A Q&A with Barbara Nova, Senior Director of Food & Beverage, Wills Group
Barbara Nova and Dash In depend on Alto-Shaam Vector Multi-Cook Ovens for fast, consistent cooking.
Is it hard finding good talent to work in your Dash In stores?
Barbara Nova: There are not a lot of folks who typically think of “amazing foodservice” and “convenience” at the same time. So the talent pool of folks wanting to work in our industry who also happen to be passionate about foodservice gets kind of tight. And then finding hospitality-minded people — even if they’re working in the front of the house — that’s always a challenge in our industry.
Is space also an issue in your business?
BN: We’re doing more business in less space. So being able to get the right equipment that allows us to have fewer people running the equipment and less space in the kitchen is really key. We need to make every inch count and every employee that much more efficient today.
How has ChefLinc remote oven management helped save you time and labor?
BN: It has been a game changer for us. We have 60 stores and about every two months, we send new promotions out. With our old ovens, the only way to get updates through was for me to do the programming on my computer and send a file to all my managers. They would have to download the file and then go to each of the locations and hand-install it. We spent two weeks prior to every promo just updating ovens. Now, I’ll push everything out and it’s in in a matter of five minutes. Then we spend that two weeks training and everybody’s able to make the product so that on day one, we’re at 100% execution. Before this, sometimes it would take us two to three weeks before we started executing at 100% at all stores.
A selection of the bakery products Dash In makes in their Vector ovens.
What do your employees think of ChefLinc?
BN: Our employees love the technology that ChefLinc provides. They love knowing that they can call me anytime and I can change the setting on their oven. Even though I’m not available 24 hours a day, the technology makes it so they feel they are completely supported all the time.
And how has the Vector multi-cook oven has helped you expand your product offerings?
BN: What I love about this oven is that I have a lot of opportunity to bring in new items. We can cook things that we could never cook before. We were never able to do fresh bakery. We do that now. We’re up in that category because we now bake fresh cookies and bake our croissants and biscuits.
It sounds like Vector is a win-win for both you and your customers.
BN: Foodservice employees in a convenience offering don’t come in with a lot of confidence that they’re going to love it. Giving them the technology and the support they’re getting now makes them love the business. And, so, I believe that we are having less turnover in the kitchen.
