Less food waste in the Municipality of Rebild
The recipe for reducing food waste is primarily better data management, according to the Municipality of Rebild’s production kitchen, which prepares food for the municipality’s elderly citizens as well as those suffering from dementia and sclerosis. Kraftvaerk has developed the food system Dankost Pro for managing and handling food products.
12 % savings
After implementing Dankost Pro, the food budget has been reduced by 12%, or approx. DKK 13,000 per month, which the kitchen can instead spend on creating tastier meals.
20 % more time
Now that everything has been systematised, the kitchen manager spends one day a week less dealing with recipes. In other words, the manager now has 20% more time at his disposal to innovate and develop new recipes.
Less food waste
What is prepared in the kitchen is also served. A much larger proportion of the food which is served is now being eaten, because it is being ordered according to individual needs. All in all, food waste has been reduced to a minimum.
If we’re going to need 300 litres of sauce, that’s what we make. No more, no less. If you make too much, you freeze the surplus, which requires packaging, space, time and energy. If you make too little, then you spend the day and precious resources on making the same dish twice. If you prepare the exact amount of food, as we do now, then the working hours in the kitchen are organised optimally. The secret is that the system converts recipes into litres rather than servings. When the food quantities are correct, as they are now, it’s so much smarter.
From handwritten notes and phone calls to a single system
Handling recipes and the number of servings was previously done via manual processes, phone calls and handwritten notes in Mayland calendars, but everything is now 100% digital. Following digitalisation, the kitchen has become streamlined to such a degree that there is now time available to develop new recipes and experiment with, for example, soft food diets. It has also significantly reduced the risk of manual errors and mistakes.
It was quite a mouthful for some of the kitchen personnel to adapt from the former manual processes to the digital system. But we received all the support we needed from a competent Kraftvaerk Foodtech team. Now that everything is up and running, we only see benefits. Every time we produce a serving, we know that it has not resulted in any waste. We also know that someone has asked for the particular dish, and is actually going to eat it. We even have the option of adding proteins to the food for an individual citizen if, for example, they have a wound which is healing, if that’s what is required.
How Dankost Pro optimises the Municipality of Rebild’s production kitchen
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- Every week, the kitchen staff select 14 main courses and 14 side dishes based on the available seasonal ingredients – from the 1,200 recipes stored in the system
- The menu comes up for order in the web shop, which is an integral part of Dankost Pro
- The municipality’s centres place their orders along with any special requests by the following Monday at 09:00
- According to the orders, the correct quantities of food are purchased, delivered and placed in stock all in one go
- Production plans are organised in the system, and packaged together with the recipes
- The food is prepared on the same day that it is going to be served, and is delivered in individual servings
- A smart label on the individual serving indicates exactly what the citizen is eating.
People have different tastes and needs – throughout their lives
Anyone who has had guests for dinner knows that some people don’t eat meat, some are allergic to almonds and there are possibly others who only eat gluten-free food. It may be inconvenient, but it is nothing compared to all the notes that have to be made when the Municipality of Rebild’s production kitchen is serving food to almost 300 people every day, and who – fortunately – are able to eat just what they want. Unless, of course, everything is systematised. Dankost Pro is designed to help optimise how kitchen staff spend their time while ensuring that all stakeholders have an overview of budget control, staffing requirements, production plans and content declarations.
When you work with food, like we do, quality assurance is paramount. Food inspections have become much more rigorous, and we must be able to document what we serve down to smallest grain of salt. Today, a curry is not just a curry. A curry must be defined with all its ingredients and its contents declared. With a system like Dankost Pro, we can upgrade the entire product catalogue to guarantee that the supplier’s instructions match the product numbers, ensuring that citizens, relatives, food inspections and even ourselves are always in sync with what we serve.
Intelligent integrations
Kraftvaerk has developed the food system Dankost Pro, a system for managing and handling food products. Since 2011, Dankost Pro has met the needs of the food industry and is currently being used by more than 200 food producers in the Nordic region. Kraftvaerk Foodtech – which is part of the Kraftvaerk Group – is responsible for implementing Dankost Pro.
Putting customers first
