Part Two: Techno-Kitchens
The promises of faster, easier and safer kitchen equipment
By Virginia Gerst, Special to R&I -- Restaurants & Institutions, 5/1/2004
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The cyber-kitchen is no longer fiction. It’s fact.
New technology and software produce ovens that speak five languages, fryers that let cooks know when the machines are approaching meltdown and computers that signal when it is time to put the chicken on the grill.
Major chains see “smart kitchens” as a means to improve sales, cut costs and increase food safety and customer satisfaction, while individual operators are picking and choosing which of many innovations are the smartest buys for their needs.
Diners at Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar locations receive food moments after it has been prepared, and at just the right temperature, thanks to software designed to make sure all dishes for a single table are ready at the same time—whether burgers, salads or riblets.
Introduced in 2002 and now installed at more than half of the Overland Park, Kan.-based chain’s 1,600 restaurants, the kitchen display system calculates preparation times for each item and submits the order to the kitchen accordingly. Under this system, a party’s order for steak that takes 12 minutes to cook appears on a kitchen monitor five minutes before the order for chicken, which will be ready in seven.
“Everything shows up hot at the same time,” says Tamy Duplantis, vice president of information technology for Applebee’s International. “It’s beautiful.”
The system reduces employee stress (“Hanging the monitors brings immediate quiet to the kitchen,” says Duplantis) and speeds service. It makes customers happy too.
“We see correlations between guest satisfaction and usage of the software,” she reports. “Everyone is so sensitive to having a prompt meal experience these days, and with this system, that is more assured.”
Cooked to order
Fast service has always been the goal at Oak Brook, Ill.-based
McDonald’s Corp., but the burger giant is out to improve
on its own record. It is introducing self-service kiosks at which
customers tap food choices onto a screen and insert cash into
a slot to pay. Tested in Denver and Raleigh, N.C., the system
debuted in St. Charles, Ill., in March, along with a vertical
grill that seasons hamburgers as they cook and a robotic arm that
bags fries.
Not all high-tech kitchen equipment packs the visual punch of a robotic arm, but operators report significant benefits from less-flashy technological breakthroughs in ovens, refrigeration systems and other equipment used for food preparation.
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Combination ovens—combi-ovens for short—are “an amazing product,” according to Christopher Deegan, food and beverage director for the Hilton Scranton & Conference Center in Scranton, Pa. The ovens, which cook with both convection and steam, can be programmed to perform multiple tasks and have intricate computer circuitry that allows them to understand five languages. Because they are connected to a computer modem, service personnel can diagnose problems off-site, and arrive with the parts needed for a quick repair.
“The oven can be programmed to cook prime rib or a casserole,” says Deegan. “It will remember the settings and cook and hold dishes perfectly every time. It’s great for labor saving and quality, and there rarely is a bad result.”
He often uses a combi-oven to prepare banquet meals a day in advance. “We cook the product at our convenience, chill it down in our blast chiller, and plate it. Each plate will have the exact presentation we are looking for.” Plates go into the cooler until shortly before meal time, when with a touch of the oven’s “re-therm” button, they are brought back to serving temperature in six minutes.
“In a traditional banquet, we needed four or five chefs just to plate,” says Deegan. “Now we need only a couple of people for the entire operation. It was a big investment, but in the long run it pays off.”
Induction ranges and burners also are worth the investment, according to Rob Brown, a principal with Savoy/Brown Foodservice Consultants of Jessup, Md. Brown appreciates the ranges’ speed—they can heat a gallon of water to boiling in five minutes—and their safety. Because they use electromagnetic energy, they produce no flame or heat.
“From the operator’s point of view, there’s no open flame to worry about,” Brown says. “Nobody is going to get burned, yet you have the ability to cook at tableside.”
What a blast
Blast chillers rate high on Ron Ehrhardt’s high-tech list.
The director of food services for Newark, N.J.-based Prudential
Financial and current president of the Society for Foodservice
Management, has installed them at each of Prudential’s 20
operations. The reason for the big investment? These super-fast
chillers improve food quality and safety, he says.
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“If a buffet is scheduled early on Wednesday, chefs can make chili on Tuesday, put it in the blast chiller and bring it down from 180F to 40F in 90 minutes before bacteria has a chance to grow,” he explains. “The next day, when they reheat the dish, it is just like heating fresh.”
Automatic vegetable washers and spinners save on labor by freeing up prep staff for other jobs, Ehrhardt notes. Automatic pot scrubbers also are a good investment.
“They clean very soiled pots without any hand scrubbing,” he says. “An operation can eliminate the pot scrubber position, which is always a very difficult job to fill. That’s a $20,000 to $25,000 savings at each location. The buyback happens in the first four months.”
The Chicago-based North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM) looks at the big picture. Its NAFEM Data Protocol, announced in September 2003, aims to make entire kitchens smarter by providing an industry wide computer language that will allow individual pieces of equipment to communicate with a central computer.
For instance, a fryer will be able to “talk to” the kitchen manager’s computer, sharing such information as how much energy it is using and if service is needed. Freezers, ovens and even pot scrubbers will be able to interface with the central computer, regardless of manufacturer.
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Several equipment makers already offer products that comply with the system, and a number of foodservice operators have adopted portions of the plan, according to Joe Carbonara, NAFEM’s marketing and communications manager.
“We want this to be as easy for operators to get involved with as possible,” he says.
For the past three years, the Frisco (Texas) Independent School District has used a similar computer networking system to monitor cooler and freezer units. The system checks temperatures at each of the district’s 21 locations every two hours; if they drop below acceptable levels, an e-mail is sent to a supervisor. If the supervisor does not reply within a predetermined timeframe, the system sends a page.
“We used to have to pay someone to go out and read those temperatures,” says Lena Wilson, director of the district’s child nutrition program. “Even then, we had freezers go out, and we had to throw away a lot of food. That doesn’t happen any more.”
New kitchen technology can facilitate tasks as basic as drying lettuce or as complicated as cooking a banquet. The key is to find the system that works best in each situation.
“Technology has to make the operation more labor-efficient and its food safer,” says Prudential’s Ehrhardt.
If it doesn’t do that, it’s just science fiction.
Low on High Tech
Not all operators have signed on to the high-tech revolution.
“There is a lot of [foodservice] technology out there, but to this point it hasn’t received broad acceptance,” says David Yanda, senior consultant at Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based consulting firm.
Yanda believes that before operators take the plunge, they must know the dollars-and-cents benefits their purchases will deliver.
“Operators have to see how a piece of high-tech equipment is going to affect top- line sales or increase operating margins,” he says. “They won’t buy it until it has been proven to provide a very believable return on investment.”
Doug Fryett, president of Fryett Consulting of Shreveport, La., a strategic planning group for the foodservice industry, contends that some “smart” equipment may simply be too intelligent.
Fryett came away from a recent focus group with school foodservice directors with the message “the lower the technology, the better.”
“More-sophisticated chains are trying to embrace the newest technology,” he says. “But technology is only as good as the people who work in the restaurant, and there will always be a level of low-tech out there.”
Yanda sees growth potential in new technologies that improve restaurant security and facilitate an operation’s carryout and delivery service. Fryett looks to systems that integrate information. “Punch in five hamburgers, and the system automatically relieves the inventory and tells the cook what to prepare.”
Both men agree that point-of-sale systems are the current exception to the low-tech rule.
“So far, the technology that has had the greatest acceptance has been the basic POS system,” says Yanda. “That’s because it offers the most easily understood and tangible value to the operator.
“Other things will happen; it just takes time.”
Virginia Gerst is a Chicago-based freelance writer.
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