Fully cooked sausages solve waste problem

15th October 2008, 12:29pm

Back in the sepia tinted days of the 1950's The Barn, on the A25 near Guildford, Surrey, was a tea room and snack bar. Since then it has metamorphosed into an upmarket licensed restaurant and coffee bar.

Run by Mrs. Jean Hoblin and her sister, it has earned a reputation among hikers, bikers, picnickers, A25 traffic and locals with an eye for cost conscious quality as a cracking place to eat (views towards the South Downs are to die for).

Typical examples of that cost conscious quality are breakfasts and the ever popular sausage and mash.

When the sisters took over the restaurant 18 months ago they used high quality fresh sausages from a local butcher.

Two snags: deliveries were unreliable; and waste levels were too high because kitchen forgetfulness led to over-cooking.

Jay McKeever, a sales manager for food wholesaler, kff, delivered a solution to those problems by introducing frozen, fully cooked sausages from Snowbird foods.

Its Gourmet 80g Cumberlands are a quantity product which can be heated to order in seconds in a microwave or, for batch preparation, in an oven, on a griddle or even a barbecue.

"We use around a box a day, mostly on breakfasts," said Mrs. Hoblin. "It's the only fully cooked item on the menu – we cook everything else ourselves."

One of the breakfasts is more challenge then dish. For £7.50 the very, very hungry can tackle "The Road Hog" – three Cumberland sausages, three eggs, three bacon rashers, black pudding, tomatoes, baked beans, mushrooms, fried bread, toast and coffee or tea!

It's appearance alone has stunned many diners.

"One was so taken with it he photographed the plateful and uses it as a screensaver on his mobile phone," said Mrs. Hoblin, who commended the Kff operation.

"When we had a problem they came up with a solution and the company's service has been consistently reliable," she said.

Trade with bikers and hikers is heavily weather dependent so the introduction of frozen sausages means use by dates are a worry that is in the past.