Easy ways to optimise your venue’s kitchen

A commercial kitchen is capable of producing fine dining to large groups of people, but they are not without their challenges. Without due diligence, meals can be served too late, and kitchens left cluttered, not clean and unsafe – all of which are significant problems for any foodservice operation.

Luckily, there are some simple ways you can improve the operations of the kitchen at your hospitality venue, enabling you to serve your unique offering quickly and efficiently.

Invest in creative storage options

Storage is critical in any kitchen, but unfortunately, the space we have available to us is often limited.

Fortunately, there are plenty of innovative and creative options available where you can store food, cutlery and other preparation equipment within easy reach.

This can include refrigeration units that roll under counters and benches as well as portable/rolling options that can be used or moved as required.

Explore every space and investigate custom options for storage in any unused nook and cranny (e.g. under benches etc.) This can help you be better organised as well and improve your food safety compliance with everything properly stored in its place and within arm’s reach.

Organise your prep outside of service hours

While many kitchens will get their prep work done in the morning hours, there is often overlap. This means extra people in the kitchen, excess mess, less workspace and greater scope for things to go wrong.

Where possible, try and arrange the prep workers as early as possible so that there is minimal or zero overlap for better organisation and less clutter in the kitchen at any given point in time.

Improve your cleaning practices

Thorough cleaning is an essential but time-consuming part of any venue.

On the one hand, best practices must be adhered to, so there is no risk of contamination that can cause diners to become ill. On the other hand, cleaning can mop up enormous amounts of time as well.

Some tips to streamline the process and speed cleaning up include:

• Keeping a detailed daily, weekly and monthly checklist of cleaning tasks
• Invest in modern, grease removing cleaning machinery that will do the job better and faster than a mop and bucket
• Polish all cutlery for faster drying
• Invest in smart technology that can monitor the levels of cleaning consumables and also hygiene levels
• Investigate new cleaning appliances and self-cleaning cooking devices.

Explore new cooking technologies

There is a range of innovations available that can speed up your operations, including:

• New pasta cookers that rapidly bring water to the boil and maintain a consistent temperature
• Combi ovens that use both steam and convection heat
• Conveyor ovens that are designed for more than just cooking pizza and
• Speed ovens that are a cross between a convection oven and a microwave and cook quickly and evenly
• Other technologies, such as an efficient POS system or hardware.

New innovations are coming onto the market all the time as well, so be sure to read the latest industry updates and attend trade shows to explore the best options for your specific business.