Why do restaurants now insist on putting ground pepper in salt shakers?
Asked by
AstroChuck (
37609
)
October 17th, 2009
from iPhone
Eating establishments used to put salt in salt shakers and ground pepper in pepper shakers. For some reason most places no longer use pepper shakers anymore. It’s so frustrating trying to get ground pepper out of the smaller holes. I usually have to just unscrew the top and grab a pinch from the open shaker, often resulting in me spilling pepper all over the table.
This question is part bitch session but I really would like to know why most restaurants have abandoned pepper shakers. Any ideas?
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11 Answers
My guess would be it’s easier to order one type of shaker and use it for both purposes.
Because they’re both shakers.
@J0E- Yes, they are both shakers but grains of salt are smaller than ground pepper which is why the holes are larger on a pepper shaker. So if you were to put salt in a pepper shaker you would get too much salt out.
Couldn’t you just ask for freshly ground pepper from a pepper mill? Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a pepper shaker on a restaurant table in years. Don’t all restaurants use pepper mills now?
Not at your typical ChiliMcFridayBee’s.
I think most places intend to purchase the finely ground pepper, because it would make it through the tiny holes, but end up with coursely ground.
If you like pepper that much, why not carry it with you?
I looked up the cheapo shakers in the catalog of one of the major restaurant suppliers, and it’s sold as a salt/pepper shaker, so it appears to be the manufacturers who’ve decided to eliminate the option, not the restaurants. I’d guess that it’s just easier to produce and inventory one kind of cap rather than two.
@chuckie: Well then, you really shouldn’t be eating at places like that. It’s not good food product.
Even pepper shakers with larger holes suck. They only have a few holes, and it takes forever to get anything out. What do people have against you using a little pepper.
An afterthought: I have no way of verifying this, but I would bet good money that the switchover to a one-size-fits-all salt/pepper cap happened when the manufacturing of the caps was outsourced to China. As long as the manufacturing was being done in-house using the existing tooling from God knows when, then it wouldn’t have been a big deal to make two different styles. But when production was outsourced, it would have required two new sets of tooling and either two new production lines or periodic set-up costs to switch over from one style to the other. I could imagine Libbey Glassware receiving the bids based on one style vs. two, and deciding that the we could get by just fine with the salt/pepper shaker.
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