4 Ways Henny Penny Can Free Up Your Team

03/06/2024

Every foodservice operation is trying to be profitable, but costs add up quickly. And what’s typically the largest portion of those costs? Labor. 

To succeed in the foodservice industry, efficient operations are incredibly important, particularly considering the challenge of turnover and staffing. Whether you’re managing an established team or assembling a new one, minimizing time spent on manual processes is crucial. 

At Henny Penny, we take pride in improving the efficiency of the foodservice operations we partner with, and our products are designed with your team in mind. 

Here are just a few of the ways Henny Penny equipment can free up hands, helping your team work effectively and putting your labor budget to better use: 

Get ahead of the rush 

Some items simply must be cooked to order. But chances are, your entire menu doesn’t need to be. 

For some, there’s an enduring misconception that food prepared ahead of time won’t have the same quality as freshly prepared dishes. At Henny Penny, we’re creating products that prove that wrong. 

Cooking to hold, often referred to as batch cooking, is a technique where food is prepared in large quantities and then placed in a holding cabinet to keep it at an optimal temperature until serving. 

Commercial kitchen equipment like the Henny Penny SmartHold cabinet creates the perfect conditions for holding almost any food, and can remain that way for up to 200% longer than most holding cabinets. A patented, automatic humidity control system links water pan heat, fans and ventilation to automatically measure and maintain humidity levels in one-percent increments from 10% to 90% relative humidity, to perfectly hold any type of food without sacrificing freshness or presentation. 

This means that instead of waiting for the dinner rush to start before you prepare your items, your team can work ahead, streamlining your service and maintaining high quality food. 

Just ask Zak Omar, owner of Atomic Wings, who implemented SmartHold cabinets to avoid being overwhelmed during service. 

“If I get a hundred customers for lunch hour, that’s a thousand wings in an hour. You can’t do that without precooking,” he said. “The way most places double fry them, they leave them in the basket hanging over the hot vat to finish when an order comes in. But the wings are actually still cooking the whole time. It dries them out and shrinks the product. We had to find another way. … When the orders start coming in, all we do is sauce them up and finish them in the combi. And that’s how you do a thousand wings in an hour!” 

 

Let us do the cleaning 

Keeping a commercial kitchen clean is a critical element of any foodservice operation. It’s not just necessary for health codes and general cleanliness, it can keep your equipment operating efficiently, extend equipment life and use oil more efficiently. 

But, of course, no one likes cleaning. 

That’s why many Henny Penny products either make cleaning easier or simply do it for you! 

For example, our FlexFusion Combi Ovens use an automated cleaning function called WaveClean, which not only takes the work away from your team, but prevents them from working with harsh chemicals and PPE equipment. The F5 Fryer cleans and maintains its own oil, washing away debris and dictating how quickly oil is pumped back into the vat, removing crumbs from the pot that most traditional fryers struggle to clean. 

And to help either manual or automatic cleaning, we also developed Henny Penny Prime Cleaner, a non-caustic degreaser specifically formulated for removing tough oils, grease and carbon scorching without harsh chemicals or asking your employees to spend hours scrubbing. 

 

We’ll make it easy 

Too often, state-of-the-art commercial kitchen equipment is created with performance and cost in mind, but not the end user. That can lead to improper operation from your team that can lead to decreases in food quality, increases your number of defeated employees, and ensures you won’t rely on that equipment again. And if your team is standing around trying to figure it out, that’s costing you money. 

That’s why we prioritize making great equipment that’s simple to use and learn, borrowing inspiration from things your team already knows. 

Take the F5 Fryer, for example. We knew it was crucial for a fast-paced kitchen to seamlessly integrate a new fryer, so we designed it to mirror things they already use. Its touchscreen design makes it so that anyone who has experience with a smartphone can jump in and learn how it works with ease. We often find that people don’t need much training to begin learning how to operate it — if they know how to use a touchscreen, they know how to start. 

“It’s the easiest equipment to use that we have in the kitchen. It’s seamless, like an iPhone,” we heard from one manager. “My crew are all young people, and they love it because everything is so self-explanatory.” 

Similarly, our pressure fryers, including the PFE500 and PFG600 4-head standard pressure fryers and the Velocity Series 8-head fryers, filter automatically after every cook cycle so that you don’t have to teach team members how to do it, and some fryers offer a feature that automatically lifts baskets in and out of the oil. 

 

Superior training every time 

It’s great to get new equipment, but getting your staff up to speed on something foreign to them can be challenging, frustrating and expensive when you start adding up the labor hours required to teach them. 

That’s why Henny Penny — with the help of our network of nearly 100 authorized distributors around the world — ensures that we help you and your team understand your new equipment from day one. 

“From a training perspective, whether I’m a franchisee, general manager or store manager, I need to be focused on doing what I can to simplify my employees’ on-the-job experience,” said Pete Krause, Director of Training and Digital Assets, Henny Penny. “We don’t want to frustrate or make life any more complicated for employees than it needs to be, and with many pieces of our equipment, when you make a purchase, we provide startup training on site. So, we’re right there with you and your employees to make sure they understand how to use the equipment.” 

Our multi-tiered training approach helps you throughout the process of adapting to new equipment. It starts with on-site startup training and fool-proof prompts built into the controls, and continues with wall chart instructions and video tutorials. With all that support, you can be sure that your team will know what they’re doing quickly and efficiently when they start using Henny Penny products. 

Are you ready to explore if Henny Penny equipment is right for your commercial kitchen? Click here to schedule a demo with your local Henny Penny distributor.