Everyone would like to open a restaurant but experience from home or dinners with friends is not enough....
Often vendors in the industry advise those who do not have a lot of experience and open an activity to purchase entry level products that are more similar to household appliances rather than professional one, recommending the most advanced technology, on the other hand, to established professionals in the industry. An established professional will surely benefit from its advantages. With my years of experience in the food service industry, I am convinced that the use of technology is also important to beginners.
In fact, there is a truly surprising correlation between successful new businesses and the type of technology they use in the kitchen.
In the sample group I examined, a high percentage of businesses that were successful chose premium kitchen technology. In the meantime, the majority of the businesses that were not successful chose budget equipment.
Often, in order to minimise the risk of failure, new business owners rely on costly consultants for restaurant startups, ranging from designing the menu to choosing the ingredients and training the staff.
A few months ago I was able to meet a virtual consultant: Naboo.
Naboo lets new restaurant owners surf through hundreds of gastronomic ideas inside the Cloud in order to design their menus. In this case, the use of technology in the kitchen, and especially the innovative Naboo, lets new restaurant owners choose between hundreds and hundreds of gastronomic ideas inside the Cloud, helping them create their own menu. It is almost like having a virtual chef at their side, guiding them through each step, from choosing the ingredients, to the preparation, plate presentation and suggesting how to prepare it in their menus, giving the history of the dish, the calories and other appetising information for the customer.
Up to this point we have discussed Naboo's "soft skills" or the knowledge that it can transfer through the Lainox Cloud.
But we must not forget that Naboo is also the most advanced multifunction oven on the market.
In fact it lets anyone who is setting up a new kitchen save on an initial equipment investment due to this multi-functionality, which makes it able to replace traditional equipment such as: grilles, wood grilles, pans, fryers, braziers, boilers, salamanders, etc.
Both the total kitchen investment and the space needed are significantly reduced.
Let's imagine ourselves as restaurant owners....
Opening day has finally arrived when we must start up our kitchen. With less machinery to turn on and monitor, we have less labour cost and a lower energy cost compared to a traditional kitchen.
Now it is time for the big challenge. After opening our restaurant we must convince our customers to come back.
So I ask you, why do you decide to go back to a restaurant?
My surveys have shown that there are two reasons customers decide to go back to the same restaurant depending upon the type of customer:
Conservative Customer: he goes back to eat the same dish he ate the last time and the restaurant owner must not disappoint him so the dish must always be the same each time.
Innovative Customer: the goes back to eat in the same restaurant if the owner is always able to surprise him with new proposals and dishes.
So a successful restaurant's menu must have a certain balance between so-called "mainstays" or "cash cows" and new, seasonal and creative "star" dishes.
I imagine that right now you are asking yourselves: "how can Naboo help me with all this?" The answer is very simple. In fact, with its ICS (Interacting Cooking System) technology, Naboo lets you ensure constant quality and so the new restaurant owner can serve his cash cow dishes with always the same quality by using the Cloud system.
Periodically Naboo proposes new dishes, new seasonal and ethnic recipes in order to surprise those innovative customers and create true stars on your menu.
Now, after the results from this survey that were described above, we invite anyone who wishes to open a new food service activity or who influences this decision process to make a knowledgeable decision.
Antoine Remi
Gastronomic Consultant