The recipe collections you often find in restaurants consist of tattered three-ring binders filled with plastic page protectors crammed full of handwritten recipes, magazine clippings and printed pages with handwritten conversions and changes. The corners are worn and pages stained with yearsof greasy fingerprints and spilled sauces. While these books serve as a nostalgic window into the kitchen's past, their relevance in a modern kitchen is debatable.
We have recently transitioned all of our recipes onto a shared drive that cooks and servers can access from two iPads mounted in the kitchen or their cell phones. The recipes are updated in real time as they evolve. In addition to recipes, there is a copy of the schedule, daily menu planning grids for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, product spec sheets, garden statistics, wine information and a number of other resources. All of the creative information and recipes are available to any of our employees at any time. A cook can check their phone when they get out of their car and see the items on their station for that evening - based on this, they are able to harvest items in the garden and properly plan their production schedule.
Not only is the new system more efficient
- it also helps our goal of being more sustainable by eliminating a ton of paper!
How do you specifically have this system set up? I would love to have something like this running in my kitchen. My iPad unfortunately collects more dust than fingerprints!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your question Jonathan- The system we have set up is really easy. First we disabled all of the functions on the Ipad and then installed the free Dropbox app. I then added different folders to the drop box from my laptop - recipes, menu grids, schedules, product spec sheets etc. Since the accounts are the same on my laptop and our two IPads everything is updated in real time as I add and refine recipes on my computer. You can also go into your dropbox account online and share certain folders- this way my cooks can access the information from their own personal smartphones or computers and my sous chefs can update recipes and other files. It is definitely a system that is still in the development stages- but I am pretty happy with the results so far.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply, I love that idea. Because most of what I do right now is catering (though a few small tasting dinners mixed in), I would really love to implement a system where written recipes can be scaled for 50-500 people and adjust things based on headcount. I know allrecipes.com has that system, but I don't necessarily want the recipes published.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I drop by Post Ranch on occasion, would love to spend a day in your kitchen if you wouldn't mind.
We would love to have you come by the kitchen. Just let me know next time you visit. Thanks
ReplyDelete