Problem: Quesada (one of Canada’s largest Mexica fast casual chains) relied heavily on using raw ground beef across a large number of their menu offerings (burritos, bowls, tacos, nachos, etc.). A staple in many Mexican dishes, ground beef posed a number of challenges at the store level to properly prepare and use. The handling of raw ground beef presented a number of food safety issues in the prep stations, the cooking of raw ground beef yielded an excess of greasy run off that created a mess, and when the store was busy it was hard to monitor the cooking of the ground beef sometime causing it to be over or under cooked. Quesada started looking for a better solution to one of their staple protein ingredients

Solution: With Cardinal’s Safe Sous Vide™ ground beef crumble, the solution was in the bag! Cardinal worked with Quesada’s culinary team at their head office & culinary centre and the results were better than they were expecting. As a cooked in bag, fully cooked product, we were able to eliminate every single point of frustration that Quesada were experiencing in dealing with raw ground beef. No mess, less time and labour in cooking the product, better yield and overall time & cost savings in their back of house, while being able to keep their menu costs in line with the previous raw inputs. Quesada realized an added benefit in working with Safe Sous Vide™ products, which was their realization that they didn’t have to keep ground beef frozen anymore before preparing. Safe Sous Vide™ ground beef had a prolonged shelf-life due to being fully cooked in bag, and therefore didn’t need to be frozen when product arrived at their facility. The result was their cooks didn’t need to pull out ground beef the night before to thaw before cooking. They could simply pull Safe Sous Vide™ ground beef out of their coolers and warm what they needed when they needed it. The last test was with guests to make sure that the product lived up to the eating experience they had with raw ground beef, and in testing with consumers they didn’t even realize they had made a change.