STRATFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Working alongside legendary icons Ray Kroc and Colonel Sanders, Food Automation Service Techniques (FAST) founder Ben Koether had an epiphany.
“If we could reduce restaurant labor by 50%, it would change the economics of running a restaurant and create another billion dollar business,” says Koether.
With the introduction of the FASTRON ® Cooking Computer, that’s just what Koether did. Now, revolutionizing the restaurant industry yet again, FAST, the worldwide leader in timers, temperature controls, and process controllers for the foodservice industry, and its Smart Commercial Kitchen division (SCK Direct) have integrated their technologies into an ‘end to end’ solution called Kitchen Brains™, designed to take restaurant performance to yet another level.
“There is a major shift occurring in the industry,” says Christian Koether, vice president, Kitchen Brains™. “We are receiving more inquiries from quick serve establishments looking to employ technology that improves restaurant performance; consistently delivers hot, fresh food; and maximizes customer satisfaction.”
Through its Quality Production Management (QPM) application, Kitchen Brains™ analyzes restaurant traffic patterns; provides sales trend data that enables just-in-time inventories; optimizes production for greatest efficiency and insures the production of fresher product at lower cost.
In effect, the kitchen thinks for itself, constantly monitoring market conditions, advising when to start cooking, monitoring hold times, and signaling with ‘active alerts’ when food should no longer be sold. By collecting and analyzing data automatically rather than via complex, labor-intensive processes, Kitchen Brains™ optimizes appliance utilization. A key feature of the Kitchen Brains™ solution is an easy-to-read, real-time dashboard that updates crew members and managers on the status of current restaurant operations at a glance.
“Through the use of complex logarithms, Kitchen Brains™ very accurately forecasts the quantity of food needed during specific time periods, when to cook and when to remove to retain freshness," says Christian. “It edges out the competition that largely just guesses how much product needs to be produced. In the 350 stores of the KFC UK market where Kitchen Brains was installed, customer complaints relating to food went to virtually zero.”
Another attribute is a key management tool that enables individual stores’ operating information to be accessed remotely, utilizing cloud based architecture.
“Imagine a franchisee with multiple stores being able to monitor all aspects of each individual’s store performance remotely. Additionally, the Kitchen Brain solution comes with a suite of management reports covering all aspects of restaurant operations,” explains Christian.
Kitchen Brains was built on the foundation of FAST, which has a long history of providing efficiency solutions to restaurants via its various proprietary electronic timers, electronic temperature controls and fryer controls. The company enjoys a solid reputation globally with customer such as YUM Brands KFC unit. The various FAST devices consistently improve the availability of high-quality fresh food, while improving production efficiency, and lowering labor costs resulting in increased profitability. By automating complex, formerly labor intensive processes, restaurant management is free to more fully focus on customers.
Further innovations to the Kitchen Brains™ solution are in development and will address critical aspects of restaurant operations such as HSSP monitoring, remote adjustment of appliance set-points, and energy management.
For more information, visit www.kitchenbrains.com.
About Kitchen Brains
Kitchen Brains, formerly SCK Direct, Inc., is Selected by QSR Magazine, a leading foodservice publication, as 'One of the Seven Trends You Won’t Want to Run Your Restaurant Without’, Kitchen Brains’ history of innovation and commitment to harnessing the power of information is at the forefront of the company’s groundbreaking, interconnected kitchen technology.