Cutlery Service/Sharpening

B

BadBamaUmp

Joined
Aug 8, 2000
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Anyone on here have any experience starting, running or working for a cutlery/sharpening service? There's no sharpening service in my area of 300k people. Just exploring ideas for a future business.

My brother used to be a restraunt manager, he told me they used a service that would drop a set of sharpened knives off each week and pick up the dull set. There's a lot of restraunts in the area, probably over 75 (with kitchens, not fast food.) Checked with barbers in the area, they all just either buy new scissors or use a replaceable blade pair.

Anyone know anything about this business? :confused:
Thanks,
 
My wife has been a chef for a wee bit over 22 years. She has had experience with having the kitchen knives rotated out with sharp ones along with having a service come in and sharpen their personal knives.

She has made a few comments about both services. The rotating knife service (in her experience) was "ok", nothing great. The knives were not what you would call quality, but were useable. Many of the chefs still used their own knives because people abused the ones that were provided. They would chip ice, cut down boxes, etc. Not exactly a good way to keep kitchen knives in good shape. But that's the reason the service didn't provide really nice ones. The restaurants basically put down a deposit for the knives, then paid a monthly fee for rotating them. If any came up missing or severly damaged, the knives had to be paid for.

Having a service just come in once a month and sharpen the chefs personal knives along with some of the restaurant owned knives seems to what my wife prefers. However, the chefs are picky on what their personal knives are sharpened with. Believe it or not, they prefer them being sharpened using an Edge Pro. It takes very little metal and gives them a nice long lasting edge. Most of the chefs my wife knows/has known will sharpen their own knives if anything else is used.

I know, many people say they can do a great job using belt sanders, grinders etc. But in my wife's experience the expertise was not the best when the sharpening outfits used these other methods.

Hope this helps,
Mike
 
I would pump your brother for information. What was the pricing structure? Did the service provide the knives or did the restaurant buy itself duplicate sets of knives.

I had a door-to-door service in an upscale locale when I was in college. I had a fixed price for scissors while I charged by the blade-inch for knives. You need to have a belt sander/grinder for rough knife sharpening. You need the speed and heavily used knives get drastically dull. You also need some long bench hones and maybe a Sharpmaker for final edge finishing. I would avoid anything that used blade clamps or fixtures. You really need to move and precision angles are not important.

I would avoid doing scissors for professionals. There are special tools that you need to adjust the tension and there is a risk of breaking the scissors in the process. Doing restaurant knives is your best bet.

Check what types of knives the local restaurants are using and where they get them. I would hope that they use basic Forschner or Dexter commercial grade knives. People who invest in high-end German knives can get overly fussy. Find a good restaurant supply store (it may be in some other city) that has a good selection of the knives that people are using. They may offer a sharpening service in their locale. Find out what type of deal they use.

If you get into the business of supplying knives for trade you will probably want to buy your knives on the internet. Go for basic Forschner or Dexter, not expensive ones. You can't afford theft problems. You will need to work out a contract if you trade knives.
 
Thanks guys.

My brother says that few of the high end chefs use their personal blades because of risk of someone else damaging them.

I appreciate the assist.
 
Yam's post came in while I was still composing my last reply. When you run into customers who insist on your using manual techniques you will need to charge them about 3x as much for the service. Even when you use a belt sander you need to be careful about not removing excessive material and not marring the sides of the blades. The worst sharpening butchery is usually done with a grinding wheel. The wheel is real inclined to dig in more than you intend at some spot and then you have to go back and even up the blade by removing additional material all over. A belt sander can do a nice job and it is easy to change to finer grits for finer work. When I was developing my skills I would use masking tape on the sides of the blades to limit marring when I slipped. This can happen with a belt or with a bench hone.
 
Any idea of the going rate on a per knife basis or a per inch basis?

I have a Burr King 960 (I make knives part time) so I have belts up to 15 micron that I sharpen with.

I was thinking about getting a couple of Edge Pros (so I can leave them with the stones set up. Maybe have a couple grades of kitchen knives and offer some high end blades for sale on a payment plan for established employees of the restraunts I service.

Thanks
 
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