Quality is written large at NINKASI. The restaurant chain offers its customers not only freshly prepared, delicious dishes, but also the certainty that all foods used are of high quality and in immaculate condition.
In order to ensure the high quality requirements, NINKASI has decided on the digital quality management solution testo Saveris Restaurant and has established it in all operation sites.
NINKASI is a successful and popular gastronomic chain with event factor. The idea is based on the American concept of microbreweries. The first NINKASI event venue was opened in 1997 in a converted former transport company at Gerland by Lyon, with a restaurant, brewery and concert hall. Today, NINKASI operates 18 event venues in the Rhône-Alpes region, and stands for a perfect combination of the finest craft beer, a first-class range of food, and concert events.
Quality and freshness are deeply rooted in the NINKASI founder’s company philosophy. The strict HACCP regulations for guaranteeing food safety, for example, are viewed as a challenging support in quality assurance, and not as a bothersome end in itself. However, for NINKASI too, strict adherence to the quality processes in paper-based form proves to be a great challenge in daily work. In particular because in the fast-growing company, reductions in quality cannot be accepted. Nicolas Cressens, Technical Director at NINKASI, becomes convinced that only a fully digitalized solution can meet the demand for consistent, transparent quality processes, uniform over all 18 gastromonic operations.
In order to simplify the HACCP quality process in day-to-day work, to work together across teams and to create and visualize the test reports of the health control plan for each individual restaurant operation, the decision is made to replace the paper-based processes with testo Saveris Restaurant. The automated, digital quality management solution with its perfectly coordinated, reliable tools is able to persuade the company all round.
Every NINKASI restaurant now uses the flexibly configurable, rugged and synchronized measuring instruments from Testo to seamlessly guarantee the following quality-relevant checks:
Cooking oil quality
The quality assurance of the foods is not just about the precise recording of temperatures and cooking oil quality – the application must be quick, easy and practicable, even at peak times. For this reason, the restaurant kitchens are equipped with the multi-functional handle with cooking oil tester, in order to optimize the quality testing of the cooking oil.
Food temperature
Using the combined infrared and penetration thermometer testo 104-IR BT, the surface and core temperatures of foods are recorded and transferred by Bluetooth.
Food storage
In the storage of food in refrigerated areas, the regulation prescribing that set temperature ranges must be guaranteed is particularly challenging, as the door to the refrigerated room is often opened or even left standing open. For this reason, a data logger is installed on the door of the refrigerated room, which measures, documents and evaluates the opening of the door in addition to the temperature. In the case of a violation of the temperature limit values, for example if the door has been left open too long, an automatic alarm is triggered via tablet or smartphone. The temperature fluctuation can thus be immediately corrected.
“Kitchen appliances have to withstand a lot, but the measuring instruments from Testo are suited to the extreme ambient conditions in a restaurant kitchen.”
Nicolas Cressens
·Technical Director at NINKASI
Digital implementation of quality processes
The networked measuring instruments transfer the measurement results automatically to the testo Saveris Control Unit. The tablet serves as a control unit with an installed software, with which the intuitive, personalized quality checks are carried out digitally.
Transparency and analysis of the quality data
The testo Saveris Control Unit allows the digital implementation, documentation and validation of the quality checks, supported by digital checklists. An overview shows you at all times which quality checks have already been conducted and which are still pending. For the purposes of marking the sell-by date of foods, the corresponding data can be transmitted to a label printer. The data are stored in the testo Saveris Control Unit and additionally in the Cloud. This means that control processes and all quality-relevant data, consolidated over all 18 restaurants, can also be viewed and analyzed remotely in the software.
“The testo Saveris Control Unit guides the staff intuitively and in a user-friendly way through all required checks and corrective measures. The recording and documentation of the collected data is tamper-proof.
Nicolas Cressens
·Technical Director at NINKASI
Dispensing with a paper-based HACCP implementation in favour of a digital quality management system with testo Saveris Restaurant, considerably simplifies not only the adherence to the processes and checks required in the context of the HACCP guidelines. Apart from that, the management can now view the data recorded by the team at all times, gaining an insight into the restaurant’s performance, and deriving improvement potential from this.
With the digital quality management system testo Saveris Restaurant, NINKASI has pulled off the trick of ensuring the quality and freshness of the entire food range, while simultaneously considerably simplifying the employees’ work and making it less time-consuming.