The year is advancing and we are excited for all the growth and most of all, sharing our spaces with you. We helped you establish How to turn your staff into street food pros. In that lesson we elaborated on the things your employees need to know to spice up your business.  We hope you are enjoying our lessons. We look forward to a better version of your street food shop. Our present series are centered on increased sales for your shop. This is why we bring your way a digest that can make your shop all round delicious.

Street food shops often ignore food presentation because they are preoccupied with the taste of their dishes. Some are too busy with other aspects of their food business to even bother. You must understand that before your servings go to the taste buds, your customers eat with their eyes first. A poorly packaged meal would decrease sales for you. So now, how do you make your pizza and pies and burgers and lunch treats more mouth watering? How does your real serving look exactly like the picture on your advert boards and internet pages? The answer lies in how you package and present them.

Have you ever ordered this as pictured on the menu:

And gotten this when served:

The difference between the meals in these two images is the plating and presentation. The former was well plated because it was going to be used for an advert while the latter was served in haste. While taste in very vital, the presentation gives an overwhelming and happy feeling to your customer. Sometimes, when you present a creatively packaged serving to them, some of them take pictures of the meal and advertise your food shop online, telling their friends about your delicacy and your creative presentation.

Isn’t this exciting, having customers advertise you without your prompting?

Before you begin Plating

What kind of meal are you serving? Are your serving spiced up meat balls or chicken soup or noodles? You need to also establish the ingredients you would need. The portion sizes are important too and should be considered. Do not forget that taste is important and should not be overshadowed by presentation.

Approaches to creating great food plating and presentation

1. The Perfect Plate

It is important that you select the right plate for your presentation. Plates that will highlight your creativity are important. Choosing the right plate entails taking the size and the shape into consideration. Plates with the wrong shapes may mar your efforts or make the presentations poor. The plate sizes should be wide enough to take all the designs you want to create.

The plate colour is as important as the two factors already mentioned. Dull-coloured plates would make your food arrangement invisible and unattractive. White plates are highly likely to favour your presentations because of their abstract appearance.

This also covers for other food types like baguettes, pizzas, and other snacks. What you wrap them with helps boost or mar your sales. Instant coffees and juices should equally be served in attractive cups, on a cup carrier, a stirrer for the coffee and a transparent cup for the colourful juice. You should seriously consider your plating when ordering your food boxes, coffee cups, soup cups, disposable plates and cutlery, etc.

 2. The Colour of Your Presentation

Children are not the only ones attracted to beautiful colours. Adults always fall to admiring colours especially when they come with food. When your serving is in a spectrum of colours, it is even more pleasing to the eye and would arouse a lost appetite. You can add green vegetables or other kind of green salad at the edges of the food. You can create a round shape with them or other kinds of shapes. You can contrast the green with coloured vegetable like tomatoes and carrots, all arranged at the sides of the plate which is the most favourable focal point of your plate. You can top sauces creatively on your servings. These additions should not be heaped at a corner but sprinkled gracefully about the plate. However, your garnishing should be related to the meal’s flavour, and should not be bitter or have a strong unpleasant scent.

3. Food Placement and The Plating Tools

 How you place your servings on the plate goes a long way in leaving an impression in your customer’s mind, good or bad as the case may be. When serving, ensure the food is not heaped at a place else your customer will find it irritating. When they are also placed too apart from the other, the customers may feel that your rations are small and not deserving for the money they are paying. So it is better to place the main meal foremost on the place, and then decorate it with the other ingredients sprinkled around it. Sauces and dressings should be the last things to get on your plate. This is to heighten their effect on your serving.

Make sure your plate is not overcrowded. Four or five different colours of ingredients and sauces are enough to set the ball rolling. Here, too much may be perceived as too poor.

There are tools you could use for more effective creations on your plate. The decorating brushes could be used for adding sauces or applying them on the meat. The garnishing kit comes with tongs, brushes, squeeze bottles, plating wedges and others. You could use molds to slice ingredients into the shape and size you want, or for stacking ingredients. The plating wedges could be used to sprinkle sauces on the plate. Shavers, spoons, and squeeze bottles are also some of the tools to use when aiming for perfect food plating.

4. Food Temperature

The state of the meal before it is served your customer is also another important aspect of plating and presentation. It is vital that the meals you serve are as fresh as they appear on your advert boards and internet sites. Adequate food storage is important here. Make sure that the ingredients are in good state. Hot meals should be kept in containers that retain their temperature, the same goes for cold meals. Keep your vegetables fresh and crunchy. Hot drinks should stay hot and cold drinks should stay cold, while keeping fresh.

 5. To Go Outstanding

There are no hard and fast rules about how to plate and present your meals so you are free to establish own designs that would make your customers fall in love with your shop. You could serve ketchup or salad cream in small portion pots placed on the tray. You could also add free cookies to their trays or place thank you notes and quotes that could inspire them in their own businesses under their trays. This goes to show that beyond their patronage, you are interested in their progress.

You do not have to worry about getting all of this right in weeks or months of practice. The perfection you desire may take a couple of years to arrive at. To become a beacon of excellent you must be consistent. Consider adding a new feature to your shop every week and then aim to make it better.

Let’s do this again next week. Until then, let us know the food presenting skills you have learned and have applied at your street food shop. How did they do? What were the comments you got? You could share the pictures with us on our Facebook page.

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P.S. If you love our Blog, you'll surely love our products: Check out our  Disposable Food Boxes, Soup Containers, Coffee Cups, Smoothie and Milkshake Cups, Sandwich Packaging or Salad Packaging Containers.