Loudons. Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Productive and flexible with RATIONAL.

Planning for the future.

Based in Edinburgh, Loudons has established a reputation as one of the city’s most popular restaurants since opening in 2011. Its ethos is to create a friendly yet relaxed place, and to be as inclusive with its menu as possible.

The success has allowed them to open a second location, but this expansion is dependent on the procedures they’ve established behind the scenes to allow them to scale their business. All food is produced in central production kitchen, then sent out to the service kitchens each day. The food is then finished on site. This system enables a large, a la carte menu serving up to 600 meals a day, while minimising cooking times in the service kitchen.

With so many variables on the menu, they knew they needed equipment that gave consistent results and enabled them to work synergistically.

“From the start we were looking at modern multifunctional appliances as the best way to achieve what we wanted, and after we went to one of RATIONAL’s CookingLive demonstrations, we knew we’d found the right brand.”

Douglas Humphrey, Director.

The RATIONAL solution.

Following on from a redesign of their kitchen into an open plan space that allows customers to see everything happening, Loudons has a selection of RATIONAL appliances including a RATIONAL VarioCookingCenter^® with a 100 litre capacity capable of preparing up to 300 meals a day and several RATIONAL SelfCookingCenter^® units of vairied sizes.

The equipment at Loudons has ConnectedCooking technology installed, RATIONAL's powerful networked control system. This allows operators to manage and control each unit centrally.

Executive Chef Peter Christensen is equally impressed. “Our process has changed dramatically since we got the new equipment,” he says. “It’s much easier to experiment with different recipes, and making changes to menus can be done instantly.

The challenge: