A Single Source of Truth for Culinary Operations
Harvest Table Culinary Group's Chief Culinary Officer, Chef Matt, on what it actually took to get dozens of collegiate kitchens working from the same food data — and the new role they created to make it stick.
Featuring 
Format Recorded webinarTopics Culinary Resource Planning, Onsite Foodservice
Format Recorded webinarTopics Culinary Resource Planning, Onsite FoodserviceAbout this session
Multi-site culinary operations rarely struggle for lack of talent — they struggle because the data is scattered. Recipes live in one place, costs in another, menus in a third, and nutrition in a spreadsheet nobody fully trusts.
In this session, Chef Matt, Chief Culinary Officer at Harvest Table Culinary Group, walks through their journey adopting a culinary operating system: where fragmentation quietly cost them, the enablement role they created to bridge culinary and data, and what changed for chefs, students, and the back office once every kitchen worked from one source of truth.
Key takeaways
- Why disconnected systems — not disconnected teams — are what break multi-site consistency, and where the synergies actually are.
- The "culinary enablement" role Harvest Table created during their Galley rollout to sit between the creative culinary team and the data.
- How ingredient-level transparency reaches the diner: looking up exactly what's in today's turkey chili from a phone.
- Change management lessons from outside foodservice — and why the digital-charting shift in nursing is the right analogy.
- Food waste and food insecurity in collegiate hospitality, where roughly a third of students face food insecurity.
- What's different for standalone units versus multi-unit groups when you standardize on shared data.
Transcript
Full transcript
auto-generated from the recording · click to expand0:02And here comes some participants. Great. I gotta get some elevator music. I never remember to get the elevator music going before I start these things. Maybe some holiday tunes. Yeah, there you go. Morning folks. Or afternoon. Give everybody a couple minutes to get in. So will you be chefing for the holidays there, Matt? Are you having a bunch of people over or what's that look like for you?
0:32That's a great question. I think we get the holidays off. We had responsibility for Thanksgiving. So if we get to put our feet up, I think for Christmas and go to the the family event, which is great. Will you cook there or let somebody else show off their skills or do people get nervous cooking for you? I feel like when you have like such a list of accolades, people get intimidated.
0:53They always get intimidated and I always tell 'em the same thing, are you kidding me? I would love for someone to cook for me for a change so that I, can exactly taste someone else's food. And I don't always have the responsibility. So actually I, it's a treat for me yeah, to be able to experience other people's food. So I enjoy it, but I'll probably dabble in something and bring something to share. I'm sure.
1:13What's your go-to kind of potluck thing? If somebody says, Hey, bring whatever you like, do you have something at the top of the bag you pull out? Or is that an opportunity to be creative? I like to keep it variable. Like surprises. Well ask me to bring something. We'll see what it is. I love it. Alright, we got about two minutes. I see some folks piling in. Thanks for joining us early.
1:35I am going to do the old screen share. Alright folks, we are broadcasting coast to coast. I've got officially two minutes past the hour. Are you ready to rock and roll? Yeah, let's do this. I'm excited. So as you've noticed we've got our good friend, chef Matt Thompson from Harvest Table Culinary here. And for those of you that I don't know, my name is Jason Gunn and I'm heading up marketing here with our friends at Galley.
2:03And some of you that I see that I know from my past obviously I'm in a new role here working with our friends at Galley and super excited about what we're gonna talk about today, all around this idea of a culinary operating system. And chef Matt has been kind to give us his time, so I'm gonna kind of leave it up to Matt to introduce himself and Harvest table.
2:26And then we will get into a little bit about food data and its impact and the journey that Harvest Table has had so far with us to adopt the culinary operating system. And let's hop right into it. Chef Matt, chief Culinary Officer, and a quite a list of accolades behind your name. Tell us about your story, how you got to harvest table before we talk about Harvest Table.
2:50Sure. That's a great question. I've had the pleasure working in the hospitality industry for about 25 years or so and really been passionate about working with people. ironically my undergrad degree is in computer science. so to be able to marry these two passions together in this partnership that we've had with Galley was particularly impactful. the Harvest Table Culinary Group came about roughly four years ago as we look to innovate the dining space and hospitality experience within collegiate hospitality, we ultimately created Harvest Table Culinary Group as a team of dedicated chefs and wellness managers and food enthusiasts.
3:27And our mission is to craft campus dining experiences where every meal tells a story and every student leaves satisfied. We're passionate about culinary arts, we're passionate about sustainability. We're passionate about wellness focused experiences for students across our portfolio. Our teams are empowered to be responsive to students' needs and truly make an impact on the campuses and local communities that we serve. When we started the Harvest Table culinary group organization, we began looking at our really our values and our value pillars.
3:58And we landed on authentic, personalized, and collaborative because we felt it tells our story. At the end of the day, food should tell a story. We should know where our food comes from. It nourishes our body, it impacts our planet. It's got it touches everything that we do within our communities and our society. So we began there and then began to look for alignment with our partners.
4:20Ultimately, that brought us to our culinary commitments, of which we've made five culinary commitments. And from our perspective, the first thing we did is we looked about where do we source our ingredients? and then the last two, how do we transform those ingredients once they make it into our kitchens? So the first three commitments, simple, clean, and honest, are return to wholesome whole foods. To think differently about our relationship with ultra processed and food additives and chemicals and those things that have found its way into food ingredients with integrity.
4:50Thinking about third party certification, ensuring that we're doing the right things for the p the people that produce our food to think about supporting regenerative agriculture bipoc, farmers, all of those sorts of things that are truly important when we create strong and resilient food systems. And then lastly, our commitment to local and staying rooted within our communities and keeping those circular economies going within the areas that we do business.
5:15Once we get those ingredients into our kitchens, we think about how we transform them with a degree of scratch cooking as well as nutritionally balanced and leaning into things like acids and chilies and herbs and those sorts of things to dry flavors and less of the sodium and fat and sugars and those sorts of things. And ultimately, we believe that does make us different in the marketplace.
5:39We're we're transforming the way traditional contract food service or hospitality experiences are done or have been done traditionally in this last several decades. And that ultimately challenged us to think differently about the partnerships that we have, both from a procurement perspective, the way our chefs behave in the kitchens, the experiences that we provide when our diners and our guests come in to eat, and all of those things that we know are critical to running a successful business.
6:05And thankfully that brought us in partnership with Galley, thinking about how we together can craft what that ultimate culinary experience could look like. Appreciate the highlights around what's going on at Harvest Table and the partnership with Galley, obviously. So one of the things for me that I like to talk about with people, because I come from the culinary world. I similarly worked in the food service space for many years before kind of taking a funny walk into into the e-commerce and in the data world.
6:32But, something that a lot of people don't think about in the food service operating space is that they even have data to worry about. And it sounds like you guys are really at the cutting edge of taking advantage of that data. So, I just put a couple of key terms up here of things that make up food data. And, I'm kind of wondering how did you guys arrive at a place to decide like, Hey, we need to start wrangling this right now.
6:58You're, you're working across multiple platforms and multiple locations, so what is food data to you guys? That's a great question. it's certainly gotten extremely complex over the course of the last decade or so. it used to be simple where you just, bring some ingredients in. You've got your recipe and production packets and you're off to the races. But now our culinary team is expected to be experts in almost everything.
7:22Whether it's nutritional content, whether it's allergens, whether it's local and sustainable a whole swath of data. I think back to an experience I had earlier in my career, and if you remember the Palm Pilots remember the POM pilots, Jason? Oh my gosh, yes. That was in my formative years and I really wanted one, and then as soon as I got it, I wanted the Blackberry.
7:46But tell me about the Palm Pilot. How did you use that? So my Palm pilot story I remember, and this was really early in my career as I took the Palm Pilot and I would go from cooler to cooler and I would, I would place my food orders right on my Palm pilot and I would, put how many cases of everything I needed to, and I'd take my palm pilot back to my desk and I plug it in and all my food orders would go out.
8:09And that's the way that I managed my food data at the time. And I think of how complex things have become since then. And trying to source ingredients, trying to work with different providers. we just made it through a very difficult time during the Covid experience related to supply chain disruptions and trying to keep track of pre-orders. a lot of the things that we're doing with Harvest Table involve pre-commitments, so when we talk about purchasing whole animals, the whole idea of, well, how much of each particular cut of meat is involved with purchasing a whole animal?
8:45And when we make commitments around crops and we work directly with food hubs and farmers, how do we keep track of how much of an ingredient we've got coming from which direction? What is the growing calendar? When is it going to be available? How do we get it on the menu? it has become increasingly complex. So how do you feel other operators in similar space are thinking about it?
9:08You're obviously exposed to the chef community, and I'm sure you hear different folks leveraging their data in different ways. Is do you find people bringing it into systems and, getting away from maybe plugging in the Palm pilot, which by the way, I applaud it seems pretty advanced for the time. I remember when I, even when I went to culinary school, they said, make sure you always have a pencil so that when you're doing inventory in the freezer, it doesn't freeze up your pen.
9:35So like, how are other operations kind of managing this and do you think they think of food data in the same way as you guys do? I certainly, through my experience, seeing a variety of different things. it's funny, I see the icon for Excel on the on the screen there. And just about every, everyone in the hospitality industry has their spreadsheet, whether they're a marketing manager, whether they're a chef, whether they're a general manager, whether they're a controller or a finance person.
10:03Everyone has, some little way that they do things scrolled away on an Excel document somewhere. I'll say that the challenge to that is that when people move on and when there's, promotion opportunities, all of those systems need to be recreated or they need to be shared or they evolve into something different. the opportunity to look at systems and processes, I think is a tremendous one.
10:29And there are certainly quite a few systems that are out there for people to leverage. I've been challenging our team to think differently about how those systems interact with one another. If there's ways that we can find some synergies and everyone can either work within the same system or follow some of the same processes. There's, there's advantages to being able to do that from not only a synergy perspective, but also efficient use of our time, which we know is extremely challenging in today's environment.
10:57So it sounds like that's what inspired you guys to get involved and start bringing all of this data together, right? As a, as a cohesive unit into this one source of truth. What we like to call a culinary operating system. But when I think Chief Culinary Officer, I don't necessarily think it, or data management and you're pretty involved, is that unusual or do the culinary and food service operations get involved in this way?
11:23Or would you maybe advocate that more, try to get involved even if they feel like they don't have time? I think more have to get involved, and we have to think from a strategic perspective. you had the question on the screen there, who's involved? And there are so many people involved with, the operations today. You've got your team who's responsible for procurement and there's an element of responsibility related to that food data.
11:49When the orders get received, you've got those receiving events and who's responsible for an AP perspective to make sure that all of the invoices get paid? who's responsible for connecting them with the finance team to make sure that we're on track with our food budget and that we're doing things, in a fiscally responsible way? Of course, you've got your production team that's concerned with, what am I making today?
12:13What's, what's the recipe for the, for the chili? Or, what am I serving at my station? You've got that team, you've got your dietetics team who is concerned about the nutritional analysis, and do we have enough gluten-free items on the menu? Do we have vegan vegetarian items on the menu? You've got your sustainability team that says, Hey, climate action, we've got cool foods partnerships and we're thinking differently about, the relationship of our food system and in climate change.
12:39And we want to try to drive behaviors. You've got your team that's looking at food waste and food insecurity. What's happening with all of these opportunities? you've got your reporting team that says, Hey, we've gotta put out our social impact report. How much of our food spend is with minority women-owned business? How much is local? How much is sustainable? How much is third party verified? To try to manage all of those things in separate disparate systems is bananas.
13:06So the more of that we can try to get together in one source of truth helps to find synergies without, throughout the system and keeps everyone on the same page along the lines of expectation and opportunity. Well, I love that you kind of put it that way, because, I'm sure, and for the record, the folks at home, Matt just rattled off all of these things, all of these people that are involved.
13:30And I couldn't even write 'em down fast enough when we were first talking. And I love the fact that it's, it's so prominent and at the forefront of what you do everyday, chef, hopefully that inspires some folks to get involved. 'cause you don't even realize that all of these different areas are affecting your day-to-Day life. And I think that's where, Ian and Benji and the team at Galley over the last several years have been really forward thinking, bringing this idea of the culinary operating system to life.
13:57And you can see we've got, a couple of simple outlines here on the, on the screen, but at the end of the day, you are making thousands of micro decisions every day just to get food up in the window, right? And any of these other pieces, whether it's ordering inventory, managing your food costs can either interrupt that and make the day a little bit more challenging, or it can become an accelerator and make you profitable and efficient.
14:24And it sounds like you guys have done a really good job doing that. but I'm probably oversimplifying it to say, oh, okay, we bought a culinary operating system and everything's happy now. Or is that the way that it went, you turned it on one day and it was fine? Or was there a bit of a journey here? What did we learn? There was definitely a journey.
14:42With all things, there's cultural shift when you move move people's cheeses, so to speak. there's, there's questions around how does this benefit me? What are the opportunities? So definitely, a cultural change in terms of the way that we thought about food. but that was not foreign to us at Harvest Table because, just several years previous, we challenged the team to think differently about their food system.
15:05So when we began looking at a supply based menu writing platform versus a demand based, we had to change the model. It was the inverse of the model that had existed out there, so that the area of cultural change was something that was familiar to us, even though the systems was new. So adapting to technology, I think was an opportunity for us.
15:30We did have an a new position that we created as we began our galley journey, and that's the position that we call the culinary enablement role. so in our world, of course, we've got our culinary team who's super creative about, putting together great tasting dishes and they're super diligent around, how they put that together from a nutritional perspective.
15:55And they're, they've got these great ideas and it's super creative and it's all happening in this wonderful world. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the registered dietician saying, well, wait a minute. I gotta write all this stuff down. I gotta be able to quantify this. I gotta be able to tell the food story from a nutritional perspective. How do I do that? And we found the bridge between those two work streams to be this role of culinary enablement.
16:19And they are, for lack of a better term, our galley experts. they have all the connections, they make sure the links are there, they make sure the recipes are clear, they make sure that our timing is where it needs to be. And that's really helped us from the perspective of keeping our teams aligned and ensuring that we meet all of the expectations. So I wanna unpack this a little bit 'cause I think it's super important.
16:40Not only did you guys adopt a new piece of technology, which I'm sure is, in itself a challenge just to get people to, go from pen and paper, or I suspect you had some of those very familiar three ring binders floating around the kitchens, but you actually assigned a role. And this isn't like a, like a one person's job for, eight to 10 hours a day.
17:04It's more of an adopted role as if during this shift, I am the culinary enabler or enablement person for the day. Could you tell us a little bit more about that and what you expect for the people in that role? Sure. So it's it's an interesting role because it is a hybrid role. and we have different strategies at each of our different campuses in terms of how we accomplish that.
17:25But essentially what the role is responsible for doing is ensure that the process is delivering on the promise that we make to our customers every day. We have the promise around great tasting food that's sustainably sourced, that is thinking innovatively about nutrition that is doing all of that work. We also have a commit to 100% transparency. So literally down to the sub ingredient level of the products that we're serving that is delivered at the moment of service.
17:53So you can look up on our mobile device I'm gonna go eat the Turkey chili today at lunch, what's in that Turkey chili, and you'll be able to see every ingredient in order for that to be a seamless process, we need that enablement person to make sure all of those behind the scenes connections are there. Our business is not unique in the way that we are still experiencing supply chain disruptions.
18:16So when we get a substitute or we have to make a last minute change, the enablement team is the one that's really making sure that what is being served that day is being backed up with the data that we provide in the background so that we still have full transparency into the dishes that we're serving. Yeah, and I think that's an interesting point too that I think I had highlighted on one of the previous slides, but when you think about food data, there are people that create the food data from the recipe perspective, which is really at the core of our culinary operating system, right?
18:45Recipe first that data has to be managed and moved around, and then that data is consumed just like the meal that you prepare, right? So you mentioned menu boards, there's nutri nutritional analysis, and not only are people consuming the thing that they, that you make, but they're consuming the data. Right. And I think that's a concept that, for me has been relatively new to think about from the operator perspective, but the consumer savvier more now than ever.
19:14Right. And maybe even the pandemic accelerated some of that because everything was coming through the apps. How has that kind of changed the way that you interact with your customers? Yeah, I think that's a great question. we have the pleasure of working with college students, and college students are always pushing us to think creatively about, the dining program and what's being offered. They're also a generation that truly believes in value-based purchasing.
19:38They want to know that what they are doing with their dollars and how they're participating in the world is making an impact, a positive impact. So when it comes to food data, it's things like, what are we doing with food waste? How much food waste are we generating? And what's happening to that food waste? And how is it being diverted? How are we thinking creatively about both pre and post consumer waste?
19:59They also want to be able to aggregate that data and say, how much of our food spend was local and how much of that supported our local community? So beyond just the content of the food that they're consuming, is all of those other pieces of the puzzle that our consumers are very aware exist and wanna make sure that their purchasing behavior and what they're doing from a consumption perspective is supporting the types of values that they find important in their lifestyle.
20:28Yeah, as you talk about it, locale and, where did the food come from? I can think of some very popular chains out there that will tell you like, Hey, your potatoes for the french fries that we made, you came from this particular farm in Utah, or whatever the case may be. So it's really interesting to think about how much of the data has become important as it is the creativity and the healthiness and the nu nutrition of the meal that you're delivering, right?
21:00Absolutely. Even packaging has a big deal. I'm sure we all remember the great revolution to kick the green straws, right? We want to get rid of, plastics and waste. Do you guys do a lot in that space as well? When you think about sustainability and eco-friendly type things? Is packaging all a part of that too? Absolutely. there's, there's definitely the packaging and disposable that's involved with the food that we produce.
21:24But in fact, we were in a training class earlier today, and one of our chefs was sharing a partnership that they have with a bipoc producer out in California, and they're actually shipping the produce to us and reusable totes so that we don't have to purchase the corrugated wax line cardboard boxes that end up in the trash. So right. Thinking about the waste that we're, we're producing, not just in the, disposables and the operation, but everything that's within our supply chain as well.
21:52And all of that effort really doesn't have the impact if you can't tell a story around it or make use of the information behind it, right. So I love the fact that you guys have been working with us for so long now to bring all that into this one source of truth for our culinary operating system. And you guys have been really at the bleeding edge of that, so appreciate it.
22:14Couple of cool features that you had highlighted to me in our early discovery conversation that you guys are taking advantage of, like translating some of these things into native languages. there's a challenge that I hadn't thought about before. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, so it's interesting and I'll, I'll share with you a quick story. my mother's a nurse and I remember one day, we were gathered around the dinner table and my mom came home and she was like, you won't believe what they're making us do at work.
22:40And of course if you watch some of the old movies, there's always that bedside chart that sits at the end of the bed and, the doctor, the nurse comes and picks it up and they make their notes of whatever. So this particular day she went to work and she's like, oh my God, you won't believe what they're making us do.
22:55We have to use the, this tablet and this computer system now to do digital charts. And, she had to record the medication and all those sorts of things. so as you can imagine, we experienced the same type of challenge with our workforce when, they had historically been used to using the, paper production sheets and the paper temperature logs and all those sorts of things.
23:15And we said, here's this tablet, it's got this new software called Galley, and we want you to use it. And their minds are like, oh, what am I gonna do here? How is this all going to work? And then we started to show them all the cool features that are available to them that they hadn't previously been exposed to. Like, when you open up the recipe, you can click here and look.
23:34There's pictures, there's videos, there's, you know station diagrams, so you can see how your station is supposed to be set up, and they're like, oh gosh, you know that's great. across the country we deal with a lot of our workforce that doesn't have English as their first native language, whether it's Spanish or Haitian or what have you.
23:54There's a lot of, Asian languages that are out there using the tablet, we're able to change the native language of the tablet and ultimately translate the recipes into a language that, they can read and understand. So a tremendous opportunity from that perspective. And then, a time savings perspective when you have to make a menu change, it usually involves going back to the computer, changing out a recipe, printing out a production sheet, going to find the associate, producing the recipe, updating your menu online, all of that changing your has logs using galley in the tablet environment.
24:33A chef or a chef manager, chef to cuisine can make a menu change. And then instantly that updates our digital screens. That updates our website, it updates our mobile app, it updates the production computers. Everyone is instantly on the same page around what that change looks like, and they're able to record their service results. So at the end of their shift, if we had a forecasted, they're gonna cook 300 hamburgers today, and they said, well, actually they're really great taste in hamburgers, and the people came back and we ended up producing 400, they can record that right on their tablet.
25:03And there's a tremendous amount of time efficiencies saved in that process versus tracking down all these, paper copies and trying to wrangle all that data. So you guys have pretty much gotten out of the pen and paper operations part of that business as much as you can. We're trying, we have a ways to go. I think we've got some wifi infrastructure things that we're trying to solve on our end and some of our older facilities in the kitchens, but that is our goal to get to that point.
25:29And everything can be done mobile, from your tablet or your iPhone. I remember when I went to culinary school, there was a chef Martini, actually, I think, I don't know if he's still at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, but he pulled out a special knife from his drawer. If he ever caught somebody with their cell phone out, he would smash it in half with a knife.
25:46And now, here we are encouraging people to take advantage of this technology in a wildly different way. Funny. Well, listen, chef, I wanna wrap up with a a quick thank you and I appreciate it. you guys have been a tremendous partner to Galley and not only being a customer, but helping us evolve this thing, with real world use cases, automating, digitizing recipes, and what we know is a culinary operating system today wouldn't be what it is without partnerships like we've had with you guys.
26:17So genuinely appreciate you making time. I think we're gonna wrap up the conversation and I wanna open up the floor for some questions. So just to get everybody inspired, I've got a couple of off the cuff questions for Chef Matt that I think will be a little fun. Absolutely. Alright, here we go. This is a, this is a deep one. Which of the five mother sauces is your favorite and why?
26:43It's like picking your favorite childs, they all have their great applications. I'm gonna go with Espanol only because I really enjoy umami flavors and that brown sauce has just got that complex depth of flavor. And, as you layer those flavors and continue to develop I have to go with umami and Espanol. If you could cook or have dinner with any three chefs, dead or alive, who would they be?
27:12Oh gosh. only three. Well, I'm gonna pick folks that are alive because I love collaborations and I love thinking about how we might be able to evolve our future food systems. So I'm gonna pick folks that are alive. I'm gonna go with Dan Barber because of the way he's thinking differently about sustainability and evolving our relationship with food. I'm going to be inspired by Jose Andres and what he's doing with Humanitarian Effort.
27:41I love the documentary we Feed people and it's just a very simple way of a, of a chef thinking differently about using his craft. And the last chef I'll choose is Dan Gusti. very interesting story around his provenance and where he began and why he has moved to, a different style of food and serving our kids really, truly great nutritious food and trying to transform a very difficult space there.
28:06So those are the three that I would be inspired to chat with. I love it. I would go and have dinner with you and your crew anytime. How about your favorite sound to hear in a kitchen? Oh, that one's easy. The sizzle. That my art effect, which really brings great flavor to a dish. Oh wow. My art reaction. Bringing some science chemistry in here. I love it.
28:27Okay, last one. What is your least favorite sound to hear in a kitchen? Oh, that's everyone's same answer for every chef. It's that, it's that do printer, that ticket printer that you just hear in your nightmare, The printer. See, and I thought it would've maybe been a plate crashing. that's this when everybody applauds. Alright folks, well thank you to Chef Matt for making time for us.
28:54I've got a couple of questions here and a couple of pre-seed questions that we'll go through. so I wanted to start with one that we got through one of our sales reps. So customer was curious about what you see as the biggest focal point or focal points over the next two to three year in food service. Would it be around reducing food waste? Is it recycling?
29:15We've got a whole litany of, supply chain issues, there could be could be labor, focusing on labor. What what are some of the big focuses that folks out in the food service world should be thinking about from your view? I think that's actually a very good question. I referenced one answer earlier, which is, thinking differently about value-based supply chains and sustainability.
29:39We are dealing with the Gen z population right now, and of course we find it valuable to work with that population because they are the consumers of tomorrow. so if you are a restaurateur or if you're working in a hotel or if you're working in a, in a corporate environment hospital, what have you these will be the folks that you will be interacting with on a regular basis, in the very near future.
30:03So we see our ability to work with college students as the tip of the sphere in terms of where we see our dining programs go. And of course, we're actually looking at generation alpha, which we know is hot on their heels and the way that their dining experiences are evolving. So I'd say, values-based supply chains and ensuring that, there is good positive work being done with the dollars that they are spending on their food experiences is extremely important.
30:29I will also say that, food waste is definitely one of those areas to look at, and the numbers are shocking. for us in the collegiate hospitality space, the number of food insecure students is somewhere in the mid 30% area. And with Covid, that number has grown. there's a significant amount of students that are food insecure, and when you look at your traditional all you care to eat collegiate dining experience there could be food waste as high as 45%.
30:58I think that's the average that I saw. so to not be looking at food waste and capitalizing on those opportunities within the operation is a miss. So I'd say definitely sustainability, values based supply chains and food waste are areas of focus in the next several years. Well, it sounds like I'm gonna have to have you back on so we can unpack those three things a little bit more and see how we can, we can take advantage of your expertise.
31:22Another question that came up was, in the, in the course of you adopting this culinary operating system, obviously you didn't make the decision in a vacuum, for an organization of your size, relatively speaking, who else was involved in that decision? it's you in the culinary space, you've probably got other key stakeholders in leadership. So for folks at home that are thinking, Hey, this might be something for me, who should they be bringing into the conversation?
31:46So really the reason why we were looking for new innovative solutions is because we were doing food differently and we needed a system that was flexible enough to allow us to achieve our goals without confining us within a box that, food service had worked in. And that's why we saw Galley as an opportunity collaboration. It's one of our key values. It's one I shared earlier in the presentation.
32:08So we collaborated with every subject matter experts, whether it was the guest experience managers who run the the marketing team obviously finance was at the table to discuss the financial impact of food cost. obviously the culinary team was there, our registered dieticians were there, our operators and general managers were there. Part of our selection process included a pilot. so we did not just make a decision on roll it out, and to the entire organization.
32:34We started this in pilot at two institutions and, there were two very different institutions and we chose them intentionally to, kind of kick the tires and to try things out and to see if this was, going to work for our business and ensure that we could still meet our goals. And ultimately, since we are here today, that we've made a decision that not only will it meet our goals, but it will allow us to be more efficient and and drive towards more positive future outcomes.
33:00So that was really our process. And I'd say the answer is collaboration between all of the parts of the operation. Another question that came up was like any key things to think about or gotchas, if you will, once you've made the decision, we're gonna do this. What are some things that you've learned along the way that might save someone a little pain when they turn it on tomorrow?
33:22Yeah, that's a great question. if there's something that I under anticipated, it was the amount of cultural change for our team. I'll, I'll share the example of the menu writing process. our team was very used to, because we are a Monday through, Sunday, seven day a week operation, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And many times our menus changed from breakfast to lunch and lunch to dinner.
33:45That part of the menu writing process was very unique to our business. And moving into the galley platform, we challenged our team to think differently about their menu writing cadence and how they do that. We surfaced that challenge with Galley, and Galley said, you know what? We'll do, we'll, we'll help you out. We're gonna build for you a menu planner that's going to allow your team to build their menus in a way that they're more traditionally done that, but also allow you to take advantage of uploading that data into galley and receiving the full galley experience.
34:16So I'd say our partnership ended up getting us there, but it was, it was a cultural shift for us, and we did make the transition between semesters and we chose the fall to spring semester transition, which really only gave us a month to do that. So I would say the timelining of what that transition looks like was another opportunity for us as well. Good pieces of advice for anybody going through a transformation, I suppose it's good to hear.
34:42So a couple of questions from the crowd, it sounds like maybe the culinary operating system sounds like it's more relevant for multi-unit operations. Would we recommend it for a standalone operation as the guy that obviously benefits from people buying it? I have to tell you that everyone's welcome to do it. I just think what you're probably gonna think about is just different benefits, right?
35:06So if you're a standalone operation, the recipe is still at the core of what you do. There's still multiple people involved. There's still different recipes that are gonna have to be managed. You've got different items that are gonna be purchased from different places, right? So you're constantly, having to manage and navigate that. So, I don't find that to be unique to the multi-unit operators.
35:29I don't any perspective on that. Chef Matt is good for the standalone as it is for the, for the multi-unit folks. Many of our operations do act as single unit which is interesting because it does ladder up to a larger infrastructure and the time savings related to how long it took our chefs to create some menus and recipes and, some of the functionality there.
35:51I still, I do believe that there's time savings in involved with that. ultimately our goal was to get our team in the kitchen not behind a computer screen. And, we did see a lot of synergies in being able to accomplish that goal. Okay. I got one more question here from the audience, and then we can let everybody kind of go back to their day and get everybody outta here a little bit early.
36:14The question is around employee and job satisfaction, chef. So any perspective on how this has generally impacted the lives of the folks that work in your kitchen specifically, by implementing this, and I can make some broad assumptions that it's improved life a little bit, but what have, what have you guys learned a little bit more specifically? We are still fairly new in terms of being able to roll this thing out to, our folks and we are still in the process of getting those tablets in place at all of our locations.
36:44So we are still very much still growing this. but I will tell you that the folks that embrace this opportunity do find some synergies related to their user experience. We're also working pretty collaboratively to think differently about how we can evolve the way that we communicate our recipes and production packets. So I referenced earlier, the ability to attach pictures and the ability to show build diagrams and those sorts of things right in the recipe that has been impactful and has helped a lot of folks.
37:15We're also think thinking about collaborations with how can we connect this to one of our employee engagement programs when they look for culinary development and those sorts of things. So I'd say there's some innovative ways that we're thinking about the future of this. but overall it's been a positive experience for our team members. Well, chef, I have really enjoyed the conversation today.
37:37I hope everyone else at home out on Zoom land did too and for spending time with us. it's been brilliant and I appreciate the partnership and I can't wait to get you back on here soon and let's keep the learning going, right. I'm sure you'll know more in a few months than you did coming into the conversation today. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
37:59Alright, chef. Well everybody at home, thank you. Thank you for your time and chef Matt, I hope you enjoy your holidays, hope you have a great amount of time off with friends and family and enjoy that and I'll talk to you after the holidays, my friend. Cheers everyone.