"When developing ConnectedCooking, we always have one question in mind: what tasks require a lot of attention, but can be taken off the chef's plate?" That's how Michael Hoffmann, Digital Product Manager at RATIONAL, describes the thought process behind networked kitchens. As an example, he describes someone overseeing three production food service kitchens that produce a total of 800 meals per day. Usually, that's a balancing act: different kitchen equipment, different cooking habits, staff with different levels of experience. And when quality fluctuates, everyone can taste the difference. ConnectedCooking can help with all of this and thus help raise the standard, especially in production food service. Reason enough for us to say that the future belongs to network kitchens, which work via smartphone, tablet, or PC. One kitchen? Two kitchens? More? Either way, ConnectedCooking gives all RATIONAL units access to the exact same cooking programs, plus the chef can access each one with a single click and monitor cooking processes, even remotely. For example, the platform uses push notifications to document parameters like capacity utilization and empty periods so that production processes can be adapted accordingly. Automatic service calls are designed to boost efficiency, too: when an incident occurs, your Service Partner is automatically notified and can get an initial report remotely, which allows them to respond efficiently on site.
Hoffmann mentions one more important point: "Maintaining hygiene standards is a challenge for every kitchen. That’s why we integrated automatic HACCP documentation into ConnectedCooking." All relevant data is recorded and stored for certain period of time... because chefs' main responsibility is creativity, not temperature records.