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For a German Chef, Hospital Food Is the Ultimate Challenge

71 points by NaOH 8y ago

clay_the_ripper 8y ago
This is really cool. I wonder how it could be scaled up to make it easier for organizations that can’t get a chef like this to do something similar? His process was pretty custom (parenting with people he knew from his career as an haute cuisine chef and making gourmet food from scratch) that would be difficult to replicate, but if he could systematize this in some way that would be an amazing win for large organizations (dorm cafeterias, hospitals, schools etc). Given what we know about nutrition and the importance of fresh, high quality food and it’s role in all aspects of health, it’s high time that hostpitals (and everyone else) serve better, healthier food.
- ex3xu 8y ago
  I agree whole-heartedly. My intuition is that there's a huge opportunity here ready to be replicated by a few creative people with experience in the right spaces.
- JacobJans 8y ago
  This company makes food for kid's lunches...A similar market... https://rfrk.com/ https://rfrk.com/
- surgeryres 8y ago
  Concerned about the decrease in meat, and ultimately protein in the diet. His meals only serve meat three times a week? For a surgical patient trying to heal their wounds, a decrease in protein content is the last thing they need.
  - distances 8y ago
    Perhaps meat three times a week shouldn't be a decrease to start with?
gmueckl 8y ago
Cooking hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of good meals on a budget is a challenge that few kitchens seem to master. The spectrum is surprisingly wide. Some fail utterly while others produce decent fare on a comparable scale and budget. Hospital food and university cafeterias in Germany are pretty comparable in that each have similar budgets per person. The worst offender that I encountered was a kitchen that only had a very limited set of standard dishes and they still predictable failed to prepare them in exactly the same way each time. Some meals were charred black when they were supposed to be lightly fried, the pizzas had an inedible crust hard as concrete, and so on. And that went on for years... I also wonder how long the increase in quality in Havelhöhe can last before some beancounter sweeps in and turns the system on its head again based on some pretext. I hope that this never happens, but reality has a way of throwing a wrench into the works every time.
- jlg23 8y ago
  > I also wonder how long the increase in quality in Havelhöhe can last before some beancounter sweeps in and turns the system on its head again based on some pretext. I hope that this never happens, but reality has a way of throwing a wrench into the works every time. I would not expect much bean counting here besides scientific studies and their results: The hospital is part of Charite[1] and as such has the status of a research/university hospital and an anthroposophic[2] orientation in which food arguably plays a role beyond what is scientifically proven. I also have to say that I did spend quite some time in German hospitals and my rule of thumb: The bigger the hospital, the better the food. Never was it as a bad as the regular in-flight meals in cattle class. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophic_medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophic_medicine
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  You may appreciate this video on Japanese school lunches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5s1SlqB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5s1SlqB8
- leetcrew 8y ago
  > Cooking hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of good meals on a budget is a challenge that few kitchens seem to master. the part that confuses me here is the "on a budget part". i attended two very different schools for undergrad, but the meal plan pricing and food quality was very similar. when divided by the total number of swipes, meal plans at both schools cost about $11-13 per meal. the food was not inedible, but it was far worse than an $11 meal would be pretty much anywhere else. both schools offered a la carte cafes run or chains that would take cash and charge about half that for a filling meal that was much tastier (and was able to accommodate pretty much any allergy or dietary restriction). the universities will always say something like it costs extra to be make enough food to feed everyone without knowing who will dine there on a given day, but don't all restaurants face that problem to an extent? is there some genuine reason why it has to be so expensive/bad, or are they all just taking advantage of the mandatory freshman meal plan to subsidize other parts of operation?
kondro 8y ago
Not to cheapen the work that Wodni's accomplished, but I imagine a very large part of the reason why this has worked is because a talented, passionate chef has decided to work in a hospital, rather than achieve notoriety and fortune running a high-end restaurant. The average person choosing to work in institutional kitchen is not one that is looking to make a difference… they're looking to make ends meet. This is scalable only if they managed to encourage more talented individuals to choose institutional kitchens over commercial ones.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- solatic 8y ago
  > This is scalable only if they managed to encourage more talented individuals to choose institutional kitchens over commercial ones. I'm not convinced that this is as difficult as you make out. Commercial kitchens don't usually pay very high salaries, but there is a social status achieved by working for a top-end restaurant. Large-kitchen institutions may not be able to compete on either, but their longevity (compared to restaurants which come and go) allows them to invest in people, taking interested low-skill candidates and bringing them up through a kitchen's roles in a predictable way, including possibly financing culinary degrees for people working their way up. It's not like Wodni is doing something particularly different (? for lack of a better word) here. Instead of buying from low-quality suppliers whose prices were higher for ensuring consistency at wholesale scale, he bought from a multitude of high-quality suppliers at wholesale market rate. He then, using experience and education, adapted to the differences in inventory that come with working with small-scale suppliers, while ensuring that his budget was efficiently utilized by not wasting anything (e.g. saving fish bones for stock instead of buying fish stock from a supplier). Yes, that requires education and experience to do and do well, but I don't see why more institutions couldn't invest in more people to get that education and experience.
gaius 8y ago
Last time I was in hospital I was dreading the food but it was in fact amazing and came with a pamphlet explaining how they configured each meal specifically for whatever was wrong with each patient. This was my local NHS.

71 points by NaOH 8y ago

This is really cool. I wonder how it could be scaled up to make it easier for organizations that can’t get a chef like this to do something similar? His process was pretty custom (parenting with people he knew from his career as an haute cuisine chef and making gourmet food from scratch) that would be difficult to replicate, but if he could systematize this in some way that would be an amazing win for large organizations (dorm cafeterias, hospitals, schools etc). Given what we know about nutrition and the importance of fresh, high quality food and it’s role in all aspects of health, it’s high time that hostpitals (and everyone else) serve better, healthier food.

ex3xu 8y ago
I agree whole-heartedly. My intuition is that there's a huge opportunity here ready to be replicated by a few creative people with experience in the right spaces.
JacobJans 8y ago
This company makes food for kid's lunches...A similar market... https://rfrk.com/ https://rfrk.com/
surgeryres 8y ago
Concerned about the decrease in meat, and ultimately protein in the diet. His meals only serve meat three times a week? For a surgical patient trying to heal their wounds, a decrease in protein content is the last thing they need.
- distances 8y ago
  Perhaps meat three times a week shouldn't be a decrease to start with?

gmueckl 8y ago

Cooking hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of good meals on a budget is a challenge that few kitchens seem to master. The spectrum is surprisingly wide. Some fail utterly while others produce decent fare on a comparable scale and budget. Hospital food and university cafeterias in Germany are pretty comparable in that each have similar budgets per person. The worst offender that I encountered was a kitchen that only had a very limited set of standard dishes and they still predictable failed to prepare them in exactly the same way each time. Some meals were charred black when they were supposed to be lightly fried, the pizzas had an inedible crust hard as concrete, and so on. And that went on for years... I also wonder how long the increase in quality in Havelhöhe can last before some beancounter sweeps in and turns the system on its head again based on some pretext. I hope that this never happens, but reality has a way of throwing a wrench into the works every time.

jlg23 8y ago
> I also wonder how long the increase in quality in Havelhöhe can last before some beancounter sweeps in and turns the system on its head again based on some pretext. I hope that this never happens, but reality has a way of throwing a wrench into the works every time. I would not expect much bean counting here besides scientific studies and their results: The hospital is part of Charite[1] and as such has the status of a research/university hospital and an anthroposophic[2] orientation in which food arguably plays a role beyond what is scientifically proven. I also have to say that I did spend quite some time in German hospitals and my rule of thumb: The bigger the hospital, the better the food. Never was it as a bad as the regular in-flight meals in cattle class. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophic_medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophic_medicine
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
You may appreciate this video on Japanese school lunches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5s1SlqB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5s1SlqB8
leetcrew 8y ago
> Cooking hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of good meals on a budget is a challenge that few kitchens seem to master. the part that confuses me here is the "on a budget part". i attended two very different schools for undergrad, but the meal plan pricing and food quality was very similar. when divided by the total number of swipes, meal plans at both schools cost about $11-13 per meal. the food was not inedible, but it was far worse than an $11 meal would be pretty much anywhere else. both schools offered a la carte cafes run or chains that would take cash and charge about half that for a filling meal that was much tastier (and was able to accommodate pretty much any allergy or dietary restriction). the universities will always say something like it costs extra to be make enough food to feed everyone without knowing who will dine there on a given day, but don't all restaurants face that problem to an extent? is there some genuine reason why it has to be so expensive/bad, or are they all just taking advantage of the mandatory freshman meal plan to subsidize other parts of operation?

kondro 8y ago

Not to cheapen the work that Wodni's accomplished, but I imagine a very large part of the reason why this has worked is because a talented, passionate chef has decided to work in a hospital, rather than achieve notoriety and fortune running a high-end restaurant. The average person choosing to work in institutional kitchen is not one that is looking to make a difference… they're looking to make ends meet. This is scalable only if they managed to encourage more talented individuals to choose institutional kitchens over commercial ones.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
solatic 8y ago
> This is scalable only if they managed to encourage more talented individuals to choose institutional kitchens over commercial ones. I'm not convinced that this is as difficult as you make out. Commercial kitchens don't usually pay very high salaries, but there is a social status achieved by working for a top-end restaurant. Large-kitchen institutions may not be able to compete on either, but their longevity (compared to restaurants which come and go) allows them to invest in people, taking interested low-skill candidates and bringing them up through a kitchen's roles in a predictable way, including possibly financing culinary degrees for people working their way up. It's not like Wodni is doing something particularly different (? for lack of a better word) here. Instead of buying from low-quality suppliers whose prices were higher for ensuring consistency at wholesale scale, he bought from a multitude of high-quality suppliers at wholesale market rate. He then, using experience and education, adapted to the differences in inventory that come with working with small-scale suppliers, while ensuring that his budget was efficiently utilized by not wasting anything (e.g. saving fish bones for stock instead of buying fish stock from a supplier). Yes, that requires education and experience to do and do well, but I don't see why more institutions couldn't invest in more people to get that education and experience.

gaius 8y ago

Last time I was in hospital I was dreading the food but it was in fact amazing and came with a pamphlet explaining how they configured each meal specifically for whatever was wrong with each patient. This was my local NHS.