| Summary: | In many ways, the foodservice industry is barely at the beginning of its own "Industrial Revolution." The Industrial Revolution of 150 years ago was basically a transfer of skills from the hands of craftsmen to machines. The foodservice industry is today transferring skills from the hands of skilled craftsmen, the chefs, to the machines of the bulk processors.
With unarguable certainty, the saucier is being replaced by pre-processed fresh and frozen vegetables, the chef is being replaced by fully prepared entrees, the waiter is being replaced by the waitress, the waitress by the cafeteria or fast food counter aide, the server by the vending machine, the executive chef by the food production manager. As the volume of public feeding increases every day, the need for new technologies in foodservice management becomes increasingly urgent. Men are being replaced by machines for the first time in the history of our industry.
"Mass production" is a term which came into widespread usage in the early 1900s, and derived largely from America. There has never been a precise, widely adopted definition of the term, yet for most people mass production means the manufacture of products in large quantities by means of purpose-designed manufacturing facilities. Mass production has been adopted as a generic rather than a specific term. In the interests of clarity and simplicity we shall refer to this aspect of mass production as quantity production.
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