Interesting article I tripped across on the internet. Now to be fair it’s an old article- from circa 1990 to be fair- shoot is that really an 18 year old article? The article about Ruth Chris Restaurant does bring up some interesting points about thinking outside the box in restaurant management and also using equipment in ways that definitely fits outside of the box. This article is attributed to the VP of Operations at Ruth Chris back in 1990.
“We try to keep the kitchen simple so we don’t need engineers or skilled chefs to operate it,” he says. “We have the same equipment in each one: two special broilers made for us, a stacked double-convection oven, a 12-burner burner range, three deep-fat fryers, a counter-top conveyor pizza oven, a 6-foot salad station, refrigeration, a reach-in freezer, an ice machine, an ice-cream dipping box and some small items like a mixer, a slicer, scales. We also installed a cabinet-type warewasher plus a very special niece of equipment – an ultrasound cleaner, which was designed specifically for us.”
The two broilers, which are gasfired, overhead flame broilers, were designed by Ruth Fertel, founder of the chain. “Back in the beginning she knew what she wanted,” Earles says, “so she sat down with a manufacturer’s representative and worked out the details. We’ve been using them in every one of our operations ever since.”
The broilers are set at 1,800 degrees, twice the temperature for a normal flame broiler, to seal in the beef’s juices. The tops of the broilers stay hot, allowing chefs to heat up appetizers and other dishes and melt cheeses on au gratin plates.
The chain also uses some conventional equipment in unconventional ways. “We buy a pizza oven to heat our bread,” Earles notes. “It does a better job, because it’s always ready and the conveyor speed and temperature can be easily adjusted. And our salad station isn’t really a salad station; it’s a pizza station, which we find works better.
“We use the convection oven mostly for heating plates. We serve our steaks on plates heated to 450 to 500 degrees. The convection oven heats them evenly and reduces plate breakage. In the old days we heated the plates on top of the broiler and got about three servings per plate before they cracked.”
Because heating the plates results in a carbon buildup, ultrasound is used to clean them.
“Scouring takes off the glaze, and chemical soaks take too long,” Earles says. The ultrasound combined with chemicals is very quick, about seven to eight minutes to completely clean deposits off a dish.
“The unit was designed specifically for us,” he continues. “It’s a bigger version of the type of ultrasound cleaner used in the jewelry business. We also clean deposits off our au gratin dishes in it.
“Everything is washed in the warewasher after going through the ultrasound cleaning, but we ultrasonically clean plates only as they need it. We inspect daily and separate for ultrasonic cleaning those plates which show deposits.”
So here are the points I found most interesting:
- Simple kitchen layout & equipment – this really is epitomized by the simplicity of Five Guys Burgers. It’s the whole KISS (Keep it simple stupid) premise that we don’t need to have a gadget to do everything. This probably counters just about everything that society dictates to us now; the use of blackberries, iphones, shark floor steamers for home, dyson upright vaccuums, dyson handheld vaccums, cell phones, laptop computers, ipods… it all doesn’t have to be automated. Get the equipment that you need, nothing more and nothing less. Get deceint equipment that will last and take good care of it running preventative maintenance.
- Alternative use: convection oven
- Alternative use: ultrasonic warewasher
- Alternative use: pizza conveyor oven
I did tour another upscale restaurant with a friend who designed the kitchen and found an entirely different outlook. That business even had a special salad spinner that was a converted dryer…. hmmm… is that really needed in a steakhouse?
So at what point do we convert to a “lean” business model? I believe our current business environment is dictating that all of us consider how we might become a more efficient machine… kitchen … restaurant.
This is good food for thought for the small business owner- as a startup restaurant often potential customers go to a dealer who has a “quick talking” salesperson who sells then equipment they cannot use. You don’t need an arsenal of one-use equipment. You should have a kitchen filled with multi-purpose and simple equipment.
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