The shortage of skilled kitchen staff won’t end anytime soon, and wages are unlikely to come down. It’s time to stop waiting for miracles and change how your kitchen operates – how can two cooks do the work previously done by three, or two kitchen hands handle the work of four? You’ll also need to look hard at your menu, not to reduce the quality but to redesign laborious processes and make big improvements in kitchen productivity.
Separate Preparation and Service. Are you still expecting all the preparation to be done on the morning shift? If you have the volume, work your space 18 hours a day with a special 4am production shift that gets all the slicing, cutting, desserts and baking done before the day shift arrives. When the service shift does arrive, they’re fresh and ready to push out the food – there are a lot of chefs looking for daytime work.
It’s time for a Kitchen Display System: these screens replace the traditional paper tickets with a digital display, showing real-time orders and tracking make-times. This system can prioritise orders based on the time they were placed or the expected prep time, ensuring a smooth flow of dishes from kitchen to customer. Not only does this reduce paper waste and the potential for lost tickets, but it also allows for better tracking and analysis of kitchen efficiency, helping to identify bottlenecks or patterns in service delays. Additionally, the KDS can be networked to display on multiple screens across the kitchen, ensuring that all staff, from the grill station to the salad bar, are synchronised.
Here are some more equipment options to boost productivity:
Restaurant Cooking and Food Preparation
Maximise Your Combi Oven: use to increase quality and simplify operations. These multifunction ovens pair heat and moisture and offer precise control over cooking conditions, ensuring great results with minimal waste. Pre-set functions make them user-friendly, and their capability for overnight cooking prepares meats to perfection for the next day.
Conveyor Pizza Ovens: recommended by experts for their foolproof operation, suitable for various dishes beyond just pizzas. They simplify cooking processes, making them ideal for teams with varied skill levels. Redesigning your menu to use with this equipment can be easily managed by a chef or consultant.
Speed Ovens: revolutionise quick service, delivering hot meals in moments with a user-friendly interface. Ideal for busy settings, they combine the speed of microwaves with the quality of convection cooking, ensuring that even bar staff can offer fresh hot snacks throughout the day without the risk of burning the food. You’ve seen these at work when you order a toasted roll at Subway.
Advanced Food Processors: They can drastically cut prep time with attachments for slicing, grating, chopping, and even kneading dough. The newer models are designed for easy cleaning, often with dishwasher-safe components, which helps to maintain hygiene without extra effort.
Sous Vide Machines: By maintaining precise temperatures, sous vide machines allow consistent, perfect results with minimal skill required. They also free up chefs to focus on other tasks while dishes cook unattended, and with water circulation systems, these machines often require less cleaning than traditional cooking methods. They work hand in hand with a vacuum-sealing system that prepares food for preservation and reheating.
Commercial Equipment Will Always Be More Reliable Than Domestic
Automatic Pot Stirrers: These are a boon for dishes that require constant stirring, such as risotto or sauces. They can be clamped onto pots and set to stir consistently, ensuring even cooking and freeing up staff members’ hands and attention.
Induction Cooktops: They heat up and cool down rapidly, giving chefs immediate control over cooking temperatures. This can speed up cooking times and improve safety, as there’s no open flame or hot element. They’re also more energy-efficient and easier to clean than traditional gas or electric ranges, and they reduce the temperature in the kitchen.
Bulk Cooking Equipment: Equipment like large steam kettles, tilting skillets, and industrial rice cookers can prepare big quantities of food more efficiently than standard-sized appliances, and they often come with easy-drain features to simplify cleanup.
Commercial Salad Spinners: A large-capacity salad spinner is essential for quickly drying leafy greens, herbs, and other vegetables. This saves time and contributes to the quality and shelf-life of salads, as properly dried ingredients hold dressings better and stay crisp longer.
Automatic Slicers and Grinders: Uniform slices of meat and cheese are easy with these machines. They can also quickly handle large volumes, ensuring that sandwich prep or pizza toppings are always ready. Many come with safety features and are designed with sanitation in mind, with removable parts that are easy to clean.
Oil Filters: These save on both the costs of oil and the labour involved in cleaning the fryers. Modern fryer filters often incorporate automated oil caddy systems that remove and filter the oil, then return it to the fryer. Others have a pump that continuously pumps and filters. This improves the taste and quality of fried food and can dramatically increase the life of the oil.
Commercial Cleaning Systems for Kitchen Productivity
Cutlery Polishers: slash the time spent on manual drying and polishing, allowing a single employee to do the work of several. This not only streamlines the post-meal process but also contributes to an earlier end to the shift for your team.
Modern Glass Washers: use reverse osmosis or self-polishing technology to eliminate the labour-intensive task of glassware polishing, making them a favourite in bustling bars and restaurants. They justify their cost with the labour savings they offer shift after shift.
Modern Conveyor Dishwashers: now featuring pre-rinse options, reducing the need for pre-scrubbing and simplifying the cleanup process.
Soak Tanks: These large, stainless-steel tanks contain heated water and a non-toxic cleaning solution mixture that can remove most stubborn carbon and grease deposits from pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils. By allowing kitchen equipment to be soaked overnight or during off-hours, soak tanks eliminate the need for time-consuming scrubbing. These tanks typically come with basket inserts, making lifting and draining the cleaned items simple.
Restaurant Refrigeration
Smart Refrigeration Systems: These refrigerators and freezers have integrated technology to monitor and adjust their own temperatures and send alerts if variations could cause loss of product or quality.
Blast Chillers: Quick cooling of hot food is not just about safety; it’s also about preserving quality. Blast chillers can cool down dishes rapidly, stopping the cooking process immediately and preserving the texture and taste. They also make it easier to plan and prep ahead of time, smoothing out kitchen workflow.
Blast Freezers: Blast freezers are crucial for kitchens that prepare food in advance. They rapidly reduce the temperature of cooked foods, which is vital for food safety and quality. The quick freezing process also helps better preserve the texture and flavour of the food.
Restaurant Maintenance Systems for Kitchen Productivity
Computerised Maintenance System: Implementing a CMS can track the maintenance history of each piece of equipment, schedule regular service checks, and issue reminders for upcoming maintenance tasks. This system can also streamline the process of calling out technicians, allowing you to log issues, track the status of repairs, and even assign tasks to specific team members or external contractors.
Smart Kitchen Equipment with IoT Capabilities: Many modern kitchen appliances come with Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities that alert you to potential problems before they become critical. These smart-systems can self-diagnose issues and automatically notify service technicians, providing them with detailed information about the problem before they arrive – sometimes, this means it can be fixed over the phone.
Digital Logbooks: Replace traditional paper logbooks with digital versions that can be updated in real-time. These digital records make it easy to track the history of equipment issues, maintenance call-outs, and repairs completed. They can be accessed by any team member from multiple devices, ensuring that everyone is informed about the status of the kitchen’s equipment.
By incorporating these systems, a commercial kitchen can anticipate equipment failures before they occur, maintain a comprehensive record of maintenance activities, and reduce the risk of operational disruptions due to equipment failure.
Work Out the Return on Investment (ROI) for New Equipment
Take into account factors such as increased sales, reduced labour costs, and decreased food waste, follow these steps:
Initial Investment: Determine the cost of purchasing and installing the new equipment.
Total Annual Benefits:
Increased Sales: Estimate the additional revenue generated from using the new equipment. This could be due to increased dishes, faster service leading to more table turns, or an expanded menu attracting more customers.
Reduced Labor Costs: Calculate the savings from reduced labor. This includes reduced hours worked due to increased efficiency or decreased staff needed because of automation.
Reduced Food Waste: Estimate the cost savings from reduced food waste. This could be due to more precise cooking methods, better portion control, or longer preservation of ingredients.
Calculate Net Benefits: To work out the total annual benefits, add the estimated increased sales, reduced labour costs, and reduced food waste.
ROI Calculation – use this formula:
This will give you the ROI as a percentage. A positive ROI indicates a good investment, whereas a negative ROI suggests the equipment may not be economically beneficial. Compare the percentage to what your money could earn in a bank deposit. Remember, ROI calculations are based on estimates and the actual ROI may vary based on a variety of factors including actual sales and operational efficiencies achieved.
The shortage of skilled kitchen staff won’t end anytime soon, and wages are unlikely to come down. It’s time to stop waiting for miracles and change how your kitchen operates – how can two cooks do the work previously done by three, or two kitchen hands handle the work of four? You’ll also need to look hard at your menu, not to reduce the quality but to redesign laborious processes and make big improvements in kitchen productivity.
Separate Preparation and Service. Are you still expecting all the preparation to be done on the morning shift? If you have the volume, work your space 18 hours a day with a special 4am production shift that gets all the slicing, cutting, desserts and baking done before the day shift arrives. When the service shift does arrive, they’re fresh and ready to push out the food – there are a lot of chefs looking for daytime work.
It’s time for a Kitchen Display System: these screens replace the traditional paper tickets with a digital display, showing real-time orders and tracking make-times. This system can prioritise orders based on the time they were placed or the expected prep time, ensuring a smooth flow of dishes from kitchen to customer. Not only does this reduce paper waste and the potential for lost tickets, but it also allows for better tracking and analysis of kitchen efficiency, helping to identify bottlenecks or patterns in service delays. Additionally, the KDS can be networked to display on multiple screens across the kitchen, ensuring that all staff, from the grill station to the salad bar, are synchronised.
Here are some more equipment options to boost productivity:
Restaurant Cooking and Food Preparation
Maximise Your Combi Oven: use to increase quality and simplify operations. These multifunction ovens pair heat and moisture and offer precise control over cooking conditions, ensuring great results with minimal waste. Pre-set functions make them user-friendly, and their capability for overnight cooking prepares meats to perfection for the next day.
Conveyor Pizza Ovens: recommended by experts for their foolproof operation, suitable for various dishes beyond just pizzas. They simplify cooking processes, making them ideal for teams with varied skill levels. Redesigning your menu to use with this equipment can be easily managed by a chef or consultant.
Speed Ovens: revolutionise quick service, delivering hot meals in moments with a user-friendly interface. Ideal for busy settings, they combine the speed of microwaves with the quality of convection cooking, ensuring that even bar staff can offer fresh hot snacks throughout the day without the risk of burning the food. You’ve seen these at work when you order a toasted roll at Subway.
Advanced Food Processors: They can drastically cut prep time with attachments for slicing, grating, chopping, and even kneading dough. The newer models are designed for easy cleaning, often with dishwasher-safe components, which helps to maintain hygiene without extra effort.
Sous Vide Machines: By maintaining precise temperatures, sous vide machines allow consistent, perfect results with minimal skill required. They also free up chefs to focus on other tasks while dishes cook unattended, and with water circulation systems, these machines often require less cleaning than traditional cooking methods. They work hand in hand with a vacuum-sealing system that prepares food for preservation and reheating.
Commercial Equipment Will Always Be More Reliable Than Domestic
Automatic Pot Stirrers: These are a boon for dishes that require constant stirring, such as risotto or sauces. They can be clamped onto pots and set to stir consistently, ensuring even cooking and freeing up staff members’ hands and attention.
Induction Cooktops: They heat up and cool down rapidly, giving chefs immediate control over cooking temperatures. This can speed up cooking times and improve safety, as there’s no open flame or hot element. They’re also more energy-efficient and easier to clean than traditional gas or electric ranges, and they reduce the temperature in the kitchen.
Bulk Cooking Equipment: Equipment like large steam kettles, tilting skillets, and industrial rice cookers can prepare big quantities of food more efficiently than standard-sized appliances, and they often come with easy-drain features to simplify cleanup.
Commercial Salad Spinners: A large-capacity salad spinner is essential for quickly drying leafy greens, herbs, and other vegetables. This saves time and contributes to the quality and shelf-life of salads, as properly dried ingredients hold dressings better and stay crisp longer.
Automatic Slicers and Grinders: Uniform slices of meat and cheese are easy with these machines. They can also quickly handle large volumes, ensuring that sandwich prep or pizza toppings are always ready. Many come with safety features and are designed with sanitation in mind, with removable parts that are easy to clean.
Oil Filters: These save on both the costs of oil and the labour involved in cleaning the fryers. Modern fryer filters often incorporate automated oil caddy systems that remove and filter the oil, then return it to the fryer. Others have a pump that continuously pumps and filters. This improves the taste and quality of fried food and can dramatically increase the life of the oil.
Commercial Cleaning Systems for Kitchen Productivity
Cutlery Polishers: slash the time spent on manual drying and polishing, allowing a single employee to do the work of several. This not only streamlines the post-meal process but also contributes to an earlier end to the shift for your team.
Modern Glass Washers: use reverse osmosis or self-polishing technology to eliminate the labour-intensive task of glassware polishing, making them a favourite in bustling bars and restaurants. They justify their cost with the labour savings they offer shift after shift.
Modern Conveyor Dishwashers: now featuring pre-rinse options, reducing the need for pre-scrubbing and simplifying the cleanup process.
Soak Tanks: These large, stainless-steel tanks contain heated water and a non-toxic cleaning solution mixture that can remove most stubborn carbon and grease deposits from pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils. By allowing kitchen equipment to be soaked overnight or during off-hours, soak tanks eliminate the need for time-consuming scrubbing. These tanks typically come with basket inserts, making lifting and draining the cleaned items simple.
Restaurant Refrigeration
Smart Refrigeration Systems: These refrigerators and freezers have integrated technology to monitor and adjust their own temperatures and send alerts if variations could cause loss of product or quality.
Blast Chillers: Quick cooling of hot food is not just about safety; it’s also about preserving quality. Blast chillers can cool down dishes rapidly, stopping the cooking process immediately and preserving the texture and taste. They also make it easier to plan and prep ahead of time, smoothing out kitchen workflow.
Blast Freezers: Blast freezers are crucial for kitchens that prepare food in advance. They rapidly reduce the temperature of cooked foods, which is vital for food safety and quality. The quick freezing process also helps better preserve the texture and flavour of the food.
Restaurant Maintenance Systems for Kitchen Productivity
Computerised Maintenance System: Implementing a CMS can track the maintenance history of each piece of equipment, schedule regular service checks, and issue reminders for upcoming maintenance tasks. This system can also streamline the process of calling out technicians, allowing you to log issues, track the status of repairs, and even assign tasks to specific team members or external contractors.
Smart Kitchen Equipment with IoT Capabilities: Many modern kitchen appliances come with Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities that alert you to potential problems before they become critical. These smart-systems can self-diagnose issues and automatically notify service technicians, providing them with detailed information about the problem before they arrive – sometimes, this means it can be fixed over the phone.
Digital Logbooks: Replace traditional paper logbooks with digital versions that can be updated in real-time. These digital records make it easy to track the history of equipment issues, maintenance call-outs, and repairs completed. They can be accessed by any team member from multiple devices, ensuring that everyone is informed about the status of the kitchen’s equipment.
By incorporating these systems, a commercial kitchen can anticipate equipment failures before they occur, maintain a comprehensive record of maintenance activities, and reduce the risk of operational disruptions due to equipment failure.
Work Out the Return on Investment (ROI) for New Equipment
Take into account factors such as increased sales, reduced labour costs, and decreased food waste, follow these steps:
Initial Investment: Determine the cost of purchasing and installing the new equipment.
Total Annual Benefits:
Calculate Net Benefits: To work out the total annual benefits, add the estimated increased sales, reduced labour costs, and reduced food waste.
ROI Calculation – use this formula:
This will give you the ROI as a percentage. A positive ROI indicates a good investment, whereas a negative ROI suggests the equipment may not be economically beneficial. Compare the percentage to what your money could earn in a bank deposit. Remember, ROI calculations are based on estimates and the actual ROI may vary based on a variety of factors including actual sales and operational efficiencies achieved.
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