The "Is It Worth It?" Test: Caramelizing Onions from Scratch

Is it worth it? As a foodservice operator, it's the question you're always asking yourself, sometimes without even realizing it. Is this particular decision worth the time and cost? Will this product get me a return on my investment? Can I menu this item at a price point that earns a profit? Is this new policy going to increase traffic or loyalty? Every decision comes down to this simple calculus. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

What if you could test it? What if you could fully investigate whether an option is worth the effort? Unfortunately, very few operators have the time—taking a few hours to investigate a hypothesis in the kitchen sounds like fun, but probably isn't worth the investment in time and energy (there's that calculation again).

So instead, we did the work for you. We took a single kitchen task—caramelizing onions— and put it to the test. We wanted to understand if spending the time and energy to caramelize onions from scratch was going to pay off.

There's almost no doubt that having caramelized onions on the menu is worth it. Caramelized onions transform an everyday ingredient into something special, whether it's burgers, soups, pastas, chicken, bowls, pizza, steaks, sausages, or sandwiches. Adding rich, sweet-yet-savory caramelized onions makes a dish a little more premium and occasion-worthy. Indeed, over 60% of consumers say they love or like caramelized onions.¹

So, you know that it's worth it to have them on the menu, but is it worth the effort of caramelizing onions from scratch?

Think through everything that needs to happen back-of-house to caramelize onions from scratch. First, you must start with pounds of raw onions, sourced, sorted for quality, and taking up precious room in storage. In fact, to get 2.5 pounds of caramelized onions you need to start with a whopping 4.3 pounds of raw onions.

Why is there so much loss? It's not just that they cook down—first, all those onions need to be peeled and trimmed. That's not just a tedious job for today's cooks, but it can also be an opportunity for injuries, particularly as many cooks may not have foundational knowledge like knife skills in today's challenging labor environment. But those peelings and trimmings aren't insubstantial—once trimmed away, a full 10% of the product immediately goes to waste.

Then, it's on to slicing. In our testing, it takes even an experienced prep cook well over twelve minutes to prep and slice the onions. And that's before any cooking has even begun. It's enough to make you cry.

Starting with raw onions means taking up plenty of burner space, with full pans of onions requiring constant vigilance to ensure they don't burn. That space is required – often multiple pans of onions on multiple burners—because they haven't cooked down yet. You are starting with a small mountain of uncooked onions. The cooking process may also surprise you in how much weight is lost due to evaporation; it's about 40%. That's weight you essentially paid for when you purchased your onions by the pound.

In essence, it nearly doubles the effective price you paid for the raw onions as profits go into the waste bin and up the vent hood in the form of peelings, trimmings, and evaporation. And that's before even taking labor into account. In our test, it took a full 25 minutes to prepare 2.5 pounds of caramelized onions. At $20 an hour in labor, those 25 minutes add another three dollars per pound to the real cost of the onions. That's more than eight dollars in labor alone for caramelized onions.

In total, preparing 2.5 pounds of caramelized onions took up storage and burner space, required culinary and knife skills, resulted in lots of waste, and still took over 25 minutes of active prep time for a 55% yield. In all our testing, it became clear—prepping caramelized onions from scratch is just not worth the time and effort. It doesn't save you money.

That research is exactly why we developed Simplot® Simple Goodness™ RTE Caramelized-Style Onions. These richly flavored, vegan caramelized-style onions are ready to eat: they only take 2-3 minutes to warm through. They can be ready to use on a wide range of menu items before a prep cook even begins slicing raw onions. In fact, they offer a whopping 93% shorter prep time compared to making caramelized onions from scratch.

The benefits of Simple Goodness™ RTE Caramelized-Style Onions are clear:

Do you want to see our test in action? Check out the video:

¹ Datassential