More and more restaurants are competing with each other for the same business and—in an age of choice—it’s difficult to be all things to all people. The successful strategy is to create a signature dish, which makes your restaurant stand out. The signature dish should be easy to make, but it can take weeks or months to develop a winning recipe that fills a unique niche and can be duplicated consistently.

One restaurant may create a unique, signature chili made with spices, exotic herbs and seasoned beef. Other operations may choose Asian or Italian cuisines. In any case, the signature dish becomes well liked and well known. It’s what brings regular customers to familiar restaurants, time and time again.

So, how do you choose your specialty?

Here are some questions to consider:

• What kind of food do you prepare that no one else does?
• What are people eating now that isn’t available in similar restaurant concepts?
• Can you identify a need the market may have?
• Will patrons pay a premium price for it?
• Are there food niches that have been underserved?
• What specialty is there a need for?
• What kind of foods do you or your chef enjoy preparing?

Creating a signature dish consists of three main components:

• First, there’s trial and error. Find a dish that you love that others love too. It can be as common as pulled pork barbeque or as special as gourmet cheese ravioli,
• Second, be the expert and make it over-and-over. Get to the point where you can make your signature dish in your sleep,
• The third component is the ingredients. No matter what, keep them on hand at all times and you’ll be ready for anything.

The secret of many successful people is not that they’re experts at everything. It’s that they’ve learned to do one thing and do it very well. For a restaurant, it’s about having at least one item on the menu that makes people drool.

Bringing that sort of inspiration to life can require long hours, loads of energy and significant labor. Unlike the specials you’ll introduce from time to time, a signature dish needs to have real staying power.

Pre-made entrées are the foundations of fabulous meals in restaurants. Windsor Foods pre-prepares many heart-of-the-entrée items that successful operators use to create their signature dishes. It’s our specialty and our purpose—to provide quality, consistency in a wide variety of appetizers and entrée menu items—that busy restaurants depend on. Select an entrée, like Windsor’s famous Grand-E-Oli ravioli, and make it the center-of-plate attraction to which you add special sauces and sides that make the dish your own.

Specialize in something easy to make and make it your signature dish. Make it better than anyone else. Always have the ingredients on hand and be smart about how you make it with pre-prepared food items from Windsor Foods.

Contact a Windsor Foods broker and let us help you develop your signature dish, as well as your good reputation.