How to achieve fail-proof recipe consistency and quality?
Getting new customers in through your restaurant doors is great. Having customers who return again and again is the winning ingredient that separates the decent food service businesses from the truly successful ones. Repeat customers are the bread and butter of your business. Chefstein® was designed to ensure that consistently memorable food experiences will be created and enjoyed, time after time. Here’s how it’s done, with the help of recipe consistency and quality.
Yes, it’s a no-brainer. A restaurant or a cafe is as good as its best recipes (and customer service). You have to nail it, every time. Customers want and expect that their favorite dishes will be just as good the next time and beyond, even at a different location within the same chain. Recipe consistency is key.
You have your recipes which have been tested until perfection. However, as we at Fredman have learned from our customers, it still isn’t always easy to replicate every winning dish, every time. Plating might look a bit different, the amount of salt often seems to be a different kind of pinch and the final touches sometimes act as an invitation to practice personal creativity.
Achieve recipe consistency and quality with digital kitchen management
What to do? A few actions and Chefstein® – Fredman’s digital kitchen management system – to the rescue!
cheese burger and chips portion, the same way, every time.
1. Document your creative efforts with videos, images and text instructions
As the Chef has perfected your menu items, you want to document each step of the preparation process for consistency at all sites. Chefstein®’s recipe feature offers an easy-to-use solution to record every step of the creative process as you prepare a dish.
You can add images for more clarity, supported by detailed text to provide your instructions Even in multiple languages. Video tutorials are an efficient tool to help maximize recipe consistency. You can link to video content via Chefstein®. For another level of quality control, each Chef could take pictures of the recreated dish and compare it to the master.
2. Share visual instructions of your recipes across teams
A clear visual guide to preparing each step of the recipe, as well as a detailed image of the finished dish and the desired plating style, is a huge help to maintaining consistency and quality. This is particularly helpful when an identical menu is served at various restaurant sites and as new kitchen staff join the team. Take video footage and photos of all the different steps of preparation, focusing on the key success factors, such as the way certain items should be fried, and add them to create a complete, visual preparation guide to the recipe on Chefstein®. This can then be instantly shared with all kitchen team members throughout your operations for optimized recipe consistency and fail-proof quality.
3. Ensure your written recipe instructions are efficiently detailed
To complement your visual recipe guide, detailed written instructions help other kitchen staff recreate your menu items to perfection. Include detailed amounts of ingredients, and make sure that a scale is always used. Describe your preparation and plating techniques. We all learn in different ways: some rely on visual guides, others prefer text. With Chefstein® you can create written recipe instructions in multiple languages. If anything proves to be unclear, you can edit your text endlessly and publish any revisions instantly.
4. Create a culture of consistency
Get everyone on board the ideology of ensuring that recreating popular menu items to what could seem like the most minute detail is a recipe to shared success through positive customer feedback and loyalty. Use Chefstein® as a training portal and promote it as a helpful workmate that is always happy to show a colleague how to keep consistency up, customers happy and praise coming!
The simple but genius recipe features in Chefstein® have helped many restaurants and food service businesses keep recipe consistency at a constant high. Create and maintain stability and boost profitability with Chefstein®’s easy-to-use interface by adding photos and texts as you cook through a recipe so the instructions are there whenever someone needs them. Then all you have to do is make sure Chefstein® is within reach for everyone on your kitchen team.