Red Fish Grill improves kitchen staff satisfaction with automation and data

Chefs at an award-winning French Quarter restaurant are now working in a safer, cleaner and more efficient kitchen.

That’s because Haley Bittermann, corporate executive chef for Ralph Brennan’s Red Fish Grill, found a more sustainable and efficient way to manage its cooking oil. Bittermann installed an automated oil management system from Restaurant Technologies, Inc. (RTI) in the restaurant, which is known for its seafood specialties. Just 60 days after implementing the RTI system, oil usage at Red Fish Grill decreased 48 percent.

“The results we have seen are tremendous,” said Bittermann, “and now the entirety of managing frying oil – from buying and storing, to filtering and cleaning – is very easy to manage.”

Before installing the automated system, Red Fish Grill was using an outdated, manual process to handle its cooking oil. Restaurant protocol required staff to filter oil twice a day, which required kitchen staff to shut down the fryers. Because busy chefs couldn’t afford the downtime needed, the staff threw out unfiltered oil to safeguard food quality – while unintentionally throwing out “money” by tossing the oil instead of filtering it.

                   
Bittermann noted, “Minimizing the space required for oil storage and reducing the amount of time spent manually filling, filtering and disposing of frying oil helps us be so much more efficient.”

Employees now filter oil according to the restaurant’s filtration protocols, and the general manager and chef are sent alerts in real-time when employees do not meet filtration standard operating practices. The general manager remotely monitors employee compliance though an online portal, which gives managers an easy-to-use dashboard for visibility into the restaurant’s oil performance and filtration trends, as well as delivery and disposal history and compliance to SOPs. This helps them improve training, correct employee behavior and identify areas to improve efficiencies.

On top of oil use and cost savings, employee safety and satisfaction has improved. Bittermann credits the system with a reduction in workers’ compensation claims, and providing peace of mind by not having to worry about employees slipping, falling or burning themselves while handling hot oil. Employees are happy because they don’t have to haul grease anymore.

“The cooks would kill me if I took RTI out at this point,” said Bittermann. "In fact, the automated oil management has been so successful at Red Fish Grill that we are installing it in a California restaurant."

Sharing a sustainable Gulf focus of emerging coalition

Gulf residents haven’t forgotten when many of their favorite fish were in short supply and even unavailable during parts of the year. Today red snapper, a wide variety of groupers and other “reef fish” are more readily available, caught by a well-managed and increasingly sustainable commercial fishery in the Gulf of Mexico. The consumers who want to enjoy these indigenous fish species are served by the commercial fishing community.

These same fish are shared with recreational fishermen and charter fishing boats. In the Gulf of Mexico the red snapper allocation between commercial and recreational fishing is just about even (51% commercial and 49% recreational). The recreational interests have sought as the total catch increases to allocate more of it for recreational fishing. The Louisiana Restaurant Association supports today’s allocation percentages whether based on the current allowable catch or any future allocation increase.

At the Gulf Fishery Management Council meeting in June in Pensacola Chefs Haley Bittermann and Brian Landry received applause from the gathered commercial fisherman following their testimony. They both spoke in support of maintaining the equitable allocation of red snapper as it currently exists. The Council also was considering additional quota to this year’s red snapper allocation.

Gulf Fisheries Management Council member Harlon Pearce
with Chef Haley Bittermann at the June 20 Red Snapper
emergency hearing in Pensacola, FL.

“The fish in the Gulf of Mexico belongs to all of us, every person in the United States,” said Bittermann, executive chef of Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group. “Reasonable people should be able to have an engaged dialogue that can satisfactorily address the ideas of the restaurant and hospitality industries, the recreational and charter fishing industries and the commercial fishing industry.”

Bittermann believes, as does the LRA, that Gulf seafood is integral to Louisiana’s heritage and culture, and that the accessibility of these indigenous fish species provides the state’s restaurants with the opportunity to differentiate its cuisine and menu items. 

Chef Brian Landry fishes with his son, the same way he did
with is father as a child. Landry believes equitability 
between the commercial and recreational interests is of
the utmost importance to his restaurant Borgne, named
for the Louisiana lake he grew up fishing in.

“At Borgne Restaurant, we get our vegetables from Covey Rise Farms, rabbits from Arkansas and Mississippi and our fish from the Gulf of Mexico,” Landry said. “As certain fish have become less available or not available at all, like speckled trout and red fish, and if fish like snapper and grouper go, we just become any town USA. We’ll be blackening tilapia and serving fish that has nothing to do with our heritage and culture and why many people come to Louisiana.”

In July, Chefs Frank Brigtsen, Bradley McGhee, Tenney Flynn and Greg Sonnier testified in the second emergency meeting of the Council regarding red snapper allocations held in New Orleans. LRA President/CEO Stan Harris also spoke on behalf of the industry at both meetings and has been an advocate for the commercial fishing and the hospitality industry’s alliances as the needs of the consumer are met through commercial harvest.

Share the Gulf Coalition has grown from the effort of the restaurant industry to support the commercial fishing industry which supplies establishments with consumer-demanded fish species. The LRA believes by sharing this resource responsibly, the desires of all the interested parties can be met.

Currently there are some interests working to tilt the allocation of the red snapper fishery more to the recreational fishermen. As an industry, we cannot support this modification. These changes if approved would hurt these family-owned small commercial fishing businesses across the Gulf who rely on access to the fishery to earn their living. In turn the impact of any allocation restructuring would be felt on the tables of our restaurants resulting in some items disappearing from menus and dinner tables across the country.

It’s happened before as Landry mentioned. In the 1980s commercial fishermen were cut out of the Gulf red drum and speckled trout fisheries. The issue surrounding who can catch how much snapper is fundamentally one of fairness. The Gulf’s recreational fishermen catch eighty percent of the most popular fish in the Gulf, including overwhelming majorities of amberjack, red drum, speckled trout, king mackerel and triggerfish.

What can you do? The Share the Gulf Coalition includes chefs, restaurateurs, restaurant associations, seafood businesses, supermarkets, fishermen and local food advocates engaged in a public campaign to draw attention to the movement to reserve Gulf of Mexico red snapper and other reef fish for recreational anglers at the expense of American seafood businesses and consumers.

“Members of Congress, our Gulf state governors, the Gulf Council and the federal and state fishery agencies must hear from the chefs and restaurateurs about the need for fair allocations on behalf of the American consumer and the businesses our industry partners with for supply.” said Harris. “The coalition will press decision-makers to keep sustainably caught Gulf seafood on the table for the millions of Americans who don’t fish or own their own boat. "

Join the coalition here.

Louisiana Seafood center plate at the 12th Annual ProStart Competition

Nearly 20 ProStart teams from across Louisiana demonstrated their culinary prowess during yesterday’s competition held at the Pontchratrain Center in Kenner. This year, the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board was the title sponsor and teams used delicious Louisiana seafood in either their appetizer or entrees, and some teams opted for both.

"People visit Louisiana to enjoy our delicious cuisine and our seafood," said Stan Harris, President/CEO, LRA. "Having Louisiana Seafood as the title sponsor re-enforces its important culinary role to a captive audience --the future chefs and restaurateurs in our industry."

Students exhibited their impressive preparation skills with shrimp, crab, crawfish and finfish from our bounty rich waters before fellow teams, family members and members of the LRA Board of Directors.

"These students work so hard on their three-courses in hopes of wowing the chef judges like Chris Lusk, Haley Bitterman, Tariq Hannah and others," Harris added.

Each member of the top three teams in the Culinary Competition and the Management Competition will receive $870,000 in scholarships to notable schools in Louisiana and nationwide. The winning team of each competition will represent Louisiana at the National ProStart Invitational in Baltimore in late April.

Winners will be announced later today at the Closing Ceremony.

ProStart is a two year culinary arts and restaurant management curriculum offered in 45 high schools across Louisiana. The program is designed to attract students to meaningful and rewarding careers in our world renowned culinary and hospitality industries.

LRA Sponsors Conference Focused on Food, Packaging Waste

Consider how much packaging and food waste is generated each day in your restaurant? Between the prep waste, uneaten meals, glass bottles and used grease, a restaurant generates a huge amount of waste. And the kicker? We have to pay a hefty price to have it hauled off.

“It has always amazed me how costly the waste removal business is,” said Stan Harris, Louisiana Restaurant Association (LRA) president & CEO. “The restaurant pays to have their grease hauled off, which is then recycled into animal feed or converted to bio-diesel.”

In addition to those costs, Harris added that a restaurant also pays to have their bulk waste and recycled corrugated packaging disposed of or reprocessed. As a former restaurateur and consultant, he knows all to well that there are very few restaurants that effectively estimate the cost of total waste removal when they are constructing menus and the amount of waste created.

“We have to become more open to receiving product in reusable containers that can be sanitized,” Harris said. “We have to consider efficient methods for dealing with food waste and accept the fact that it might be time to consider upgrading existing lighting and air conditioning/heating systems to those that use less energy, require less maintenance and provide the same comfort levels at a lower cost.”