News – 2023-06-27
RATIONAL, the specialist in hot food preparation, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with the slogan “When it tastes great, we all speak the same language." The company anniversary will be accompanied by a new image film, a website with content about the company's history and numerous social media activities. Far more important, however, are the numerous, international celebrations for employees, partners and customers, for example at the company's various locations and at trade fairs. At the headquarters in Landsberg am Lech, an open day on 8 July will provide an insight into the production of the iCombi as well as the new, sustainable office building. In mid-October, there will be an official ceremony here with invited guests from politics and business and the traditional Siegfried Meister concert in Plant 3. There is also cause for celebration for some subsidiaries: RATIONAL has been represented in India for 10 years, in Italy and Sweden for 25 years and in the USA for 30 years.
Siegfried Meister founded what is now RATIONAL AG in 1973. For 44 years, he led the company with a focus on customer benefit: "In this day and age, a company has a right to exist when it fulfills its task and that task is to offer benefit to the customer. The quality of this benefit determines success or failure." This philosophy is still firmly anchored in the corporate culture today. To achieve this, more than 2300 employees worldwide, including around 500 master chefs, are in daily contact with customers and form the DNA of the company with their knowledge and experience. Their cooking know-how is the basis for the development of new products such as the iCombi and iVario. Or ConnectedCooking, the digital networking solution for professional kitchens.
When Siegfried Meister founded the company in 1973 with just 18 employees, nobody knew that it would become a global market leader, a hidden champion. Meister laid the foundation for this in 1976, first with the invention of the first RATIONAL combi-steamer and then in 1979 with the bottleneck-concentrated strategy. This strategy states that the goal of entrepreneurship must not be to maximise profit, but to maximise the benefit for a specific target group. At RATIONAL, this means the people who cook in the commercial kitchens of this world and thus the specialisation in cooking systems that support them in the best possible way. From 1983, only combi-steamers were built in Landsberg am Lech. The 1,000,000th unit crowns the success story in 2019. A major contributor to this success was the fact that in 1992 the French distribution partner Frima, which had built the predecessors of the iVario, became a subsidiary. In 2018, Frima finally became RATIONAL.
Since RATIONAL sees itself as a company of the future, it will not only be taking a look back, but also 50 years ahead. Euromonitor commissioned a study for the online magazine KTCHNrebel, which addressed questions such as “How will food be purchased for the hospitality industry in 2073?”, “How will food be produced and processed?”, “How will food be served?”. Result: Restaurants will still be used in 2073, and thanks to automation and digitalisation, chefs will have more and more time to devote to their creativity. Dr Peter Stadelmann, CEO at Rational, comments: "The difference between food intake and the restaurant dining experience will continue to diverge in the coming decades. This is great news for the eating out sector. Because this is precisely where we humans, as social beings, are given moments that go far beyond mere calorie intake: Through their unique atmosphere, through their even more attentive service in the future and through dishes that tell stories through an unprecedented kind of creativity. I am convinced that the technologies of the future are a unique opportunity for the hospitality industry. On that note, 2073, here we come!"