New research has revealed that 38% of hospitality professionals spend three-five hours dealing with equipment issues on a monthly basis – the equivalent of 60 hours every year. The figures, which are included in a new report from BRITA Professional, highlight staff shortages and unreliable equipment as the biggest factors which impact hospitality professional’s workloads and contribute to a pressured working environment. So much so that 70% of hospitality workers feel stressed in the kitchen and for 41%, this is a daily occurrence.
The survey also uncovered that 61% of hospitality professionals believe reliable equipment would make their kitchen more efficient. Equipment breakdowns don’t just cause time pressures in kitchens, for a quarter of businesses, downtime on equipment costs up to a 10% loss of sales monthly. When you consider this – it’s clear to see how unreliable equipment can cause unnecessary stress in the kitchen.
The report, Life is Better Filtered: The Collaborative Kitchen, demonstrates the impact kitchen inefficiencies can have on staff satisfaction, productivity and the consistency of food, as well as an immediate tangible loss of earnings, and provides practical steps on how to address these challenges.
Key findings also include:
- Half of hospitality professionals consider themselves to be time poor when completing everyday tasks in the kitchen
- 68% of hospitality professionals worry about the consistency of their food offering
- 82% of hospitality professionals feel they’ve had to spend additional costs on unexpected equipment repairs
Speaking about the launch of the Life is Better Filtered: The Collaborative Kitchen report, Sarah Taylor, Managing Director of BRITA UK, said: “While the hospitality sector is booming, it’s still one of the most challenging times for businesses, with an ongoing skills shortage – anticipated to heighten due to Brexit – a turbulent economic and environmental climate, and growing pressure from discerning consumers. The kitchen is the backbone of any hospitality establishment and for a business to succeed, it needs to be operating as efficiently as possible.
“At BRITA Professional, our aim is to support businesses in their pursuit of optimum kitchen efficiency. Whether that’s through providing preventative maintenance advice and technology – in the form of our market-leading water filters – offering the tools to provide a consistent food offer through the use of filtered water in cooking, or providing insights into best practice and industry concerns via reports. While it’s a challenging time in the sector, it’s also an exciting one and we can’t wait to see what innovations hospitality businesses continue to implement to create the ultimate collaborative kitchen.”
Life is Better Filtered: The Collaborative Kitchen offers an in-depth look at the main productivity challenges and barriers in professional kitchens and provides advice for businesses that are striving to ‘filter out’ inefficient practices.
To download a copy of the Life is Better Filtered: The Collaborative Kitchen report, go to: https://bit.ly/2zAqktL
