How The Cheesecake Factory Prepares Most Of Its Food May Surprise You

If you've ever looked at a Cheesecake Factory menu, you might have asked yourself how the restaurant can possible prepare so many items. The menu is more like a short story with pages and pages of appetizers, pasta dishes, meat choices, and, of course, that famous cheesecake. The Cheesecake Factory has a handful of secrets, but its biggest secret might be that it actually prepares almost all of its items in-house. The restaurant chain is mostly able to do this by having large prep kitchens; many staff members arrive well before opening to prepare for the day, including chopping vegetables, making sauces, and marinating meats. When the doors open by late morning, the kitchen is ready to handle the influx of orders on its roughly 250-item menu. 

More surprisingly, its cheesecake is one of the only things shipped in from elsewhere. The cheesecakes actually come from two baking facilities in the United States: Calabasas Hills, California, and Rocky Mount, North Carolina. If you're bold enough to try every cheesecake on the menu, know that just about all are delicious.

If you think there's just a bunch of frozen food or prepared entrées hanging out in a Cheesecake Factory kitchen, think again. While the chefs and cooks do tons of morning preparation, every dish is actually made to order. The restaurant's refrigerator space far outweighs its freezer space because there are so few frozen menu items; the cheesecakes are the main item housed in freezers.

If you ever want to test your local restaurant's made-to-order dynamic, just ask for a special request with a meal since most requests can easily be granted. Some dishes are better or worse than others in terms of health and flavor, but there is undoubtedly an option for everyone. Still, former employees credit menu items such as the stuffed mushroom appetizer and pasta carbonara as being some of the chain's best items. While many items are good quality, avoid the salad and cocktails if you want the most bang for your buck; the salads don't hold well when taken home — likely due to the abundance of dressing — and there's no such thing as an extra-strong drink at this chain. "The restaurant puts exactly the required amount of alcohol in each drink and no more," former Cheesecake Factory employee Ken Schwartz told Business Insider. "The rest of the drink is ice, mixer, and fluff."