Bye pen and paper: the story of Chefstein®
Everyone deserves the time to focus on what they love to do, particularly those devoted to feeding us: the chefs, the kitchen and restaurant staff and food service workers. But how to find the time when the commercial kitchen world moves at a frenzied pace and the demands are so high? Fredman set out to solve this challenge by creating the ultimate holistic digital kitchen management solution. This is the story of Chefstein® – your favorite new kitchen workmate.
Hey you – there – in the chef’s jacket! What do you love about your job? In every paid role we have, there are aspects that we love – the reason we said “yes” to the work in the first place. For those in the food service industry, whether in a fast-casual restaurant, on a cruise ship, fine dining, or a campus cafeteria, there is one reason that surfaces above the rest: a love for good food and a desire to create a good dining experience for guests. Step in, Chefstein®, the new digital kitchen management solution!
Chefstein®: doing what you love, but better
To every amazing food creation there’s the less exciting side – the must-dos that we may not exactly enjoy. The actions that keep the wheels turning. Many of these tasks are performed in food service businesses daily; follow industry-regulated HACCP plans and processes; have carefully planned kitchen management strategies for key operational areas such as food safety, food waste, and hygiene.
Traditionally, these kitchen management tasks have been done using pen and paper, following manual processes that are often slower and less accurate than the business restaurant manager would like.
‘Clearly,’ Fredman customers said, ‘we need a better kitchen management solution – something easy-to-use, intuitive, and time-saving. Something that makes our kitchens more efficient.’ Fredman dug into the problem, together with customers and partners, to find out what was missing. We put our heads together, and drew up, on a piece of notebook paper, the ideal kitchen colleague avatar: Chefstein®.
Your new favorite kitchen workmate: Chefstein®!
From the drawing board to a design process Chefstein® was given several competencies, a professional look and feel as well as a distinct personality. So, who exactly is Chefstein®?
Chefstein® is the colleague who is there with you when you arrive in the morning and when you leave. It manages all your key information, digitally and seamlessly, making sure it’s available when you need it and out of the way when you don’t.
Chefstein® is the one who has an eye and an ear out for any potential issues in the kitchen, 24/7, and raises the alarm when your cold storage temperatures rise too much or your dishwasher temp drops too low. It gives you detailed information about patterns of behavior and outcomes for key kitchen operational areas. No matter what the goals of the business or the task at hand, you can depend on Chefstein®.
“We wanted to design a digital solution that would help define and lead kitchen management technology”, said Fredman Perfect Kitchen Marketing Director, Ann Plough, adding, “HACCP was the original guiding light in the early development of Chefstein® so that commercial kitchens could comply with regulations and requirements set out by the state, related to preventative food safety measures.”
Do you have an HACCP inspector coming in to make sure your restaurant is in compliance with industry standards and that all plans are in place? Chefstein® is there with a full report of all the necessary data.
But that’s not all.
Holistic kitchen management solution
Do you know how much food waste is generated in a specific area of your kitchen? Chefstein® is the ultimate kitchen management solution that tracks all of that automatically using the Chefstein® smart scale. You only need to pull up the reports on your nearest mobile device or desktop to get the information you need.
Are you planning to introduce a new hygiene task sheet to employees across 25 sites in 4 countries? No problem. Chefstein® helps you roll that out across every location with a few clicks, and then lets you track the action to make sure all tasks are done on time.
In fact, the more locations you manage, the more value Chefstein® delivers. It is designed so you can adapt it to your kitchen, any location, any culture. It loves diversity, and meeting and working with new people. The ultimate extrovert – it’s ready to be brought into the game whenever you need, and stays out of the way so you can shine.
In other words: Chefstein® is the worker bee who does all the tasks nobody loves. It never complains. It saves you money and gives you your time back – to work on creating the best flavors out there.
Daily task management with automated intelligence
By making you look good, we mean really good. Are the daily tasks done? Ask Chefstein®.
Want to manage all the temperatures for all of your appliances without making it a full-time job? Chefstein® does this for you, automatically, with the help of sensors.
Want to share this season’s newest recipes, photos and instructions with all of your staff? Share them in Chefstein® recipes and give everyone access easily.
Need a closer view of data that shows exactly what’s going on in each of or all of your kitchens, in all critical operational areas, worldwide? Chefstein® has dashboards that give you all of your kitchens’ critical information in one place so you always have the knowledge you need to run your kitchen operations with excellence.
As the Fredman Perfect Kitchen Chief Design Officer, Elina Halinen, says:
“Fredman wanted to focus on helping the backhouse so the chefs and the management could focus more on the development of their customer relationships and their menu offerings – to reinforce why they got into the hospitality industry to begin with”.
And Chefstein® delivers this from day one.
