Consultants: The Most Useful Tech Builds on Basics

All things robotic may get the lion’s share of buzz when it comes to new foodservice tech, but for two industry veterans, the most compelling back-of-the-house technologies earn their place in the kitchen by offering simple solutions to common problems.

Take, for instance, the problem of dishmachines that fail because they haven’t been delimed on a regular basis. Laura Lentz, design principal at Culinary Advisors, applauds manufacturers’ rollout of control-board technology that allows machines to self-diagnose, helping operators avoid costly service calls.

“If 90% of my service calls are coming because people are forgetting to delime the machine, and the control board is now going to be able to diagnose, ‘Hey, you haven’t delimed your machine in 60 days and you’re supposed to do that every week,’ that solves the service call that they were paying for to have someone come in and tell them to take better care of their machine,” Lentz says.

Similarly, for operators who scratch-cook signature sauces but struggle to manage the time, labor and space it takes to prep these a few times a week, high-capacity vertical cutter-mixers used with versatile combi ovens and multifunction blast chillers can make simple work of batch cooking.

“Operators need to be looking at ways in which they can do advanced meal preparation,” Lentz says. “If somebody’s really using a combi oven to a blast chiller like they’re supposed to be doing it, then you can make a tomato sauce, chill it down in the blast chiller, get it frozen and potentially double the amount of pasta sauce that you’re making one day a week and get yourself through the whole week so you don’t have to make it twice.”

Control Freaks

That same back-to-basics practicality is of high interest, too, to Cini-Little International President Emeritus Dick Eisenbarth, who like Lentz had a chance to survey vendors’ latest offerings at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago last month. “We see an awful lot of equipment that’s bright and shiny … then you ask, well, what’s the payback?” says Eisenbarth, who also serves as a Kitchen Innovation Awards judge.

Any kitchen equipment with a capital payback of less than three years is “a slam-dunk,” Eisenbarth says, but anything that offers a return on investment between three and five years after purchase offers good savings. Eisenbarth sees high potential in equipment with built-in smart controls that can connect with, for example, inventory management systems. He points to smart visual monitoring technology in use at Chipotle that can track workers’ use of the concept’s highest-cost item, guacamole, and let them know when they’re serving up too big of a scoop.

Another notable kitchen newcomer, he says, is scanning technology that can analyze a food item’s weight and temperature as it waits to be served and also analyze leftovers on plates that return to the kitchen. This not only helps operators manage food-safety compliance by ensuring that items are held at the proper temperature, but also it can help them track what customers consume vs. what they’re served. Using this data to inform decisions about portion sizes and inventory management can help cut down on food waste.

“We’re still trying to completely connect the kitchen, but we’re getting close.”
– Dick Eisenbarth, Cini-Little International

“We’re still trying to completely connect the kitchen, but we’re getting close,” Eisenbarth says. And as the market widens for such tools as visual monitoring technology and easily programmable, multifunction food-prep equipment, operators across foodservice segments will be better able to tackle two of their most persistent (and expensive) challenges: labor allocation and food waste.

“The ability to control things a little bit more” is huge, says Eisenbarth. “When you can really dial into what’s needed, speed up service times, reduce waste and increase the quality of product–hey, what more do you want?”