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breading

AyrKing Presents: What Your Restaurant Can Do About the Labor Shortage

October 10, 2022 By Corey Meyers

The restaurant industry is reeling from a widely reported labor shortage, causing many operations to change the way they function.

Some fast food chains have resisted opening their dining rooms, kept shorter operating hours and placed high demands on existing employees in order to function with a smaller staff.

The reasons for the shortage, which is affecting restaurants from quick serve to fine dining, are complex and hotly debated. But whether the root cause is higher unemployment benefits, an industry battling a historic reputation for low wages and difficult working conditions, or the pandemic and its chilling effect on the hospitality industry as a whole, the result is that restaurants are put in a position of doing more with less.


The Challenge

Lower-than-desired staff levels can have a ripple effect on a restaurant’s operation.

In full-service restaurants, fewer front-of-house workers means larger sections for each worker to cover, potentially resulting in slowed or worsened service as servers rush from table to table.

In every kind of operation, fewer back-of-house workers to prepare meals means longer wait times for orders to be fulfilled and a potential increase in errors from rushed workers.

The end result may be less efficiency and thus less revenue — not to mention unhappy customers.

To adapt to these challenges, many restaurants have cut their hours — eliminating a meal period like lunch or an entire day of service — reduced their seating capacity, or shrunk their menu to streamline kitchen operations.


The Solutions

The solutions to this industrywide challenge are multi-layered, and operators are working both ends toward the middle — focusing not only on improving staffing levels but also on adjusting processes to boost efficiency and throughput.

On the staffing side, restaurants can seek to improve hiring through creative (and generous) hiring tactics. A focus on retaining existing workers by boosting morale and creating a positive work environment can also have a lasting impact.

On the other end of the equation, operations are seeking to reduce the number of employees needed to run a restaurant.

This is the approach favored by Beef O’Brady’s, a 176-unit full-service chain that is looking at options like menu items that require less prep, technologies that allow customers to order and cash out at their tables, and more efficient back-of-house equipment in order to run its restaurants with fewer workers.

In fact, equipment changes can have a surprisingly large impact on labor needs. Automating labor-intensive processes frees personnel up to perform other tasks and reduces the labor hours needed to churn out meals.


AyrKing’s DrumRoll Automated Breader is one such option that enables restaurants to produce the same amount of freshly breaded fried foods with less labor.

Fresh breading is typically a labor-intensive process. But the unique spinning helix design of the DrumRoll quickly and efficiently breads proteins and vegetables, reducing labor and accelerating production by an average of 25%. It takes just one minute to bread 60 wings or 40 seconds to bread eight pieces of chicken.

In addition, the DrumRoll is ideal for kitchens where there are often new and inexperienced workers because there’s very little training involved — as opposed to hand breading, which requires solid training and experience to achieve consistent results.

Learn more about the DrumRoll Automated Breader
The AyrKing BBS

The DrumRoll Automated Breader also improves product consistency by more than 30% over traditional hand breading, providing a better customer experience.

Pair the AyrKing DrumRoll with our Breader Blender Sifter for even more efficiency. The BBS cuts hand-sifting time by 80% and extends the life of breading mixtures, reducing waste and cutting costs.

Filed Under: AyrKing, Blog, Labor Tagged With: AyrKing, breading, labor

Serve Up Endless Possibilities With Chicken!

October 7, 2022 By Corey Meyers

One big reason chicken is so popular is that there are so many ways to prepare it. Whole roasted… 8-piece fried… wings, tenders, thighs… and that’s just the bird. Breadings, seasonings and cooking methods can easily alter the flavor and texture of chicken into a wide range of menu items. The hardest part may be deciding what you want to offer!

Given this, it’s no surprise there are so many chicken-only chains. Some only offer one kind! Naturally, these kitchen operations are devoted to chicken, although the equipment used will differ depending on how many different types of chicken are on the menu. For retail delis, convenience stores and pizza places that want to add chicken, we take the same idea—a chicken focused program—and scale it to your space and existing operations. It’s important to think of it this way, because profitability and efficiency depend a great deal on using the right equipment, accessories and practices.

Two methods: Frying, and every other way in a combi oven

There are almost as many ways to cook chicken as there are to serve it—frying, roasting, grilling, smoking, boiling, sous vid, etc. Fortunately you won’t need a separate piece of cooking equipment for each method. In fact, you could do them all with a fryer and a combi oven. Keep in mind what we said about using the right equipment. Not all combis, for instance, are equipped with built-in smokers or the capability for low-temperature steaming. And not all fryers are built to cook bone-in fried chicken all day long.

The specifics of each equipment platform will largely be determined by what you want to serve and how much. That, in turn, may be influenced by your store concept, customer base and meal part. For example:

  • If pizza is the main event, you may want to serve chicken wings, tenders and nuggets as a protein choice or to capture families with young children.
  • A family restaurant may want to introduce a fried chicken dinner and a chicken sandwich for lunch.
  • Wings can happen just about anywhere—they travel well and can be cooked and served anywhere from snack portions to multiple dozens.
  • Whole rotisserie-style chickens roasted in a combi oven are a mainstay for grocery and retail foodservice.

Flavor profile

The flavor profile for chicken is determined mostly by the breading and seasoning, and partly by the method of preparation.

Keep in mind, a flavor profile covers taste and texture.

  • Big, flakey crispy chicken filet sandwiches are often double-dredged in medium spicy breading and cooked in an open fryer.
  • If you’re going to serve traditional southern-fried bone-in chicken in volume, you will want to do it in a pressure fryer. It’s faster, less greasy and the breaded texture is softer. We’ll learn more about the differences in fryers and techniques later.

Seasonings do the same thing as breading for chicken roasted or grilled in a combi oven. The initial burst of flavor comes from the surface—skin or skinless.

  • Seasonings can be used along with a dry-heat cooking stage to darken and crisp the skin for rotisserie style whole birds.
  • Smoking at lower cook temperatures imparts a distinctive flavor deeper into the product. Combis with built-in smokers make it easy to create signature smoked wings, smoked quarters, or shredded chicken for BBQ, salad and pizza toppings.
  • Low-temperature combi steaming, particularly the sous vide process, creates exceptionally moist and evenly cooked chicken that holds up well as an ingredient in soups, salads and sauces.

There is a lot more to implementing a profitable chicken program than deciding how to cook the birds. As a foodservice operator, where do you begin?

Sourcing to Serving is a step-by-step planning guide from our chicken experts that will help you make key decisions about:

  • Menu and operations
  • Sourcing product and equipment
  • Installation, start-up, maintenance
  • After-sales service and support

Click here to download Sourcing to Serving for free and get 22 pages packed with everything you need to know about adding chicken to your menu.

Filed Under: Blog, Chicken Tagged With: breading, fried chicken, Henny Penny, seasoning

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