Gloppy Dressing: The Mother of Innovation

Gloppy dressing full of preservatives.

Sounds appetizing, right?

It certainly wasn’t for the end consumer of coleslaw. That is exactly what was available for delis and restaurants 20 years ago. You could make it fresh everyday like you’d do at home or in chef-led kitchens, but for quick serve chains, that was a cumbersome task to be added to all the other things needed to keep operations running. For this time the solution was pre-made coleslaw which was difficult to like and didn’t taste great — all those copious preservatives producing the “gloppiness factor” stuck rather well to the cabbage. If necessity is the mother of invention, then this gloppy dressing spurred on a little bit of innovation that we now see today.

A Brief History of Fresh Cut Produce in FoodserviceLet’s go back 40 years. At that point in foodservice, produce was still taking its baby steps with chopping and preparation being handled back of house. But with the arrival of franchising, other…