Dropped $800 on a Berkel electric slicer for the shop last quarter either the best or worst decision depending on who you ask

It cuts through a pork belly like butter but the cleanup takes 20 minutes compared to 5 with my old hand slicer. Anyone else wrestle with whether automation is worth the extra scrubbing time?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake6382mo agoMost Upvoted

Flip it around and ask yourself how much that 15 extra minutes of cleanup actually costs you over a year. If you're slicing 10 pounds of pork belly a week, that's 15 minutes per slice session, times 52 weeks, equals 13 hours of your life just scrubbing down a machine. My old hand slicer took me 20 minutes total from start to clean plate, and I didn't have to take apart 15 components or worry about a blade guard jamming up. The Berkel might look professional on your counter, but if you're not running a deli counter doing 50 pounds an hour, you're basically paying $800 for a conversation piece that eats your time. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd rather spend that 13 hours doing literally anything else than scrubbing stainless steel.

sarah_hart2mo ago

Didn't someone on here do a cost per minute breakdown on cleanup time a while back? I remember reading that and it kind of stuck with me, because yeah, those little time adds really pile up over a year.

rileyb612mo ago

13 hours of your life scrubbing? That's a little dramatic, isn't it? Maybe take a step back and ask yourself if that 15 minutes is really the end of the world or if you're just looking for something to complain about.