Mr. Escoffier

Food & Beverage

Combo Ovens: The Ginzu Knife of the Professional Kitchen

By Marcel Escoffier, Associate Professor, FIU School of Hospitality Management

One aspect of hotel food and beverage operations that annoys me beyond description is our ability to design food and beverage facilities guaranteed to lose money. Let's say that your hotel has a national restaurant chain's unit across the street. And let's go across the street and compare the operations over there versus what happens in your, typical, hotel.

The first thing you should notice is that the kitchens across the street are smaller than yours. In fact, were you to compare the ratio of square feet of kitchen versus square feet of dining room, you would notice that the restaurant kitchen across the street is a whole lot smaller than is your kitchen. Smaller, up to a point, is more efficient than bigger. A smaller kitchen uses less utilities, needs fewer workers, has less equipment (and a lower investment and borrowing expense.) About the only thing a restaurant kitchen can't do is decent sized banquets, but that's more a function of smaller set-up space (that is, tables needed in the plating of the food for service) and holding space then of actual production space.

Oh, yes, and that place across the street has less variety of equipment as well. That restaurant chain kitchen services a relatively concentrated ("themed") menu with relatively fewer choices on it. You, the typical hotel, have multiple menus, often featuring multiple themes. So, it would stand to reason that historically, at least, you needed a greater variety of equipment than the chain restaurant across the street.While the next observation is a function of how recently that chain restaurant opened (or refurbished), it still holds true in enough restaurants to be important t o note. The kitchen across the street probably has the latest energy-saving equipment, and only the specific equipment it needs to produce that limited, themed menu. If the kitchen is new enough, all the major equipment, as well as the cold storage facilities are computer controlled and monitored so as to produce an HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) record of meat, fish and other production.

So What Do I Do Now?

Hopefully, you've got the hotel food and beverage facilities that were state of the art back when it was installed. Most likely the installation was some time ago. If your production facilities were installed within the past couple of years, you probably are stuck for a while. If this is the case, then, congratulations, you are the F+B Director of an operation designed to lose money (or, at the least, designed to cost a whole lot more money to produce any given menu item.) But even you can begin planning to design a kitchen that works efficiently.

If you have a kitchen that is old enough, than you should consider this as a good time to begin planning to renovate. Even if relatively new (let's say three years or more in age), it might save you money to renovate.But why consider a kitchen upgrade now? Well, if you take your time, plan well and thoroughly, you probably will have a new kitchen in about 8 months to a year. Dr. Ben Bernake, Federal Reserve Chairman, recently said that the economy should begin to turn around toward the end of 2009. Most economists doubt that and believe a turn around will occur in 2010 or 2011. Either way, remember; every turn around that I have witnessed (from the 1950's to today) begins with companies starting to send out salesmen, and, hence, with an uptick in business hotel occupancy. So plan on your hotel starting to get busier at the beginning of an economic cycle, not toward the end! This means that you most likely should be planning on a completed kitchen remodeling for, say the start of 2010.

Some Important Recent Product Developments

You probably remember the late night TV commercials for the kitchen implement that, "slices and dices, minces and chops" and otherwise does everything but go out and shop for the food. Well, the newest kitchen equipment really does all that. In fact, some even tell you what food to shop for!

New combi-ovens (one manufacturer calls their line of such ovens the "Combitherm(R)") can "oven-fry", steam, bake, roast, smoke, and even hold and rethermalize (bring food back up to serving temperature). With its network-ready connection these new ovens can produce the required HACCP records as well as tell you how much food was produced (and, hence, how much you need to buy to replenish what was used.) It even uses the steam feature to thoroughly clean itself!

Obviously, combining five or six pieces of equipment in one reduces the floor space requirements, as well as reducing energy costs. Those energy costs are further reduced because the units are often so energy efficient. Not only do they replace five pieces of equipment with one, but that one operates more efficiently than any of the five older pieces of equipment!

Another advantage to these combi-ovens as well as other new equipment is the ability to hold foods for relatively long periods of time. You can hold scrambled eggs for several hours without noticeable deterioration in their quality. Most allow you to use what is perhaps the most notable French cooking technique, braising. They allow you to braise foods overnight, with incredible results.

They solve several of the imperatives I mentioned in the introduction. These ovens provide the variety of cooking methods that allow the F+B Director to create more varied menus (the Chef can no longer plead that he doesn't have the equipment to do what you ask of him.) Most of these ovens are supplied by manufacturers who have test kitchens and will work with you to produce distinctive recipes that more fully utilize the oven's features. You save on space, so you save on energy and occupancy costs. And, (I am embarrassed to say this), when your Chef leaves, you don't get stuck with equipment that only he used and you don't have to buy new equipment that the new Chef may want.

Who Can I Trust for Help?

None of these new pieces of equipment are, let us say, cheap. They constitute a major capital investment on the part of the hotel. Also, in order to maximize their usefulness, you need to rethink the food production techniques you currently employ. In other words, you need to figure out how to utilize them to their maximum capabilities or you will be spending money that will take a long time to recoup. You want to maximize your production savings with as short a payback time as possible.

Given these needs, unless you or someone in your department is a true expert in kitchen design, I recommend that you consider hiring a consultant. Yes, equipment vendors often provide design services, but they have competing needs. They want you to be satisfied, but they also want to maximize their profits. Often, they specify more equipment or more expensive equipment than you really need.

I have seen another error as well. If they detect that you are not as willing to commit to a full remodeling, they will design a partial remodeling that could leave you with the worst of both worlds, expensive old equipment that doesn't provide the integrated production capabilities of the new equipment and new installations that are not capable of supplying all the savings that they were designed to provide.

Get an independent consultant who has no specific need to satisfy anyone other than you, his client.

Let's Not Forget the Fundamentals

You are about to reduce the footprint of your kitchen production area by a factor of up to five. This will free up a lot of space. Now is the time to think about future expansion. As I said, the newest equipment isn't cheap. So buying more than you need is probably not something your Hotel Controller will approve. But, you need to allocate space for future purchases. It is quite possible that you will see the advantages of consolidating your production into one kitchen. You can do this by purchasing holding and transportation equipment that can be integrated into the combi-oven system. Now is the time to think about this consolidation. One hotel I know of consolidated its banquet kitchen into another kitchen and converted the old banquet kitchen into another meeting room space. The hotel, like many, can now appeal to groups holding larger meetings. A nice way to help recoup the cost of doing the kitchen redesign.

Another aspect to consider is the possibility of running equipment in multiple modes. That is, having, for example, three units where one is steaming food while another is baking food and another is holding food. Multiple, simultaneous production can now be accomplished without the huge kitchens of the past. One hotel in Orlando is producing three banquet functions a day (each function of up to 400 guests), as well as running its dining room (150 seats) and coffee shop (85 seats) production out of a kitchen that is less than 2,000 square feet. Think of the savings in energy and labor!

Remember... Buy Low, Sell High

Now is the time to buy... anything. The nation is experiencing a severe recession; people are simply not buying. I just purchased a new Lexis ES350. They reduced the price by 25%! Your equipment supplier should be able to sell you new equipment at a similarly steep discount. Remember, a 10% price drop will reduce the payback period by more than 25%. Some equipment suppliers offer their own financing as well. They are desperate to sell.

Also, construction has generally fallen in price. It is too soon to say if the Federal stimulus package will reverse the drop in construction costs, or merely slow down the price declines, but any construction you might need to do a kitchen refurbishment will probably be less expensive than in the immediate past.

Finally, many people are advocating radical menu changes in order to craw in more customers. The new equipment can handle about any production task thrown at it, wiping out the production cost consideration when making such menu changes.

What to Do Today

I would recommend that you consider a kitchen redesign at once. Calculate the cost savings from reduced energy and labor costs, the opportunity cost savings (in other words, the savings you will realize do to better space utilization) and create a list of the other benefits such an upgrade may offer. Compare these savings to the potential cost estimates (remember, whatever you think it will cost to renovate probably will be lower than what it will actually cost, even in these slow economic times.) Remember, too, that the renovations should be completed before mid-2010 so as to catch the potential initial turnaround in the economy.

It is hard to contemplate spending money in these trying economic times. Yet, the hotels who are ready for an economic rebound will outperform those who are not ready when the time comes. Also, most of the ideas that I have seen for how to cope with the current crisis in hotel occupancy assume idling of whole areas of the hotel. These schemes may be self defeating. One hotel in Maui, Hawaii, has reversed its decision to close a significant part of its food and beverage operation because of negative guest feedback. We don't want to lose guests permanently because of what we do temporarily.

Planning and organizing the work are the two initial steps any manager must take when overseeing any major business activity. Now is the time to plan when the economy is weak so you are ready to maximize your profits when the economy gets strong.

Marcel R. Escoffier was an Associate Professor at the School of Hospitality Management Florida International University. He had over thirty years experience in hotels and restaurants throughout the U.S. Unfortunately, Mr. Escoffier passed away in September, 2009. We at HotelExecutive.com would like to continue publishing Marcel's articles on our website as a tribute to this brilliant man. The one thing we loved most about him most was his sense of humor. He would always make light of any serious situation, and this was reflected often in the articles he wrote for the Hotel Business Review. Mr. Escoffier can be contacted at editor@hotelexecutive.com Extended Bio...

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