If restaurants just microwave their food can I just get the frozen version and cut out the middle man?

Shitty restaurants just microwave their food. Real restaurants actually cook the food. You could cut out the middle man by making your own food from raw ingredients.

Takes time, effort and skill. Occasionally, you may prefer to pay someone else to take care of all that + dishes. I think the middle man is actually doing something useful, so you pay for the food and the convenience. If it was just food and nothing else, cutting him out would make a lot of sense.
- If you really like food then learning how to cook is one of the most rewarding skills of all. Personally I think it’s even more than that. I think it’s harder to appreciate a really good meal until you’ve learned to cook it yourself.
- hence why I refuse to go to Korean barbecues, or whatever that entire genre of restaurant is called where they make you cook your own food

Where does Applebee's get their potato skins?

I'll give you instructions for making potato skins.

Since you referenced food from Applebee's, first you're going to need to wean yourself off whatever drugs you're on so you can tell the difference between food and what Applebee's sells.
wash and dry some potatoes.
pierce the potatoes several times, all around the outside with a fork.
bake the potatoes in a preheated 400° F. oven until you can easily insert your poking fork all the way to the center of the potato (probably about an hour, depending on the potatoes).
take the potatoes out of the oven and let them cool down.
slice each potato in half
scoop out the insides of each potato, leaving about a quarter inch thickness for the skins. Last time I did this, I used a melon baller and deep-fried all the potato balls.
deep fry the scooped out skins at about 375°. I prefer beef tallow for frying.
when they are golden brown, take them out and set them aside to drain.
cook bacon until crispy, then ~~brake~~ break it up into small pieces.
arrange all the fried potato skins on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
fill each potato skin with shredded cheddar cheese, and sprinkle bacon pieces on top.
bake in the oven at 350° until the cheese melts.

Serve with sour cream and chopped scallions.

OP asks for a source for the frozen food that restaurants microwave. Your response is a 14 step recipe to make potato skins.
- Yep.
  
  Sometimes the answer you need is to the question you didn't ask.
  
  Edit: I'll add that I've tried buying restaurant branded potato skins from the grocery store, and they were absolute crap, worse even than the frozen ones that the restaurant was microwaving.
  
  I don't think there's going to be any way to buy what the restaurants purchases, unless you're able to buy in bulk, or find someone who's willing to sell you some that "fell off the truck"
- They just forgot to mention the last step which is to put the result into plastic bags and put in the freezer.
- Well OP might not have asked for this but I'm happy we got this answer.
Not OP, but what do you do with the leftover potato scoops? Do you save it for eating later?
- My wife would kill me if we wasted any part of the potatoes.
  
  We've done a couple things with the insides. Sometimes we pan fry the bits in butter with some sauteed onions to have at breakfast the next day.
  
  Last time was the first time I used a melon baller.
  
  When we saw the almost perfect potato balls, it was almost automatic to deep fry them, add a little salt, and just eat them like that.
- Not them, but mashed potatoes! You'll need to add more milk than if you boiled the potatoes, but that's good calcium you're getting. Could also be an ingredient for gnocchi. It would freeze fine, because you're gonna smoosh it around after thawing anyway.
  
  You might as well cook the whole pack of bacon too, because frozen cooked bacon slices are convenient and keep well.
Alternative, it’s a different thing, but:

Bake potatoes until deep brown; oil and salt them, if preferred

Scoop them out entirely into a big bowl, be gentle but try to get all the potato without causing structural issues to the remaining skin.

Skins go back in the oven, empty side up whilst you do the rest, should be crisping up but not shrivelling.

Mash the scooped potato until smooth, adding black pepper, cream, cheese, bacon etc.

Remove skins and refill them as densely as possible

Mozzarella on top, parsley, herbs etc. to taste

Back in the oven until looking good and ready

Don’t burn yourself
- Sounds like Twice Baked Potatoes.
  
  My mom used to make them. My wife does too.
  
  To be extra fancy, use a piping bag with a star tip when you fill them.
Beef tallow ftw 🙌

Many places in the US get their supply from Sysco: https://shop.sysco.com/

Ah they don't show the price unless you create an account first I guess. Do you know if the price difference is significant?

Some of the stuff in the freezer section is pretty high quality. I recently got a shrimp entree on sale that could easily pass for restaurant quality.

Also, don't sleep on frozen vegetables. The quality is second only to fresh and you can also get "restaurant" versions covered in cheese, butter, and even roasted.

Seconding frozen veggies (and fruit). They're frozen at their ripest. Makes for amazing roasted veggies in those cold winter months where I'm not feeling soup.
- I use frozen berries to flavor my proats. They cancel out the weird tang from the protein powder. So far the only thing I've found that works and healthier than sugar anyway.

Sysco foods.

fuckin Sysco
- Gawd, I hate that aftertaste.

Even just the frozen food at your normal grocery store is really good. I'm pretty sure some of it it sourced in the same place these restaurants get their food. (I'm pretty sure I can get McDonald's hash browns at my local Kroger.)

If you tend to buy in bulk, you might want to check out restaurant supply places like GFS. If I am doing bulk baking or cooking, I will sometimes pick up a few things from them. They are open to the public and sell a lot of stuff that restaurants use, too.

Its called a supermarket

I don't think that's really the spirit of the question. Not all frozen food are made equal. The stuff in restaurants is higher quality frozen food than what you typically find in the frozen foods section of your local supermarket.
- Higher quality seems like a stretch based on the last times someone dragged me to a crappy national chain.
  
  Higher salt and fat content definitely, because that shit tastes good. At the grocery store, you're far more likely to shop for things that seem healthy, and the restaurant meals would have insane nutrition labels (especially if they were honest about restaurant serving sizes).
- I thought they were referring to the restaurant branded food you can buy from the supermarket snd make at home. Like these two chain restaurant items that I have purchased and consumed.
  
  https://www.walmart.com/ip/Red-Lobster-Cheddar-Bay-Frozen-Biscuits-Ready-to-Bake-Makes-8-Regular-Biscuits-15-66-oz-Box/423932600
  
  https://www.walmart.com/browse/food/on-the-border-salsa/976759_976787_1001393_7109351_7154555
  
  There are some frozen ones too, but don't remember which ones.
- Lol, no. Restaurants just use a full stick of butter per meal so it tastes better.
- Not at Applebees. That place is terrible. I'd rather eat McDonald's.

If the only restaurant you go to is applebees and TGI Fridays's and the like, sure. They're already available in store.

You mentioned TGI Fridays.

When I was in college, we'd go to Fridays all the time, and the food was incredible.

Then, over the years, it turned to shit. We stopped going.

One day, we were craving the memory of what it was and decided to give it anorher chance.

When we sat down, the manager stopped by our table to thank us for coming in and informed us that they had changed their process. She said that in recent years all their food was being prepared off-site, frozen, and just microwaved to order at the restaurant. However, they recently went back to doing all the prep from scratch in their kitchen.

The food was incredible! Exactly what we remembered. We started going back.

Then COVID hit. The Fridays that we would go to shut down.

The last time we went to a Fridays, the restaurant was empty, the staff was disinterested, and the food was shit.
- How was the Mudslide?
Same in Canada, especially since covid, a couple of restaurant chain are offering their food in the frozen aisle of supermarket

I had a catalogue once from a convenience food supplier for commercial kitchens. It was a very interesting read. Imagine chicken broth powder in buckets of 10kg, no idea how much broth this makes. Frozen stuff of all kinds, up to "grilled fish" of some sort, to be regenerated in a warm water bath, complete with fake grill stripes. Absolutely crazy stuff.

You could batch cook the things you like from healthy ingredients. That way you too can microwave your food right from the freezer and have your own private restaurant. Welcome to Chez Moi!

If you choreograph things correctly, it's not super difficult to whip up between two and four multi serving meals in an afternoon.

Many recipes share things like ingredients and steps, so you can combine them into a mega recipe without a ton of effort.

The biggest time challenge is baking temps (especially for sheet pan meals), but if you fudge the cook times a bit you can usually cook everything at the same temperature.

I really liked the giant pretzels at a brewery near me. Sat near the kitchen until I saw the box they pulled them out of. Learned I could buy 75 online for the price of 5 there.

This is the shit I love to hear. Got a link for a fellow pretzel lover?
- I am sad now. I cannot find it anymore.

Well, some of the foods at chains like that are made by either their own food factory, or under contract to a company that does it. I can't tell you what chains and what foods in specific because it's been too long since I discovered this.

But, it means that you've got a couple of options.

The most realistic is you just hope that the chain sells their stuff in grocery stores. Some do. Iirc, tgif sells a goodly number of its appetizers that way. I wanna say Applebees does too, but I don't really pay attention to that section of the freezer aisle.

Less realistic, but not impossible, is to check at the restaurant. Some of them will actually sell the products like that. It's pretty rare, and you'll pay the full retail price, but you can then take it home and heat it up yourself.

And, sometimes, you'll find employees stealing the stuff and selling it. No bullshit, it happens. Happens in fast food as well, for that matter. Used to know a guy that would take requests from burger king. You catch him on the right day, you could get a giant box of the whopper patties for twenty bucks. He'd just pad the waste reports over a few days, and afaik, nobody ever caught on.

But, yeah, pre cooked chain restaurant food is usually produced in bulk at a factory, same as your typical frozen foods ata grocery store. Just with bigger packages. Have a cousin that used to work at one, though I can't remember which chain it was.

The ones sold in supermarkets are not the same as what are distributed to restaurants. Plus, you don't have the right equipment to make it the same way as the restaurant.
Semi-related, you can buy anything at an Olive Garden. Like, anything. Art off the wall, the chair you're sitting in, the cheese grater. They will sell it to you if you ask.

Schwan's is basically this. I haven't seen one of their trucks in forever, but I think COVID really helped their business model.

My mom loved Schwann's mostly because she liked the driver. Then they changed their delivery model, and she quit.

The stuff was pretty good, but it was about the same quality as the frozen stuff in Publix, and Publix is about half the price. I'm glad she stopped buying from Schwann's, and is saving money. There's still a lot of stuff in the freezer, some we'll never eat - why would she order frozen fried rice? She hates Chinese food.
Fucking LOVED them. They sold unbranded softstix in bags of like 50 and it made me so happy. Now I have to buy them in boxes of 12 at giant. Bitch that's a snack for two days maybe.

Look at the boxes outside the back of the restaurant.

Any decent restaurant will be cooking a fair bit of their food, even if they’re using Restaurant Supply’s fried chicken mix.

Applebee’s potato skins you probably can’t get directly because it’s probably only available to franchisees. But with some digging you might be able to buy a skid of the generic stuff from the manufacturer.

Once, I got a box of frozen microwaveable dessert. We ate so much… every day… it was a big box.

I found this recipe for Chickpea Masala a few days ago, and it's fucking delicious. Also, its time and effort is pretty low. I might be able to make it stoned. Not quite as fast and easy as microwaved, but pretty damn close. Faster than driving to fucking Applebee's and getting a table.

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a5543/masala-spiced-chickpeas-recipe/

Please go to any local restaurant or pub and have better food that's probably not microwaved at least to the extent of Applebee's

In France and Sweden we have Picard who sells frosen high quality food.

You actually should.