Magazine Aug-Oct 2020

FEATURE

OUR NEW CLUBHOUSE THROUGH THE LENS OF: OUR EXECUTIVE SOUS CHEF Caryl Wong discovers how The Club embraced change to become even more cost-efficient with new innovations.

Our Executive Sous Chef Paul Ng proudly shares insights into how The Club’s culinary team has managed to implement new innovations for Club F&B outlets, programs and services – all while achieving process efficiencies and cost savings, without compromising on the quality of our Members’ dining experiences. The first half of 2020 has had its fair share of challenges, the biggest of which were the unexpected disruptions to Club operations due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. With Executive Sous Chef Paul at the helm, the Culinary team has managed to turn challenge into oppor tunity – by refreshing outlet concepts and offerings, and optimizing internal processes, such as procurement, stock control, recipe standardization and manpower deployment. Find out how these process optimization measures have translated into a reduction of 11 headcounts for the culinary team, as compared to pre- redevelopment in FY2015.

TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECTS: OUR CENTRAL PRODUCTION KITCHEN According to Chef Paul, the culinary depar tment’s efficiencies stem from having an in-house Central Production Kitchen, to complement The Club’s various outlet kitchens.The Central Production Kitchen is located at basement one of the Clubhouse. Our Central Production Kitchen fulfils three key centralized functions – the storage of ingredients, mise en place , and the preparation of select base dishes and condiments that are utilized across outlets. For example, our popular Club-made salsa is used in a number of dishes across outlets. The Central Production Kitchen produces the base salsa, before it is sent to the Grillhouse kitchen. The Grillhouse kitchen team then adds jalapeño and fresh lime juice to the base salsa, to create Grillhouse’s signature salsa that accompanies Grillhouse tacos. The centralization of food production and storage have led to three positive trickle-down effects on process optimization and cost savings for The Club’s culinary depar tment – reduced manpower costs, increased procurement efficiency and standardization of outlet recipes.

21 THE AMERICAN CLUB SINGAPORE