New technology is answering professional kitchen woes
BY SHUAJTH ALI
The kitchen, a major revenue generator for any hospitality business, needs to be mindfully functional. An ideal design, seamless energy, hygiene compliance and modern kitchen equipment are the basics needed in new-age professional kitchens to optimize operations. Learning about the many pain points that food business owners have been facing in reducing costs while maximizing return on investment on the back of consistent results, several kitchen solution providers have come up with technological advances in different areas of kitchen operations, from cooking to cleaning to upgrading the kitchen’s productivity.
In recent times, smart kitchen equipment has been adopted by almost all formats of foodservice kitchens. The smart here means how the equipment is backed by learning and automation capabilities to reduce repetitive daily manual operations.
Speaking about smart equipment taking over new-age kitchens, Sanjay Jain, Director, Elanpro, said, “Smart is the game-changer. In today’s time when innovation is on every menu, refrigeration equipment must give ease of use apart from fundamental functionality. Pioneering approaches across the refrigeration industry focusing on energy efficiency, storage, user-friendliness, etc. are mushrooming.”
Kitchen automation
Smart kitchen equipment that is equipped with learning capabilities to not only learn the chef’s cooking style but also adapt to it during their unforeseen sudden absence and being operated by any of the executive chef’s team members is the need of the hour.
Having understood chefs’ shortcomings for decades now, Rational strives to create a symbiotic environment between manual and automated kitchen environments. After years of research and development, it has evolved its smart kitchen equipment.
Speaking about Rational’s latest smart kitchen equipment iCombi Pro’s role in aiding kitchen automation, Saurabh Puri, Marketing Director, Asia, Rational AG, said, “The iCombi Pro is smart to learn the chef’s cooking preference to be able to deliver consistent results. Continuously assessing the load size, type of food and mode of cooking used, the system smartly regulates the temperature and water usage by itself to deliver desired results every time.”
He added: “Using under 1 cubic meter of space, you can grill, steam, roast, poach, bake and even smoke an array of dishes. Moreover, being fed with a repository of global chef-directed recipes, increasing the ROI of the eatery while driving efficient cooking operations couldn’t have been any easier.”
With regard to the functionality of the automated programmes available in smart equipment, Sunil Khanna, Principal Consultant, Food Service Design India, said, “The new-age equipment, undoubtedly, are pre-programmed Combi Steamers, pre-programmed Pressurised Bratt Pans and programmable Speed Ovens if we focus our discussion only on cooking.”
“The Flexi-chefs from MKN can also perform similar cooking functions at the press of a button with multi-zone operation whereby different products may be cooked simultaneously in a single appliance,” he continued. “Speed Ovens can regenerate any pre-cooked and preserved food to its original quality within seconds by simply clicking on the correct programme.”
Being completely sealed and requiring a negligible amount of exhaust air, thereby also saving supply air and conditioned air, the smart appliances are emission-free due to strong insulation. Providing results in half of the time consumed by traditional equipment, the smart kitchen equipment uses efficient heat transfer through forced draft heating with variable speed fans.
Chef’s take
Moving away from the business figures’ perspective, chefs agree that smart-kitchen equipment have started providing respite to their complex kitchen operations.
In line with Saurabh’s point, Rana Mukherjee, Executive Sous Chef at The Westin Kolkata Rajarhat, said, “We are seeing today that pre-planned cooking programmes available in the automated cooking equipment are being in constant use by many chefs which allows them to focus on preparing other dishes at ease.”
Consulting Chef Nilesh Limaye, added: “The chefs have now access to the guests’ choices and menu priorities as soon as the guest checks in based on his history of preferences. Materials management systems give more accurate data based on the previous patterns of stock orders. This helps us in pointing out critical areas like controls in wastage of a particular ingredient, non-usage of any ingredient, near expiry of a certain stock item, etc.”
Irfan Sayyed, former Executive Sous Chef at The Westin Mumbai Powai Lake, explained, “Many of the heavy-duty equipment such as the combination oven, gravity slicers, peeling machines, boilers and steamers and vacuum machines make life easy for the chef as they can produce quality food products with minimum manpower involved.”
Personal touch
Technology has certainly been a boon in easing complex kitchen operations in hotels and restaurants but it cannot fully replace human culinary excellence in creating memories for patrons.
While artificial intelligence and machine learning have greatly influenced foodservice industry, the human brain behind creating sensorial culinary memories will remain steadfast, reiterated Saurabh.
“The smart equipment are here to optimize operations for the foodservice business by aiding the chefs with tedious manual tasks and saving on business costs by providing detailed performance reports of the system in the kitchen,” he added.
Nilesh noted that equipment can soon go on to become a liability from an asset when one starts abusing technology. “We can say that already we have a shortage of skilled manpower, and with the advent of the use of technology, talented chefs will become obsolete,” he said.
Rana agreed with Saurabh while saying, “A machine cannot be creative as it is programmed to perform in a specific way and gives chefs very little room for improvisation.”
“Mishandling can lead to major accidents, waste of products and dissatisfaction of the guests. Also, using these equipment needs constant monitoring as they are not fully automatic and can sometimes malfunction leading to producing the wrong product,” concluded Irfan.
