By now I'm sure that some of you young whipper-snappers know that I'm an old-timer. If not, just know that I am. > A lot of things changed since I left the retail business but something never change (the basics). I met Lander McCoy Bacon (not slab bacon) Coy Bacon for short. He was a lineman for the Redskins (can I still say that in public?). > I met him in a bar in Fairfax, Va. He told me that football is all about basics; running, blocking, tackling and throwing. If your good at one of them you get the big bucks. During the 1979/80 seasons for the Skins he had 26 unassisted sacks. He turned and looked at me and then put those huge paws one on my right shoulder the other on the left. Then he said that's all I am responsible for on the line. I clear-away anyone in front of me between your shoulders. Now his shoulders were about 4 feet apart. LOL>LOL>
You say what does this have to do with "receiving weights". Like blocking and tackling we in the meat business live and die by the scale. The scale is "king", it should be worshiped. We totally take "scales" for granted. We don't think about the fact that the "scale" is a tool just like your knife or saws. Just about everything you sell on the fresh meat, poultry and seafood side of the business must go across a scale.
I hope that at least you check your scale accuracy everyday with a set of accurate weights. Not with a prepackaged pound of coffee. I mean you need a solid object made out of steel or plastic. Back in the day you could buy them in any hardware store but I suppose now you have to go to Amazon. One pound is all you need maybe your company provides the weights. In the packing house checking scales was apart of pre-op. It was the responsibility of Quality Assurance to check the scales and we had many many scales.
We need to make time to check our receiving weights. Now you say who the heck can do that. Well how about if I tell you it is the quickest way to add points to your gross with little labor. I can't tell you how many times we found weight discrepancies when I work as a field supervisor for an independent group. We use to have seminars on that subject. Digital scales, (garbage in, garbage out) and who operates the scales? "Good house Keeping magazine" tell the woman shoppers to check their grocery receipts especially now that everything is scanned. Somebody in your store has to go back where the computer is located and change prices. Right. Garbage in garbage out!
When I worked for a large meat packer who was totally digital we got a call from a major chain in the D.C. area. They found a slight rounding problem and it was found in their warehouse. So I got sent in there, the box weights were off .25 of a pound. Not much you say but on 10 loads of boxed beef it was a big chunk of money. You don't have to check every single box of meat, poultry or seafood you receive but you can do spot checks and make a schedule for doing it. Do it on the most expensive items first. Like crab legs, or shrimp or expensive fish cuts, tenderloins, rib eyes and so forth. Don't be afraid to take a box of rib eyes removed them and weigh them and compare your scale weight with the box weight.
You know its a funny thing. Stores get weight checked all the time by state and government agencies. But no body is checking the receiving weights. This is so very important.
The other day I went with my wife grocery shopping and while she was shopping I always check the meat cases and I also like to check the produce case. I watched a shopper weigh mango fruit. I couldn't imagine why because they were sold by count not weight. So I asked her and I was dumbfounded. I never thought about it. She said at .99 cents each I pick out the large ones. I think I'm getting a better deal. So there you have it.
I leave you with a quote by Will Rogers Sr. : There are 3 kinds of men; The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on a electric fence to find out for themselves.
I used t randomly scale primals and add the weights to check. The thing is when you encounter a problem, notify the people who need to be notified we ended up still with a shortage. :)
Where I am now, I started weighing bone and meat etc and noticed a 30-50 lb discrepancy in what our rail ticket said and what we actually brought in on hooks. I tried to explain to my bosses the moisture/water loss etc :) They still asked our supplier, and pissed him off big time.
Moral, if it ain't my money I'm not going to make a huge issue out of it unless there's a huge price loss. :)
I used t randomly scale primals and add the weights to check. The thing is when you encounter a problem, notify the people who need to be notified we ended up still with a shortage. :) Where I am now, I started weighing bone and meat etc and noticed a 30-50 lb discrepancy in what our rail ticket said and what we actually brought in on hooks. I tried to explain to my bosses the moisture/water loss etc :) They still asked our supplier, and pissed him off big time. Moral, if it ain't my money I'm not going to make a huge issue out of it unless there's a huge price loss. :)
Well now you have a point if nobody else is concerned. However, suppliers shouldn't dictate to customers. They know that there is a shrink factor in swinging beef. As an example (in the old days) our swinging beef suppliers built in an automatic shrink loss into the invoice. At least the honest ones did. You would have to be from Mars not to know swinging beef looses moisture. I guess your supplier feels he is doing you a favor selling you swinging beef! Somebody needs to straighten that boy out! Sure you might eat a few pounds but 30-50 lbs those kind of losses will only make you work harder because you will have to cover that loss some how. The other loss with swinging beef is floor-loss or some people call it floor sweepings. What ever you call it, its real. Fronts, hinds, whatever bump together somewhere along the line and bits and piece of fat, blood and meat hit the floor. More loss.
You don't cheat your customers on outbound weights so gosh almighty you shouldn't be cheated on inbound weights.
Now I'm not knocking swinging beef but these are the pitfalls using it.
Back in the day when I worked for two different independents, we weighed in EVERYTHING coming in on the rail and we only paid for what we got. Changed the invoice and made their driver sign it. If the supplier didn't like it they could sell to someone who didn't care but not to us.
Later, when I worked for the big chain, not so much. Everything came in from our PDC and we had to accept what the invoice said. Not that we didn't do spot checks but it was more or less "checking a box" on one of our check lists.
Coalcracker wrote:
By now I'm sure that some of you young whipper-snappers know that I'm an old-timer. If not, just know that I am. > A lot of things changed since I left the retail business but something never change (the basics). I met Lander McCoy Bacon (not slab bacon) Coy Bacon for short. He was a lineman for the Redskins (can I still say that in public?). > I met him in a bar in Fairfax, Va. He told me that football is all about basics; running, blocking, tackling and throwing. If your good at one of them you get the big bucks. During the 1979/80 seasons for the Skins he had 26 unassisted sacks. He turned and looked at me and then put those huge paws one on my right shoulder the other on the left. Then he said that's all I am responsible for on the line. I clear-away anyone in front of me between your shoulders. Now his shoulders were about 4 feet apart. LOL>LOL>
You say what does this have to do with "receiving weights". Like blocking and tackling we in the meat business live and die by the scale. The scale is "king", it should be worshiped. We totally take "scales" for granted. We don't think about the fact that the "scale" is a tool just like your knife or saws. Just about everything you sell on the fresh meat, poultry and seafood side of the business must go across a scale.
I hope that at least you check your scale accuracy everyday with a set of accurate weights. Not with a prepackaged pound of coffee. I mean you need a solid object made out of steel or plastic. Back in the day you could buy them in any hardware store but I suppose now you have to go to Amazon. One pound is all you need maybe your company provides the weights. In the packing house checking scales was apart of pre-op. It was the responsibility of Quality Assurance to check the scales and we had many many scales.
We need to make time to check our receiving weights. Now you say who the heck can do that. Well how about if I tell you it is the quickest way to add points to your gross with little labor. I can't tell you how many times we found weight discrepancies when I work as a field supervisor for an independent group. We use to have seminars on that subject. Digital scales, (garbage in, garbage out) and who operates the scales? "Good house Keeping magazine" tell the woman shoppers to check their grocery receipts especially now that everything is scanned. Somebody in your store has to go back where the computer is located and change prices. Right. Garbage in garbage out!
When I worked for a large meat packer who was totally digital we got a call from a major chain in the D.C. area. They found a slight rounding problem and it was found in their warehouse. So I got sent in there, the box weights were off .25 of a pound. Not much you say but on 10 loads of boxed beef it was a big chunk of money. You don't have to check every single box of meat, poultry or seafood you receive but you can do spot checks and make a schedule for doing it. Do it on the most expensive items first. Like crab legs, or shrimp or expensive fish cuts, tenderloins, rib eyes and so forth. Don't be afraid to take a box of rib eyes removed them and weigh them and compare your scale weight with the box weight.
You know its a funny thing. Stores get weight checked all the time by state and government agencies. But no body is checking the receiving weights. This is so very important.
The other day I went with my wife grocery shopping and while she was shopping I always check the meat cases and I also like to check the produce case. I watched a shopper weigh mango fruit. I couldn't imagine why because they were sold by count not weight. So I asked her and I was dumbfounded. I never thought about it. She said at .99 cents each I pick out the large ones. I think I'm getting a better deal. So there you have it.
I leave you with a quote by Will Rogers Sr. : There are 3 kinds of men; The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on a electric fence to find out for themselves.
When I started this love affair with meat I use to have to take all the chickens out of the box, we had ice pack chickens in those days, I had to knock off all the ice, reweigh them with out the ice and change the ticket, knocking the ice off could save you 20 to 25 lbs
> A lot of things changed since I left the retail business but something never change (the basics). I met Lander McCoy Bacon (not slab bacon) Coy Bacon for short. He was a lineman for the Redskins (can I still say that in public?).
> I met him in a bar in Fairfax, Va. He told me that football is all about basics; running, blocking, tackling and throwing. If your good at one of them you get the big bucks. During the 1979/80 seasons for the Skins he had 26 unassisted sacks. He turned and looked at me and then put those huge paws one on my right shoulder the other on the left. Then he said that's all I am responsible for on the line. I clear-away anyone in front of me between your shoulders. Now his shoulders were about 4 feet apart. LOL>LOL>
