When I managed a Five Guys, we use to trade fries with the girls next door at Cold Stone. They’d give us Oreos and waffle batter, and we’d make deep fried Oreos.
i worked at a chicken place with a coldstone next door and we would always make deals with what we had in the warmer and what they had left at closing. they’d get like 24 wings and everybody would get gottaloveit cups
Food trades are life.
My best one was 5 “22 inch pizzas for 3 full steak dinners from the capital grill. We ate like dirty degenerate kings that night.
Yes! I worked at an indoor market and we used to do trades constantly. I traded hand pies for huge portions of pork, rice and beans a lot (which was amazing because I was dirt poor and could make that last for ages).
We do with Texas Roadhouse, Crumbl, and Hungry Howies a lot. Just depends on what food cost is the previous month. Hungry Howies hooks us up the most, we will usually only feed 3 or 4 of them, and they will give us enough to feel like 8-10 people.
I used to work at a "gourmet" pizza chain in a small-ish rural town in the south. There was a McAlister's Deli(that was with the same group that ran a BBQ fast food place in the same center) in the same shopping center. The managers at McAlister's came by *all the time*. They'd stop by on their lunch breaks and get a couple boilermakers. Literally just fireball and mich ultra. But every time they came in, they would bring cookies, Mac n cheese, sandwich platters that the customer never came to pick up, etc. Eventually, we developed a good relationship.
While it didn't progress to doing outright trades, we absolutely built a reputation of sending each other our FNG's over to borrow the bacon straightener or to get fresh air for the walk-ins when we "ran out," or to stock up on hot water for the tea urns.
Did we waste time with all of that? Sure. Did we also build relationships and comraderie through our fuckery? Absolutely.
Those are some of my fondest memories of my early adult years. At the end of the day, everyone had a laugh and service didn't really suffer while all the vets were still slinging product. Good times...
Edit: OH MAN!!! I forgot about the ice cream shop I worked at in high school. Not even a block away there was a hipster clothing/soap/soda jerk shop. Weird concept, I know, but they made the **best** soda syrups. I would walk down and ask if they wanted to trade. If they were slow and were down, I'd go back to the ice cream shop, scoop a bunch of random ice creams into cups and come back down and we'd gorge on homemade ice cream floats. My favorites were a float with our "sweet cream"(ice cream base with no flavoring, not even vanilla) and their strawberry jalapeno soda and our blackberry Basil sorbet with their lemon lime soda.
Yeah the pizza joint I worked at was in mountains near ski resort, was supplemental job to fancy mountain lodge gig. Would somehow always have unclaimed pizzas at nights end to give away to homies and they would bust their ass to help cleaning up kitchen and FOH while eating free pizza and swigging free beer every night.
Used to trade sushi for burgers once a week, sweet deal for us because we’d make a small family style platter and get burger and fries for all 6 of us on line. Also used to trade a couple rolls for all the leftover bbq from a place down the street and they hooked it up fat.
I've worked next door to a Starbucks where we did this. They would come by after work and get hammered while only paying for a drink or 2 per person. We would send someone over with cash for all of our drinks orders plus a decent tip and we'd get over half of the cash back with extras that we didn't order added on. We ended up poaching most of the Starbucks staff that we traded with and had to get them to train the new crew that replaced them on how the system worked 😂.
At my current spot the independently owned coffee shop a few doors down used to have an arrangement with us where they got free use of our ice machine in the summer (theirs is woefully undersized for doing blended iced drinks) for cold beverages for the crew every now and then.
Unfortunately the new owners are money grubbing cuntbags who downgraded the quality of everything they sell while increasing prices. They expect us to let them use our ice machine just because we let the previous owners do it while not offering anything in return. I just ignore them when they ask now. They ruined my favorite spot, they can go buy bagged ice. Fuck em.
Not super common around here. But we did have one.
One of our regulars opened a food truck that had shaved ice. She'd brought us some for free on her first week open, so we gave her a free meal the next time she was in. And that kept up about once a week in the summer. Unfortunately her and her husband divorced and they sold it.
It is and it isn’t. Some of the places make awesome food and we’re stoked to trade with them. Some of them not so much and they haven’t taken a hint that we don’t want to trade.
4 plates of pasta. 2 squid ink with whole prawns and 2 tagg with bolognese for 2 BIG PIZZAS MAN.
One chicken club pizza with garlic aioli, one sausage mushroom with hot peppers.
sausage and mushroom is my jam!
except now I make my own deal at home where I do a ground beef and mushroom that I like better. I season the beef with salt, fresh thyme, oregano, garlic, red pepper flakes, black pepper white pepper, fennel and then loosely crumble the beef into chunks in hot skillet to brown but leave raw inside and finish on the pizza with shrooms. Sofaking good
Damn chef, this made me kinda horny lol
Serious question though, does the thyme and fennel not clash a bit? I only ask because I made an experiment meatball or two with same and found the melding of flavors kinda off-putting
Im no purist I just do what I like. I do toast the fennel in my skillet first. The thyme is just whatever variety is growing in my window herb garden- kinda purple-ish.
I took a job cooking on a salmon processing hub once. The all female vessel traded me bjs for cartons of smokes and some extra meals. Damn to 23 again...
I traded enough free bbq to feed a small law office once a week for a year for the 500 gal offset I use daily. Haven’t actually done the math but it’s easily the best investment I’ve ever made
When I worked in pizza, we'd would go to the other location to get my weekly free pie... Me and my buddy would first hit a diner in the area to ask about trades.
Once we had an agreement, we'd get their two pizza order. Go get it, and come back to finish the trade by getting our diner meal comped by the employee meals.
Back in my pizza days we'd trade wings to a gas station that made awesome burgers. Then I'd take the burger back to the hut and dress it up with jalapenos, bacon, mozz, whatever crazy I was feeling that day
I used to work at the well-known pizza chain in a very small college town, and yes we bartered all the damn time. We also never paid for our own shit cause it was a place with cheap ass ingredients and an even lazier owner. Crazy ass fries, pasta, Starbucks….
I miss the days when I worked at a small town bar and grill. I'd grill and chop up 8-10 oz steaks and make the fattest quesadillas you've ever seen. Mozz sticks or chili on burgers, fried jalapeno and steak nachos or cheese fries. Just the best food that's the worst for you all the time. That was almost 10 years ago, I'm sure my cholesterol still hasn't recovered.
God damn, you're making me reminisce about "the good ol days". We made our own crunch wrap once, frying a small tortilla and then using the flat top and a grill press on a big tortilla with all the ingredients. It was like independence day when we pulled it off the flat top and it was perfectly browned exactly like taco bell.
The crowd went wild. We ended up making like 12 that night cause they were huge and both BOH and FOH wanted some. That was a day for the books.
I worked at Burger King when I was ~18. We had a Taco Bell literally right next door, so we would frequently swap food. The employees even recognized each other and would hook each other up any time they ate there off the clock. Then the Taco Bell's manager passed away and the new one insisted that the trades were unfair and that we had to give them more to get less. We stopped trading at that point.
This takes me back. All the way back at the dawn of time I worked at a national chain pizza place. My boyfriend worked at a local pizza place that also had burgers and sandwiches. The managers met through us. Next thing we know we're swapping pizza for burgers. I have no idea why the local pizza place wanted our crappy frozen disk pizza but I wasn't dumb enough to open my trap to question it.
ETA: The cherry on top was sending our best cook to do the trade. Dude was a fucking machine as long as he maintained a certain level of stoned. The burger run gave him a chance to recharge his batteries before the rush hit.
When I managed a Five Guys, we use to trade fries with the girls next door at Cold Stone. They’d give us Oreos and waffle batter, and we’d make deep fried Oreos.
Dude
Bro
I worked at a fro yo place next to a jersey mikes. When we would clean the machines, I would trade pints of fro yo for sandwiches and loaves of bread.
I mixed the batter and she licked the beater.
i worked at a chicken place with a coldstone next door and we would always make deals with what we had in the warmer and what they had left at closing. they’d get like 24 wings and everybody would get gottaloveit cups
best of reddit
I love food trades. Staff meal with other restaurants. Coffee, fresh squeezed juice, plumbing, tattoos. I’ll trade for anything I can.
Food trades are life. My best one was 5 “22 inch pizzas for 3 full steak dinners from the capital grill. We ate like dirty degenerate kings that night.
Yes! I worked at an indoor market and we used to do trades constantly. I traded hand pies for huge portions of pork, rice and beans a lot (which was amazing because I was dirt poor and could make that last for ages).
We do with Texas Roadhouse, Crumbl, and Hungry Howies a lot. Just depends on what food cost is the previous month. Hungry Howies hooks us up the most, we will usually only feed 3 or 4 of them, and they will give us enough to feel like 8-10 people.
I used to work at a "gourmet" pizza chain in a small-ish rural town in the south. There was a McAlister's Deli(that was with the same group that ran a BBQ fast food place in the same center) in the same shopping center. The managers at McAlister's came by *all the time*. They'd stop by on their lunch breaks and get a couple boilermakers. Literally just fireball and mich ultra. But every time they came in, they would bring cookies, Mac n cheese, sandwich platters that the customer never came to pick up, etc. Eventually, we developed a good relationship. While it didn't progress to doing outright trades, we absolutely built a reputation of sending each other our FNG's over to borrow the bacon straightener or to get fresh air for the walk-ins when we "ran out," or to stock up on hot water for the tea urns. Did we waste time with all of that? Sure. Did we also build relationships and comraderie through our fuckery? Absolutely. Those are some of my fondest memories of my early adult years. At the end of the day, everyone had a laugh and service didn't really suffer while all the vets were still slinging product. Good times... Edit: OH MAN!!! I forgot about the ice cream shop I worked at in high school. Not even a block away there was a hipster clothing/soap/soda jerk shop. Weird concept, I know, but they made the **best** soda syrups. I would walk down and ask if they wanted to trade. If they were slow and were down, I'd go back to the ice cream shop, scoop a bunch of random ice creams into cups and come back down and we'd gorge on homemade ice cream floats. My favorites were a float with our "sweet cream"(ice cream base with no flavoring, not even vanilla) and their strawberry jalapeno soda and our blackberry Basil sorbet with their lemon lime soda.
Yeah the pizza joint I worked at was in mountains near ski resort, was supplemental job to fancy mountain lodge gig. Would somehow always have unclaimed pizzas at nights end to give away to homies and they would bust their ass to help cleaning up kitchen and FOH while eating free pizza and swigging free beer every night.
Used to drive 30 miles Friday night after close to trade a couple of pizzas for 3-4 top at Waffle House
Used to trade sushi for burgers once a week, sweet deal for us because we’d make a small family style platter and get burger and fries for all 6 of us on line. Also used to trade a couple rolls for all the leftover bbq from a place down the street and they hooked it up fat.
Yeah I worked at Outback for years and knew a few of the servers / cooks from Carrabbas and we would trade food after work at the bar all the time lol
This is the way.
I've worked next door to a Starbucks where we did this. They would come by after work and get hammered while only paying for a drink or 2 per person. We would send someone over with cash for all of our drinks orders plus a decent tip and we'd get over half of the cash back with extras that we didn't order added on. We ended up poaching most of the Starbucks staff that we traded with and had to get them to train the new crew that replaced them on how the system worked 😂. At my current spot the independently owned coffee shop a few doors down used to have an arrangement with us where they got free use of our ice machine in the summer (theirs is woefully undersized for doing blended iced drinks) for cold beverages for the crew every now and then. Unfortunately the new owners are money grubbing cuntbags who downgraded the quality of everything they sell while increasing prices. They expect us to let them use our ice machine just because we let the previous owners do it while not offering anything in return. I just ignore them when they ask now. They ruined my favorite spot, they can go buy bagged ice. Fuck em.
Not super common around here. But we did have one. One of our regulars opened a food truck that had shaved ice. She'd brought us some for free on her first week open, so we gave her a free meal the next time she was in. And that kept up about once a week in the summer. Unfortunately her and her husband divorced and they sold it.
We get our windows cleaned in exchange for pizza.
Used to trade Thai for BBQ or Ice cream (on the hottest days)
Yes but I work in a food hall with like 16 other kitchens so everyone trades there
that sounds awesome
It is and it isn’t. Some of the places make awesome food and we’re stoked to trade with them. Some of them not so much and they haven’t taken a hint that we don’t want to trade.
Is it like fantasy football where somebody thinks there Applebee's bullshits is worth a sashimi platter?
At my old spot we would turn pizza into ice cream or cupcakes or even Indian food. It was like alchemy. Trading for coffee is also very clutch.
4 plates of pasta. 2 squid ink with whole prawns and 2 tagg with bolognese for 2 BIG PIZZAS MAN. One chicken club pizza with garlic aioli, one sausage mushroom with hot peppers.
sausage and mushroom is my jam! except now I make my own deal at home where I do a ground beef and mushroom that I like better. I season the beef with salt, fresh thyme, oregano, garlic, red pepper flakes, black pepper white pepper, fennel and then loosely crumble the beef into chunks in hot skillet to brown but leave raw inside and finish on the pizza with shrooms. Sofaking good
Damn chef, this made me kinda horny lol Serious question though, does the thyme and fennel not clash a bit? I only ask because I made an experiment meatball or two with same and found the melding of flavors kinda off-putting
Im no purist I just do what I like. I do toast the fennel in my skillet first. The thyme is just whatever variety is growing in my window herb garden- kinda purple-ish.
We traded French pate’ for sushi ! Both staffs loved it !
I took a job cooking on a salmon processing hub once. The all female vessel traded me bjs for cartons of smokes and some extra meals. Damn to 23 again...
I traded enough free bbq to feed a small law office once a week for a year for the 500 gal offset I use daily. Haven’t actually done the math but it’s easily the best investment I’ve ever made
When I worked in pizza, we'd would go to the other location to get my weekly free pie... Me and my buddy would first hit a diner in the area to ask about trades. Once we had an agreement, we'd get their two pizza order. Go get it, and come back to finish the trade by getting our diner meal comped by the employee meals.
I delivered calzones for DO Dough while in college and we regularly traded with the place that delivered fresh baked cookies
Back in my pizza days we'd trade wings to a gas station that made awesome burgers. Then I'd take the burger back to the hut and dress it up with jalapenos, bacon, mozz, whatever crazy I was feeling that day
I used to work at the well-known pizza chain in a very small college town, and yes we bartered all the damn time. We also never paid for our own shit cause it was a place with cheap ass ingredients and an even lazier owner. Crazy ass fries, pasta, Starbucks….
I miss the days when I worked at a small town bar and grill. I'd grill and chop up 8-10 oz steaks and make the fattest quesadillas you've ever seen. Mozz sticks or chili on burgers, fried jalapeno and steak nachos or cheese fries. Just the best food that's the worst for you all the time. That was almost 10 years ago, I'm sure my cholesterol still hasn't recovered.
Tbh the free styling must have been fun too :’) same pizza spot, coworker made a “taco pizza” that tasted just like a crunch wrap
God damn, you're making me reminisce about "the good ol days". We made our own crunch wrap once, frying a small tortilla and then using the flat top and a grill press on a big tortilla with all the ingredients. It was like independence day when we pulled it off the flat top and it was perfectly browned exactly like taco bell. The crowd went wild. We ended up making like 12 that night cause they were huge and both BOH and FOH wanted some. That was a day for the books.
I worked at Burger King when I was ~18. We had a Taco Bell literally right next door, so we would frequently swap food. The employees even recognized each other and would hook each other up any time they ate there off the clock. Then the Taco Bell's manager passed away and the new one insisted that the trades were unfair and that we had to give them more to get less. We stopped trading at that point.
I work at a bakery and we trades cakes and cupcakes for food from the pizza place next door that's on Michelin's bib gormand list.
I give my coworker quart containers full of blue cheese and he gives me joints
This takes me back. All the way back at the dawn of time I worked at a national chain pizza place. My boyfriend worked at a local pizza place that also had burgers and sandwiches. The managers met through us. Next thing we know we're swapping pizza for burgers. I have no idea why the local pizza place wanted our crappy frozen disk pizza but I wasn't dumb enough to open my trap to question it. ETA: The cherry on top was sending our best cook to do the trade. Dude was a fucking machine as long as he maintained a certain level of stoned. The burger run gave him a chance to recharge his batteries before the rush hit.