Landsberg am Lech, 31 October 2006.

For years now, RATIONAL AG, the world market leader in the field of hot food preparation in large and commercial kitchens, has been an essential feature at any major event such as the Munich Oktoberfest. When there are around 500,000 roast chickens, 56,000 knuckles of pork and over 100 steers to be prepared in 75 catering establishments for the hungry guests at the world’s largest public festival, that’s when the kitchen professionals rely on RATIONAL equipment. For over 80 percent of independently-surveyed master chefs, RATIONAL units represent an essential part of their kitchen equipment.

Year after year, a major event like the Oktoberfest makes enormous demands of the catering establishments in Munich’s Theresienwiese. Massive quantities of prepared food have to be made available very quickly and to the same high quality every time. This challenge just cannot be met any more with conventional cooking methods given the number of visitors and the limited kitchen space. As the world leader in cooking technology, RATIONAL has the solution. A solution that gives excellent cooking results in very large quantities and in the shortest time. During the Oktoberfest celebrations, several thousand meals are produced using RATIONAL technology every day. For example, up to 120 grilled chickens or 64 ducks can be cooked simultaneously and fully automatically in around 30 minutes in a SelfCooking Center^® 202 using the chicken or duck SuperSpike (available as an accessory).

After a long day at the Oktoberfest, cleaning is another important issue for the chefs working the evening shift. Here, again, the RATIONAL units save the professionals a vast amount of valuable time. CleanJet^®, the cleaning function for the RATIONAL units, - takes over this task in its entirety from the user. The whole process takes place fully automatically, with no monitoring required. It can even be done overnight. “Working with the RATIONAL SelfCooking Center^® makes our day-to-day activities in the Hippodrome so much easier during the Oktoberfest. With up to 8000 meals and 2000 menus every day, we can rely on the excellent cooking results, and they are repeatable every time. Overnight cooking with the SelfCooking Center^® also creates additional capacity for us, and the fully automatic cleaning function is a major benefit. This saves us valuable time and means that no manual cleaning is required,” commented Erhard Schneider, master chef at the Hippodrome, when sharing his experience of RATIONAL.