Foods R Us

We had to head to the Albany, NY, area early this morning. We were meeting our Pennsylvania distributor, Alpine Wurst and Meat House at a large Shop-rite supermarket. They deliver their sausages to Shop-rite, and we hand off our spatzle to their delivery person. It works out conveniently for all of us.

After our delivery, we went shopping at Restaurant Depot, aka Foods R Us. This is the Toys R Us of the restaurant world. The first time we walked into Restaurant Depot 4 years ago, we were in shock. It is Sam’s Club or BJ’s size, but they only sell things that restaurants use.

We got our free membership for the business when we were doing an Octoberfest event. We were going to be hot food vendors. We’ve both cooked for crowds before and knew exactly what we needed. It was a little overwhelming; we were in there for close to 3 hours to get everything we needed.

When we visit Restaurant Depot, we purchase supplies for the business and some items for ourselves. When we arrived, the place was packed! I mean, we haven’t seen it this busy for a long time. We guessed that more and more food businesses are re-opening.

So we don’t get off track; we have a list that we try to stick to unless there are bargains that we just can’t live without. Today I took photos because I wanted to share our shopping trip with you guys today. I didn’t even take photos of half the aisles.

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I saw the store through different eyes, trying to show you all the things that blew our minds the first time we went. I tried to capture the sheer size of the place; it’s huge. The refrigerated section is gigantic with an entire row of different cheeses, another aisle with just deli meat, bacon, and fancy charcuterie. The dairy aisle has anything you would need, and the produce section…whole shit, it is gigantic! There are meats and seafood as well. They sell kosher and halal meats and other items.

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All of the quantities are commercial size and priced well. We also purchase our cleaning solutions and detergent for the business and rubber gloves, green scrubby pads, tablecloths, sanitizer tablets, and the list goes on and on.

So who shops at Restaurant Depot? Small businesses do. Larger restaurants and chain restaurants get their food delivered directly to them. Small businesses can’t meet the minimum amount every week, so they have to purchase things themselves.

Many ethnic restaurants shop at Restaurant Depot, so you will find things you would never see in regular supermarkets. Goat, salted, dried cod, and other animal parts from nose to tail.

Restaurants that don’t cook anything from scratch are in heaven. Anything that you have ever seen on the menu in a restaurant, bar, snack bar, bowling alley, ball-game is available. Large boxes of candy, drinks, chips, you name it, they have it.

Last year right before Covid hit, we took our chef friend Martin to Restaurant Depot. Martin was fascinated and confused. He’s been a chef for more than 40 years and couldn’t believe what he saw in the freezer section. “Why would they have this? It’s so easy to make. Why do they have that? You can make it for much less money? We were hysterical watching him in bewilderment.

We shopped quickly since we were both staving and breezed right through the check out with our U-boat. They don’t have shopping carts at Restaurant Depot. It’s impressive how people can whirl their U-boats around loaded to the gills.

It was great to see the place buzzing with action again. People from every walk of life and ethnicity were shopping. They were moving quickly, dodging the forklifts in the aisles with determined looks on their faces. They were there to get what they needed for their businesses and make some money again. Thank goodness!