In most restaurants today, bussing of tables is performed by removing the dishes, glassware, and silverware from the table, placing these in a plastic tub along with the leftover food soil and liquids. The tub is then taken to the dishroom, and the person washing dishes then sorts the dishware, glassware, silverware, scrapes the soil from these items, pre-rinses the items, and places them into the dish machine for washing.
Often, however, food soil is left on the items and they are simply placed into the dish machine. This happens because the person operating the dish machine is overloaded, giving them no time for proper scraping and sorting. This results in the water in the dish tank being extremely dirty, breakage occurs, and the dishes, glasses and silverware contain soil when they leave the dish machine.
The problem is more severe in banquet operations where several hundred tables may be cleared. The glasses are often placed in glass racks with liquids remaining in the glasses. The dishes and silverware sit in buss tubs for several hours, causing the soil to harden, before being washed in the dish machine.
It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved method and apparatus which allows dishes, glasses and silverware to be prepared for the dish machine when tables are bussed. There is another need for an apparatus and system that allows liquids to be removed from glasses at the time a table is bussed. There is a further need for such an apparatus and system that allows silverware to be placed in a presoak solution to prevent soil from hardening on the silverware before it is placed in the dish machine. Yet another need is for an apparatus that collects food soil from dishes and allows the dishes to be easily pre-rinsed. A still further need is for a system an apparatus that provides a combination apparatus or cart to perform these functions. The present invention meets these and other needs.