To be astonished that Morrisons cafe cannot make scrambled egg

[FishyTree]

Fancied a quick brunch with DH this morning so headed to Morrisons cafe after we finished our shopping. Asked for scrambled egg with my breakfast but was told they only had fried or poached!

Upon querying this with a manager I was told the scrambled egg comes pre prepared and gets microwaved in a bag.

I don’t expect Michelin starred food at a supermarket cafe but Aibu to expect them to be able to make fresh scrambled egg?

So does that mean the poached and fried eggs also come in a bag?

Yes YABU to not know that most places just reheat food and there is no actual chefing involved. Why should a minimum wage cafe assistant be expected to have to make eggs too? No doubt if they were bad you would be on here moaning they weren’t good enough 🥲

As others have said, it's not about the skill of the staff, they won't have the facilities to do it, nor the stock. Re stock, they can't just nip onto the shop floor, it's a different system/pricing, often cafes are actually a separate company. But the benefit you get from all this is the low cost of the food. By all means go to a proper independent cafe if you want a cook who can adapt things for you, but you'll pay accordingly.

I think if you order a Full English for £6.50 then the ingredient quality/range and cooking skills are going to be fairly minimal in order to keep their meals actually returning any profit.

If you want fresh, high quality ingredients, cooked to your specific liking, then you need to choose a venue which is dedicated to this, and pay the additional costs.

Even up here in the North East I'd not expect to get a full English for less than £13/14.

My friend used to work at Wetherspoons as a microwave technician 😂

it's mental when you consider all the food waste from supermarkets, yet they don't use up short life stock by making meals in the cafe, or even restocking from the shop when they run out of eggs or whatever.

I can picture how prepackaged scrambled and poached eggs would look in the packaging but not the fried ones!

Some people like my husband can’t crack eggs due to a disability, he can however open a tetra pak (mangle it!) and pour out the contents.

Most businesses will bring in pre-cooked food so they can wash their hands on any food poisoning allegations

I can't seem to find any info on pre-prepared fried eggs in the UK but there is a market elsewhere in the world.

https://www.farmpride.com.au/fried-eggs/

They can't make poached eggs either... Hardboiled eggs is what you get.

Can happily confirm (as I’ve said on several threads about fast food cos I’m sad) that poached eggs are vacuum packed in individual bags and then blasted in the microwave for about ten seconds.

Scambled eggs (if you go to Whetherspoons) are microwaved. Probably with some spit in.

But the OP is being v. Unreasonable to think a fast food cafe is gonna do good quality fresh food. The ‘chef’ is probably a 16 year old who can’t even make himself scrambled eggs tbh

All I could think of was that someone might want to take it away somewhere and not risk breaking actual eggs en route.

It might be easier for some people I suppose or for speed. Bulk omelettes without having to mess about with dripping eggs and bits of shell, or for brushing pastry for hundreds of mince pies. I never bother to break an egg for that, just use milk as I hate messing about with the stringy bits. Wouldn't buy a carton of egg myself.

Apart from that, I agree, it is pointless. People must buy it though.

Supermarket food waste is way less than it used to be. Stock levels are constantly monitored by matching the data from sales (barcodes mean they know exactly what the sell) orders are adjusted accordingly, algorithms predict when there are likely to be higher or lower sales of particular items. That's before you've got the yellow label items, plus most supermarkets are signed up to fareshare or similar schemes, which redistribute food to charities before it goes out of date (but on the probability that it won't sell within date) who move it on safely and quickly. Eg in soup kitchens or community fresh food pantrys (similar to food banks but people pay a small charge for a certain number of bags of shopping)

That's far more effective than having stock sitting around that may or may not be used in a cafe, that is unlikely to have the facilities to cook it in the first place.

a friends DS spent the summer working in a factory that supplies pre cooked eggs of all varieties - - scrambled, fried, poached, omelettes.

I would have thought most would be aware supermarket cafes do not prepare any fresh cooked food on site, it’s clearly obvious they only use microwaves to reheat orders.

I think it's unreasonable for anyone to use a plastic bag and a microwave to cook, and then charge money for that shit. Plastic should never go in a microwave anyway, much less as a standard method.

Not anyone in the stores fault though so no point complaining to the manager

As everyone has said, the cooking facilities won’t exist. Chances are they don’t have:

1. saucepan
2. whisk
3. hob
4. staff with the food handling licences needed to actually cook from scratch.

If the pre-packaged serving of scrambled eggs to be heated in the microwave is out of stock, you are out of luck.

It’s not mental at all

Food establishments make their food with specific ingredients, and they advertise and write their menus based off that.

They can’t just randomly grab different brands of stuff because the ingredients would be wrong. If anyone had an allergic reaction they would be fucked.

It’s why it’s more expensive when you go to a nice cafe.

Box of 24 ready made poached eggs.

https://www.brake.co.uk/dairy/eggs/value-added/processed/sysco-classic-british-free-range-poached-eggs/p/127620

My Dd used to work in the range. They started selling Iceland food so the cafe would just nip down and get a cheap frozen lasagne when it was ordered.

There is probably not a person alive who can eat pre cooked eggs in a supermarket cafe but not fresh eggs from the supermarket itself.

You get what you pay for. Morrisons is a supermarket cafe doing reasonably decent economically priced food by offering a standard range. If you want more than that you need the go somewhere which offers a choice which will obviously cost more.

My daughter works in Morrisons cafe. She is 17 and so isn't allowed to cook so instead she takes orders and takes food to tables and bears the brunt of customers complaining that they can't buy off menu items. Staff turnover is ridiculous. She's been there 3 months which is amazing really.

As ever on these threads, I can't understand how arrogant some people are to believe that whatever they think is easy to do; that the business itself hasn't already considered that. And dismissed it.

If they made a profit making you scrambled eggs when it's not on the menu, then they would,obviously, offer that.

It doesn't even matter why they can't, it doesn't take rocket science to assume it's a mixture of lack of facilities/time in this case, but it still doesn't matter, they've made a business decision they're not offering scrambled eggs for whatever reason, and that's it.

You arguing and complaining about it doesn't change that.

I've just looked it up. It's £3 for eggs on toast. Which are poached or fried. So, for £3 you think it makes business sense for them to employ someone to spend ten minutes trying to explain to a dim customer why they can't have it, then agreeing anyway and walking over to the supermarket aisle to get the eggs as they don't have them in the kitchen as they don't offer scrambled eggs. finding a bowl which they don't have and a whisk, filling in whatever forms are required ti transfer stock from shelf to kitchen, and cooking on a hob which they don't have; to serve to a customer who, given the nature of the question, is likely to continue to complain about the length of time it took.

Yabu.

And for future, if any business won't offer you something, they will have a reason for it.