Turning a profit in the restaurant industry can be quite challenging. Even with plenty of reservations on the books and a parade of food leaving the kitchen, soaring expenses can decimate your bottom line before the dinner rush is even complete.

By discovering new ways to manage profit and loss, such as learning how to reduce labor costs in a restaurant and maximizing the efficiency of basic tasks like daily restaurant kitchen cleaning, you can become an expert at balancing expenses and revenue.

Here are a few ways to reduce expenses without completely overhauling your operation. 

Reduce Energy Consumption

Baking, broiling, grilling, cleaning dishes, sanitizing equipment — restaurant ops suck up a ton of energy. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy says restaurants use triple the amount of energy compared to other commercial enterprises. It’s no surprise, then, that the electric bill can be a major source of stress.

A large chunk of those energy costs can be attributed to heating water used to fill standard three-compartment sinks and facilitate dishwashing. Water is heated, used and discarded, then the process starts over from step one. Inefficient cleaning can be problematic as well, as cookware coated in unsightly carbon crust won’t conduct heat as well, increasing cook times and energy use.

Finding ways to streamline cleaning and break the heat-toss-repeat cycle could result in significant savings.

Take Care of Your Equipment

Restaurant cleaning costs can be hefty, either in terms of paying for in-house labor or contracting out to a professional cleaning team. But what you pay for cleaning is a pittance compared to how much it costs to replace pots, pans, trays and appliances that have been poorly maintained.

Some of the biggest barriers to equipment cleanliness are the fats and oils that build up over time. Layers upon layers of grease can solidify into carbon buildup that makes cookware less effective — you may have noticed those beat-up sauté pans taking longer and longer to heat up and searing meat less beautifully. If lower quality food ends up leaving the kitchen, that could hurt your reputation and revenue, too.

Develop a clear, productive approach to cleaning that produces high-level results. Paying attention to equipment health in the short term can pay huge dividends in the long run.

Lower Your Labor Costs

Restaurant cleaning costs include the price of cleansers, water, heat, equipment and the salaries of all the people needed to bring those elements together. It can take several people hours to tackle the mound of pots, pans, utensils and dishes generated by a busy lunch or dinner service.

With the minimum wage edging toward $15/hour and other employment costs tacking on as much as 25%, investing in cleaning solutions that maximize efficiency and efficacy can help you streamline your back-of-house team and pare back expenses.

The FOG Tank® is brimming with benefits that can help you protect your revenue and improve restaurant operations. This ingenious heated soak tank and its coordinating proprietary Tiger Carbon-Removal Powder are so adept at removing fat, oil, grease and rigid carbon buildup from equipment that they can save a single restaurant location a whopping $3,000 in annual energy expenditures. All this with no scrubbing, saving your team time and reducing daily stewarding department work by 3+ hours daily and your labor costs by as much as 85%.

Learn more about the FOG Tank to see how it can help you and your restaurant meet shared goals — all while paying for itself in as little as six months.

Knowing how to sanitize kitchen tools and equipment in a commercial setting is essential — especially in healthcare facilities and school cafeterias. If the right sanitation steps are not taken, these environments could quickly become messy breeding grounds for harmful bacteria. It’s crucial to have a thorough understanding of how to clean and sanitize kitchen tools and equipment.

Below, we’ll go over the importance of cleanliness and how to sanitize restaurant equipment more efficiently with a soak tank.

Improving Practices: How to Clean Commercial Kitchen Equipment With a Soak Tank

Nowadays, cleaning the traditional way — with hand washing or outdated dishwashers — is far from the most effective method. It takes innovative sanitation tools and certain know-how to sanitize kitchen equipment properly. Fortunately, there is a wide range of kitchen sanitation solutions to help deliver better results. For instance, every healthcare facility kitchen, school cafeteria, or other commercial kitchen should be equipped with an industry-grade soak tank.

What is a soak tank? Used to safely remove filth and buildup, these insulated stainless steel vats can be utilized for everything from cooking utensils and cutlery to storage containers, metal cookware, and bakery equipment. Using heated water and specialized cleaners, the items come out fully sanitized and bacteria-free.

Not only do soak tanks help prevent the spread of germs, but there are numerous other advantages. They are used to clear away those hard-to-scrub stains from fat, oil, grease, and carbon buildup with little to no scrubbing. Additionally, a soak tank can save on water, energy costs, and space, taking up significantly less space than a three-compartment sink.

Using a Soak Tank: A Step-by-Step Guide on How To Clean Restaurant Equipment

Understanding how to sanitize restaurant equipment with a soak tank is crucial. Done in five easy steps, the process on how to sanitize kitchen tools and equipment using the industry-leading FOG Tank is as follows:

• Step 1

Fill the FOG Tank with water to the “Fill Line” marked on the inside, plug the tank into an electrical outlet, and turn the switch to ON.

• Step 2

Slowly add the Tiger Carbon Removal Powder®.

• Step 3

Load the tank with dirty pots, pans, vent hood filters, etc., by using the “lifting basket” housed inside the FOG Tank.

• Step 4

Close the lid, leaving the items in the tank to soak; walk away!

• Step 5

Remove the items from the tank, then simply rinse off any loose or softened carbon fragments.

A Leading Cleaning Solution for Pots, Pans, and Other Kitchen Equipment

By including a soaking tank step in the process, commercial kitchens of all sizes can streamline their labor and dishwashing practices all while helping to maintain a clean, safe kitchen. If you’re in the market for a quality soak tank, look no further than FOG Tank®.

Eco-friendly and easy to operate, the FOG Tank is the ideal heated soak tank. Available for rent or purchase, FOG Tanks come in four sizes to fit the needs of various industries and applications. Get one to enhance operations in your commercial kitchen today!

Aluminum, cast iron, and stainless steel pans are fixtures in institutional kitchens, such as those in schools and hospitals. Serving so many people every day means this equipment collects a significant amount of grease and food debris. It also means kitchen staff can spend hours scrubbing them or consume a lot of power and water running them through a dishwasher.

Knowing how to clean aluminum pans and other metal items successfully without a lot of additional effort could save a lot of time, money, and resources. Fortunately, there is an alternative to the old-fashioned ways that can accomplish all of this. Read on to learn how to clean cooking pans and more using a commercial soak tank.

Why Soak Tanks Make the Best Cleaning Equipment

If you want to know how to clean a cast iron skillet and more without steel wool, a soak tank is the answer. These work by submerging metal kitchen equipment in a tank of hot water and specialized detergent. Over time, the grease and food residue is dissolved away, leaving behind clean, fully sanitized cookware.

If you’re already familiar with how to clean stainless steel pans through traditional means, it’s clear to see what makes soak tanks so much better. Users can just dunk what they need cleaned, shut the lid, and forget about it until later. After the cleaning cycle is finished, you remove the items from inside and they’ll be clean.

There are a host of other advantages, as well, such as the fact that they use much less water and power than dishwashers. Using a soak tank means you can save a lot of money over the long run.

How to Clean Cookware With a Soak Tank

If your school, hospital, hotel, or other large-scale kitchen wants to find a better way to stay clean, the soak tank might be what you need. Here’s how to clean stainless steel pots and more using one like the FOG Tank:

• Step 1: Fill the stainless steel tank with hot water up to the fill line and start it.
• Step 2: Slowly add the cleaning solution. In the case of the FOG Tank, this is our proprietary Tiger Carbon Removal Powder®.
• Step 3: Load your dirty metal equipment into the basket and lower it into the tank.
• Step 4: Close the lid and leave the items to soak.
• Step 5: Remove your items from the tank, rinsing away any loose or softened carbon fragments that might have been left behind.

If you are cleaning cast iron equipment, make sure to dry and oil it after using the tank to avoid rust.

Get a FOG Tank for Your Kitchen Today

Now that you understand how to clean aluminum pans and other metal kitchen equipment using a soak tank, it’s time to add the power of FOG Tank to your operations. It is available in a wide variety of sizes to fit virtually any application, including restaurants, catering operations, institutional kitchens and more. If you’d like to learn more about what the FOG Tank can do for you, reach out and get in touch with us today.

Dirty, greasy kitchen equipment is generally a good thing — it means you’re busy serving customers and making money. But all that success comes at a price, namely the hours you and your staff spend scrubbing all that grease off your griddles, frying pans, sheet pans and more.

Knowing how to clean commercial kitchen equipment typically means fighting cooking grease with elbow grease or using a heavy-duty dishwasher. Unfortunately, these methods are not only a lot of work, but also not always completely effective. Want to know how to clean a commercial griddle without a lot of hassle? Read on to learn more about how to clean restaurant equipment using a soak tank.

Why Soak Tanks Are Superior Cleaning Tools

Want to know how to clean burnt grease from inside of your frying pans without touching a scouring pad even once? It’s easy when you have a soak tank. These work by submerging dirty metal kitchen equipment in a tank of hot water and special detergent. The caked-on grease and food residue are dissolved as the items soak.

If you already know how to clean oven pans and other items the old-fashioned way, it’s easy to see how soak tanks are superior. All you need to do is add the dirty items to the inside of the tank, close the lid and walk away until the cleaning cycle is finished. But there are other advantages to using one. For instance, you can use the same water and detergent for up to 30 days before they need to be changed. These also draw less power and use less water than commercial dishwashers, meaning you’ll save money on your utility bills.

How to Clean Commercial Kitchen Equipment With a Soak Tank

Here’s how to clean cooking pans and more using a commercial soak tank such as the FOG Tank:

• Step 1: Fill the stainless-steel tank with hot water up to the fill line and activate it.
• Step 2: Slowly add the detergent. In the case of the FOG Tank, this is the proprietary Tiger Carbon-Removal Powder provided with it.
• Step 3: Load your dirty kitchen equipment into the basket and lower it into the tank.
• Step 4: Close the tank’s lid and let it run through the cleaning cycle.
• Step 5: Remove the items from the tank, and rinse away any loose or softened carbon fragments that might remain.

Get Your FOG Tank Today

Now that you know how a FOG Tank can save you time, money and effort, why not add one to your location? We provide these tanks in multiple sizes for use in numerous applications beyond restaurants. Get in touch with us today to purchase the one that’s right for you.

Operating a commercial kitchen means you’re probably aware of hood vents and what they do. You also probably know all about what a job cleaning their filters can be. Venting the heat from your cooktops, grills, and frying stations means they also accumulate a lot of grease. Keeping the filters clean from day to day usually means a lot of soaking and scrubbing or running them through the dishwasher. These methods not only require a lot of time, but also consume other resources such as detergent and water, not to mention the energy used to get everything hot enough to cut through the greasy buildup. Fortunately, knowing how to clean commercial hood filters with a soak tank can make the job much easier, faster, and more eco-friendly.

How a Soak Tank Makes Cleanup Easier

You may think you already know how to clean commercial hood vent filters, but a soak tank offers a number of benefits over the traditional methods. Because they use the same water and solution for 30 days straight, there’s no need to keep running the water or adding more soap each time you clean. They also require no scrubbing, meaning you can just drop the filters into the tank and do something else while the cycle runs in the background. Once it’s done, all you need to do is rinse away any carbon particles that may be left behind and you’re finished. When you know how to clean commercial hood vents with this equipment, you’ll experience better results and a more-efficient kitchen.

How to Clean Commercial Kitchen Hood Filters With FOG Tank

The FOG Tank commercial soak tank utilizes our proprietary, non-toxic, and eco-friendly Tiger Carbon Removal Powder® to clean a wide range of metal kitchen equipment. Here’s a step-by-step guide to using it for your hood vent filters and more:

• Step 1: Add water and Tiger Carbon Removal Powder to the tank. You only need to change the water and solution once every 30 days.
• Step 2: Drop items to be cleaned inside the tank. The insulated stainless steel tank maintains an operating temperature of 185 degrees without needing to use as much power to reheat the water as a dishwasher does.
• Step 3: Handle other tasks while the FOG Tank works. As it goes through its cleaning cycle, you and your employees will be free to do other jobs. There’s no scrubbing necessary.
• Step 4: Remove and rinse off your implements. There may be some particles of carbon left behind on your filters that can be removed with a quick rinse.

FOG Tank is available in a wide range of sizes for use in numerous industries and applications. To learn more or get yours today, get in touch with one of our representatives.

The struggle of being short staffed in the restaurant industry is a universal one. Attempting to run your store, even on a moderately busy shift, while shorthanded is incredibly stressful for everyone involved. Restaurants across all segments have been severely affected, due to the record number of workers who have quit the industry throughout 2021. So, how do business owners solve this problem and entice workers to join them in a highly competitive market? By getting creative.

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Create a More Welcoming Culture

Foodservice employees are often seen as a “different breed,” being both hearty and immune to work conditions that are often too hectic for others- but that can hold back potential hires. Managers and owners can set the tone, and create a welcoming environment; one where respect, diversity, and positivity are prioritized. By creating a dynamic and positive work culture, you open the doors to a broader range of available staff, while maintaining a high satisfaction level among your existing employees.

Your staff should be reflective of the community around your business. Focus on creating a diverse, equitable work environment, and your place of business will be a welcoming option to more potential hires. A wider pool means more candidates, and in the end, better hires.

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Get More Involved in Your Community

Another way to gain access to an incredible pool of potential staff? Build close relationships within your community. Reach out to local high schools, where they may offer class credits to students for work experience. Foster relationships with colleges in your area, and create a pipeline that will give you access to potential hires. Creating sponsorship programs, offering on-the-job training, and getting involved in community job fairs and other outreach programs not only allows you to find new talent in your community, but it also builds relationships that will be a great resource for finding labor in the future.

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Invest in Automation

One of the simplest solutions to a labor shortage scenario is to automate more time-consuming tasks that bog down your employees. Time-consuming, tedious, and frustrating tasks like scrubbing pizza pans, screens, and belts are necessary parts of running a Domino’s, but are a burden to your staff. Investing in automation solutions, like the FOG Tank, allows staff to reduce the time and effort spent on these menial tasks, and instead focus on more pressing matters such as making the highest quality pizzas.

The FOG Tank is a heated soak tank, so-named because it safely and easily removes fat, oil, and grease – as well as heavy carbon build-up – from metal cookware, pizza pans, belts, etc. It tackles the buildup on all types of metal, including aluminum, saving back-of-house employees tons of time they would otherwise spend scrubbing and straining. The FOG tank gets great results within a matter of hours, with little effort on the part of your employees. Cleanliness and sanitation are incredibly important tasks in any Domino’s kitchen and allowing staff to quickly and safely sanitize cookware without struggle means more time effectively spent on higher-level work.

 

A labor shortage creates stress for everyone in the industry, but when you invest in automation, that both eases the burden on your existing staff and saves you money on water, labor, and energy costs, you’re doubling the positive results. Investing in a FOG Tank for your business makes practical sense- and your kitchen staff, and their hands, will appreciate it.

 

 

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the restaurant and foodservice industry. With a loss of more than$25 billion in sales and 3 million jobs in the first month of the coronavirus shutdown, businesses must find the proper roadmap to re-open their restaurants in a way that makes customers and employees feel safe.

While takeout and delivery are still popular options, restrictions are starting to lift on dining, and many people are ready to revisit restaurants in person. This is a pivotal moment for every restaurant because they must have a plan for how they are going to keep their restaurant safe and clean while staying true to their brand values.

Customers want to see cleanliness and sanitation procedures implemented so they can feel safe at their favorite restaurants. Plus, when restaurants show that they care about their customers through policies and safety measures, they can build brand trust and loyalty with customers. Here are some of the new expectations that customers will have moving forward.

Have a Cleaning Schedule

Part of the trust-building process includes following proper sanitation processes and keeping everything visibly clean. By creating a cleaning schedule, restaurants can ensure that they’re maintaining the standards they set for their brand.

While it should be common to clean a table after every customer, these schedules can also include hourly wipe-downs of shared areas. In the kitchen, it’s essential to ensure every food surface is cleaned after four hours or every time it’s used and before moving on to a new food product. Keeping a cleaning schedule helps everyone stay sanitary and safe in a restaurant environment.

Keep Cleaning Supplies in Sight

Besides cleaning each table and labeling them as clean, providing guests with various sanitary supplies is a great way to show that a restaurant cares. This could include anything from hand sanitizer and masks to gloves and disposable napkins. By providing this to each guest, it’s allowing customers to choose their level of comfort and sanitize to meet their needs.

Keep Dinnerware Sparkling Clean

One tremendous concern that frequently stops customers from eating out is considering how clean the cutlery, plates, and cups are in the restaurant they choose. While you can choose to invest in single-use silverware and dishes, it can have some significant downsides. It might not fit your brand if you’re a higher-end restaurant, it’s expensive to have to order supplies consistently, and it’s not very eco-friendly.

Instead, you need to invest in a way to keep your dishes sparkling clean and free of any type of bacteria by using the Tiger Carbon Remover Powder. The FOG tank will altogether remove any carbon, grease, oils, or fats from the kitchenware, delivering a clean shine every time.

Create Clear Signs

People want visible proof that cleanliness is enforced in your establishment. This could include adding a “masks required” sign to the front of your door, COVID safety guidelines on the tables, Floor markings for social distancing, or any other procedures you have in place to keep your business clean.

For example, suppose you’re using the FOG Tank. In that case, you can print out an information sheet to post on your business’s window that includes the logo, temperature information that states 185 degrees is used to disinfect and make each dish bacteria-free, and how there is 100% sanitation after taking items out of the tank. Plus, its constructed from 304-grade stainless steel and is fully insulated. 

Additionally, the FOG Tank is UL Listed can improve food safety by ensuring that all wares are sanitized. There is no reliance on the operator, and it is in compliance with NSF and FDA Food Code Standards. Customers want to know what you’re doing to protect yourself and your community before choosing to spend money at your business, and posting signage is the perfect way to do it.

Provide Open Spaces

The new trend in dining is to space it out and keep it clean. Instead of focusing solely on indoor dining, there is a rise in the popularity of outdoor dining. This is especially helpful for restaurants that do not have much indoor room to begin with, especially when local restrictions have put capacities in place for indoor spaces. 

It’s essential to create a comfortable environment where customers feel safe enough to take off their masks, and by providing outdoor space, you’re doing just that. Make sure to keep your outdoor space clean, especially in environments that are make-shift outdoor dining, like parking lots or sidewalks.

Technology Increase

The increased use of technology can be a crucial component of visible evidence of your cleanliness procedures. For example, instead of printing out disposable menus, or handing over re-usable menus to your customers, offer a QR code so everyone can view the menu without having to touch something shared with others.

You can go a step further by allowing payment across various applications like Cashapp or Venmo. You can offer to send digital receipts versus physical receipts or clean credit cards between use. However you decide to use technology, it’s important to use systems that help your customers stay safe by limiting touch in your business.

Use Cleaning Supplies Properly

Just because you have the cleaning supplies doesn’t mean that you’re using them correctly. It’s essential to create the right concentration of sanitizer and water to keep your space clean. Use a test kit to ensure the concentration is correct and a thermometer to ensure the solution is warm enough to kill germs. Ensure that any object you choose to sanitize sits between 5-30 seconds, depending on the sanitizer and the object’s size. Change the solution as you notice it becomes dirty and ensure as a restaurant that you commit to staying clean instead of letting it fall to the wayside when you’re busy.

As the restaurant industry works to bounce back and people start to show up to your business, it’s essential to already have a plan formulated to keep your business, employees, and customers safe. Deliver confidence through your service, cleanliness, and signage. It’s your duty to protect those who work for or choose to support your business. Addressing these needs and adapting will help your business thrive as the economy continues to re-open.

 

With curfews, lockdowns, and an ever-present public health crisis, those in the food industry face a tricky business landscape. Finding a balance between keeping customers feeling safe, making a profit, and following local guidelines can be challenging and even detrimental to many businesses.

However, exciting discovery in the Pandemic era is the popularity and profit made in the food truck business. In fact, some food trucks are doing even better than they were pre-pandemic. As food trucks already offer outdoor dining and encourage social distancing, it’s easy to see why customers continue to choose this food option. Here are a few ways that food trucks are staying ahead during COVID-19.

Outdoor Dining is a Hot Trend

The premise behind food trucks is that there is no physical indoor seating location to visit. Instead, you need to approach a window to order and will be served the food from the same window once it’s ready, really limiting the amount of interaction. Most food trucks only offer a few tables or benches that are naturally spaced apart because most people order food and leave once they receive it instead of sticking around.

As regulations become trickier to manage with capacity limits, food trucks don’t necessarily need to worry or change their process significantly. It’s easier for food trucks to stay open and follow proper sanitation procedures. This allows the business to run as usual and gain even more business from surrounding restaurants that cannot accommodate their typical capacity of visitors.

Smaller Appliances = Less Expensive

Compared to the costs of opening a regular restaurant, a food truck has a lot less overhead. Since there is less space, there is no need for oversized equipment. In fact, most restaurants use smaller, most efficient appliances, such as the FOG Tank, which is designed to clean your dishes in a space as small as 28 inches wide by 33 inches tall and can be customized to fit your specific food truck layout. Additionally, the FOG Tank is UL Listed can improve food safety by ensuring that all wares are sanitized. There is no reliance on the operator, and it is in compliance with NSF and FDA Food Code Standards.

Along with smaller and more efficient appliances, food trucks do not need to pay for staff, indoor seating, or decorations. Plus, fixed costs like rent, electricity, and water are a lot lower for a mobile food truck. While it doesn’t mean the food truck business is easier, it does make it simpler to adapt to the ever-changing industry.

Catering Gigs

Even though the pandemic is not over, events, business meetings, birthdays, and office parties are still happening, and they need food. One of the cleanest and safest ways to offer catering is through a food truck. It’s easy to transport food in a safe and clean environment to the destination that the catering will happen, which means fewer hands and settings interacting with the food.

Plus, unlike restaurants that usually require kitchen space to heat up or set-up their food, you’ll be able to keep it all in one place. This reduces the possibility of cross-contamination or having to enter an unsanitary environment to cook food. It protects both customers and employees from getting sick while still making a profit and providing stellar service.

Online Ordering

An advantage of food trucks is the ability to process a large number of online orders. In restaurants, it can be hard to keep up with to-go orders or eliminate them completely, depending on how busy your restaurant becomes. In the pandemic, customers feel safer ordering take out and eating in an environment that feels clean to them.

Food trucks are the perfect set-up for take-out because they already do it on a daily basis. Food trucks allow ordering through the front window, phone call, or through an online website, streamlining the ordering and payment methods to have less physical interaction.

Easy to Change Menu

When restaurants create a menu, customers expect that the same items will be consistently offered. However, with a food truck, menus can be a little more flexible, allowing owners to change and experiment with new food options. Food truck owners can offer specials to see if a new dish works and gain customer feedback before allowing it to become a permanent menu item. Food trucks can even adjust their menu seasonally to keep up with produce or food products offered in bulk. By purchasing seasonally, it helps keep food costs to a minimum.

Free Advertising

Most restaurants have to spend a fortune creating advertising and brand awareness, especially when many people are not eating out. However, since food trucks can move locations, they’re essentially acting as a billboard to attract business. As a food truck moves around town, it allows customers to learn about the business. Usually, food trucks contain their menu and social media links right on the side of the vehicle so anyone who passes by can open it up on their mobile device. Plus, it helps to build brand recognition and familiarity the more that customers see the name as they’re driving around town.

Perfect Location

Some areas have different or more strict restrictions than others. Guidelines can be set by the state, city, or even county restrictions. It can impact the time businesses are allowed to open and close, along with capacity limits. If, for some reason, one location doesn’t work due to restrictions or popularity, it’s easy for a food truck to move to a new place to find new customers. This allows food truck owners to test out multiple locations at different times of the day to see where they get the most business and what local laws work the best for them. Some food trucks even change location mid-day, using one for the lunch rush and one for dinner.

Easy to Follow Sanitation Guidelines

The biggest concern during coronavirus is how to keep restaurants clean according to city guidelines and customers’ preferences. With such a small space available inside a food truck, it’s easy for owners to sanitize between customers by wiping down all surfaces and providing almost entirely contact-free orders.

 

Fifty-two percent of adults claim that ordering takeout or delivery is an essential part of their lifestyle. The response by many restaurants to this dramatic shift is to create ghost kitchens. Ordering from ghost kitchens has increased as the pandemic eliminated regular dining options, and people feel safer eating at home or in a public location.

What are Ghost Kitchens?

Essentially ghost kitchens are restaurants that don’t have any dining space, only a kitchen. The idea is to create food that can fulfill orders through your own delivery services or apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats. Most places will either use their own restaurant kitchen or rent a kitchen at a commercially licensed facility. Once a kitchen has been contracted, restaurants will create a name for themselves, advertise their menu, and take customer orders.

There are no interactions with the customers and the kitchen because the order will always be picked up by a delivery driver, eliminating a significant customer service role restaurants provide. Location doesn’t matter if you can still deliver to popular areas. Even better, you won’t need to spend any money on furniture, wait staff, decorations or menus.

How to Find Efficiency with A Ghost Kitchen

Creating a ghost kitchen is a great way to save money and create a product that customers want. However, to see the success of your ghost kitchen, you’ll need to be able to keep up with delivery demands, especially during busy dining hours. This means you must have back-of-the-house efficiency if you want to stay in business. Here are a few ways you can ensure your back kitchen is as efficient as possible.

Save Money on Labor

One of the most expensive costs you’ll incur is your labor costs. While you’ll need staff to help in the kitchen to cook and prep food, an unnecessary expense you will incur is paying an employee to clean dishes by hand. This can be a long and tedious process that can be detrimental during busy delivery times.

The last thing you want to worry about when you have 20 orders is if your dishes are cleaned properly. A business needs to invest in a solution that saves labor cost, eliminates up to 3 hours or more per day spent scrubbing, and increases the overall kitchen’s cleanliness. A FOG Tank not only solves these issues but is timely, efficient, and delivers the cleaning results you need.

Manage Orders from One Location

Technology plays a vital role in guaranteeing you can deliver your orders correctly and quickly to your customers. You need to ensure you can take all orders from call centers, third-party delivery services, social media, mobile apps, and websites. Investing in a centralized POS system so that all orders can be connected into one system will help to prepare food faster, ensure accuracy and minimize the risk of miscommunication. Plus, all your data will be in one place, so tracking your profits and costs of goods is easier than ever.

High-Quality Packaging and Service

With a ghost kitchen, you won’t have any interaction with customers, but you still need to ensure they have a good experience so they’ll choose to order from you again. First, it’s essential that the food created can withstand long travel times. Unlike at a restaurant where food is served as soon as it’s finished, ghost kitchens will need to account for distance. Consider how long it takes from the moment you complete order to when a customer will consume it.

Choose packaging and containers that help to keep the temperature of your food consistent. If you have your own delivery drivers, ensure that insulated food bags are continually being used as an extra measure to keep food warm. 

When you receive a customer request, try to follow through as much as you can. To ensure customers are satisfied with your service and food, most businesses will include a business card or a QR code for customers to review or post about their order.

Create Operating Procedures

There need to be clear-cut procedures to create a fast turnaround time from the moment a customer orders to when it gets to their hands. Some factors can’t be controlled, such as traffic or the distance to your customer’s address. The things that can be controlled, like food prep time, availability of drivers, and accuracy in your orders, should be done as efficiently as possible. Make sure you know how long your processes should take and streamline anything you don’t need to do by hand, like choosing to use the FOG Tank instead of washing dishes by hand. Additionally, the FOG Tank is UL Listed can improve food safety by ensuring that all wares are sanitized. There is no reliance on the operator, and it is in compliance with NSF and FDA Food Code Standards.

If you don’t handle your own delivery services, make sure the online platforms that manage it have accurate menus and pricing and ensure delivery drivers know how to get to your kitchen to grab the deliveries. The more backend work you do beforehand, the faster your operations will run.

Use Social Media 

Social media is an easy way to get your kitchen noticed. Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok to spread the word, engage with customers and promote your brand. An easy way to get involved is to post photos of your dishes or videos documenting the creation process to entice customers to try out your food and increase interaction. Some simple social media tactics you can use are offering giveaways, advertising promotions, and directly linking a way to order in your social media bio. Make sure to follow locals in your area to gain awareness and brand recognition.

Respond to Reviews

Reviews are a critical part of any business. They can either convince others to try out your brand or discourage them from ever ordering. Both good and bad reviews need to be taken seriously by your team and answered appropriately. If someone had a bad experience, it’s essential to take the time to contact that customer and publicly post a response. This will help the upset customer find a solution to their issue and let others who read the review understand the situation.

New Website and FOG Tank at the National Restaurant Association Show 

We are excited to introduce our brand new website, which features new videos, before and after photos, and product details that will help you learn more about the FOG Tank. The FOG Tank is a fully insulated and thermostatically controlled stainless steel soak tank that safely and easily removes fat, oil, grease, and carbon build-up from your metal cookware and kitchen equipment. We invite you to visit our site and learn more about how the FOG Tank could help you save money, increase staff productivity, and reduce your carbon footprint.

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If you’d rather learn more about the FOG Tank in person, we urge you to attend the National Restaurant Association’s NRA Show 2014 from May 17-20 at McCormick Place in Chicago. The NRA show is a chance for restaurant owners, kitchen managers, and other food service industry professionals to meet with the biggest restaurant suppliers. FOG Tank will have a booth at the show, and we will have knowledgeable staff members standing by to teach you more about how the FOG Tank can help make your business more efficient and profitable. They can also teach you more about our 1 Week Risk Free Trial, or help you choose whether a renting plan or outright purchase makes more sense for your company. 

We hope you enjoy our new site. Stay tuned for more events and updates from FOG Tank, and if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us by filling out the form on our Contact Us page.