The U.K’s largest operator of hotels and restaurants future-proofs its brand with ConnectSmart® Kitchen technology.

(London and Dunstable, England, UK),  19 November 2019, QSR Automations, the UK’s leading supplier of technology across front- and back-of house for the hospitality industry, and Whitbread Plc, an operator of some of the UK’s most successful hospitality brands, today announced that Whitbread has expanded ConnectSmart Kitchen to 200 of its restaurants across three restaurant brands.

Whitbread’s brief to QSR’s technology was simple, to improve the customer experience, whilst retaining the same levels of brand standards across the estate. Needs were two-fold: increased speed of service and table turns; decreased food wastage.

Three Whitbread concepts — Beefeater, Bar + Block, and Cookhouse & Pub — will reap the benefits of ConnectSmart Kitchen (CSK) technology, which has the intelligence to work hand-in-hand with restaurant kitchen teams to reduce order wait time and improve food quality, by displaying orders and automatically allocating each section of an order to the correct chef. This confirms each meal is hot, freshly prepared and completed at the same. The technology ensures orders leave the kitchen quicker, decreasing the customer’s total meal time whilst increasing table turns.

CSK has also provided Whitbread with the following benefits:

• Aided kitchen efficiency and productivity through the systems’ ability to adapt/support different labour levels and trading periods
• Allowed full integration with Whitbread’s Business Intelligence platforms — CSK data provides detailed kitchen operational insights to the Whitbread Operations team
• Future-proofed Whitbread by becoming an integral part of Whitbread’s unfolding restaurant development

The system eradicates any confusion between kitchen stations, with specification cards and images of restaurant dishes uploaded into the CSK system, with further instructions on how dishes should be prepared and presented. Greater control is also given to the kitchen manager, who can instantly see if stations are under pressure, eradicating any problems before a potential issue.

QSR Automations’ VP of Sales, Ashley Sheppard commented: “Whitbread has such iconic brands within hospitality; and we are delighted to work with them to drive consistency and brand standards across all food offerings, whilst at the same time improving the experience for customers, with increased speed of service and reduced waste.”

Karen Higgins, head of hotels and food & beverage IT solutions for Whitbread commented: “We are committed to developing our food offerings throughout the estate to safeguard and ensure memorable dining experiences for our customers. ConnectSmart kitchen is an integral and intelligent part of our strategy, which will enable us to deliver dishes to a consistently high standard, whilst also having the means to expand future menus.”

Whitbread Plc is the owner of the UK’s favourite hotel chain, Premier Inn, as well as restaurant brands, Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Bar + Block. Employing over 35,000 people in over 1,200 Premier Inn hotels and restaurants across the UK, Whitbread serves over five million customers every month. Premier Inn currently operates three hotels in Germany with plans to grow the brand to over 30 hotels in Germany by 2020/21. Whitbread is committed to being a force for good in the communities in which it operates.