep frozen stock can be left out for quite a while. Block fish can be left out for 12/24 hours, though I wouldn’t risk that with sausages, burgers, chickens etc.
Oh and a lot of chicken, sausage, burger etc boxes feature the words ‘mechanically recovered’.
The view from the other side of the counter can be very different!
Not sure why, but it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Maybe as I spend half my time driving a desk and not having to witnes the horrors mentioned above all the time.
Occasionaly on a Saturday morning I do a fruit & Veg run in a van for a mate , you get to see a lot of kitchens & how they store their food , makes me wonder how some places get away with it , just because the place is posh & has a good rep does not mean they have a great kitchen, some places you wouldn’t gut fish! … as its all local I know the places to eat & the ones to avoid & the avoid list is much much longer …
I used to deliver to school kichens in the north of England and they were always spotless.
Some grumpy cow at a bakery near Melton Mowbray on Friday, actually moaned because we were pumptrucking the bakeries’ 20 bags rather than handballing them. “It’s a lazy way of doing it” according to her. She wasn’t happy when my mate pointed out how lazy it is on the customers part that we have to put it away for them. Hoping for the day H&S/insurance company create a “doorstep delivery only” rule.
Thought I’d bump this thread, given that Farmfoods is being discussed on here…
Muckaway:
Some grumpy cow at a bakery near Melton Mowbray on Friday, actually moaned because we were pumptrucking the bakeries’ 20 bags rather than handballing them. “It’s a lazy way of doing it” according to her. She wasn’t happy when my mate pointed out how lazy it is on the customers part that we have to put it away for them. Hoping for the day H&S/insurance company create a “doorstep delivery only” rule.
she just wanted to leer at your muscles bulging
Used to work for brakes in Tamworth, used to do Wing Wah chinese on the Stafford road customer found a small piece of plastic in her food.
Sent to trading standards who said it was a microchip from a dog turned out one of the chefs sister worked in the vets opposite lol
Was in the papers and the place shut not long after lol.
Jeff.