Colleges and other foodservice customers were being asked to provide a better casual-dining food experience to customers. This increased need for quality of food needed to be weighed against the reality of having to serve hundreds or thousands of diners in a short time.

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Even more challenging, one of the products needed to be a quality hamburger, a staple of the college diet. While most foodservice companies were more interested in easy-to-manage food than premium quality or taste, the solution from Cargill’s Foodservice group combined all three.

Foodservice operators needed a burger they could cook in advance, hold, and then serve still juicy and tender. Cargill identified with the issue and challenged its beef and foodservice experts to create a burger that was dramatically better than standard “cook and hold” burgers. 

Setting a new standard, Cargill worked with customers to create the Thick ’N Tender™ burger—a proprietary recipe that allows the burger to maintain a juicy grilled flavor for three-plus hours. 

The result was a reduction in wasted food and improved profits for the customers of Cargill. 

Although the innovation was new to the industry, the burger’s award-winning taste was also a critical success factor. The success of the collaboration between Cargill and foodservice operators is evident as cafeterias across the nation adopt the Thick ’N Tender™ burger for their operations.

This is how Cargill works with customers.