Thunder Road Café Tackles Labor, Speed of Service with Complete System

Finding and retaining labor is a challenge many restaurants are faced with today. By using the right equipment, operators can save on associated labor costs while improving profitability and speed of service.

Serving more than 3,500 customers per week, Thunder Road Café was in search of equipment that would reduce labor costs, improve profitability, and improve speed of service to alleviate stress from their staff.

Founded in 1995, Thunder Road Café is Dublin’s largest themed restaurant, right in the heart of the trendy Temple Bar. Open 7 days a week, this party atmosphere hosts an extensive menu containing a generous selection of appetizing dishes revolving around American cuisine–and super-sized portions to match. Sizzling steaks, whopping burgers, and beautiful pastas are just a few of the dishes that are served.

While attending A Taste of Alto-Shaam demonstration, Thunder Road Café was impressed with the speed, consistency and quality of the food produced by their Vector^® Multi-Cook ovens, Cook & Hold Smoker oven, and variety of hot holding solutions.

Alto-Shaam’s Vector H Series ovens feature a compact footprint that can be placed anywhere, without the need for an exhaust hood. With intentionally simple, user-friendly controls and Cheflinc™ capabilities, operators can program recipes to ensure consistency in each cook, eliminating the need to rotate pans and babysit the process. Further, they feature waterless operation, reducing installation and operating costs.

The Cook & Hold Smoker oven allows Thunder Road Café to achieve labor-free cooking and smoking at a lower cost. Relieving multiple pieces of equipment, the oven provides a better distribution of workloads by cooking, smoking and holding foods overnight. Thanks to Halo Heat^® technology, gentle and precise heat evenly cooks food while retaining moisture and no added humidity. This allows for greater yields and the highest food quality in each cook.

What’s more, Alto-Shaam’s heated holding solutions reduce prep time and labor costs, allowing Thunder Road to prepare food before peak service, and hold it at the optimal temperature for the best quality and reduced ticket times. Unique thermal cabling surrounds the cavity to evenly warm food and retain moisture. 

After owning two Vector ovens and a Cook & Hold Smoker oven, the most impactful feature for both types of ovens were how easy it was to set up and save recipes. Integrating warming drawers, hot holding cabinets and hot food wells, the decision to design the new kitchen around the Alto Shaam range of equipment has improved Thunder Road Café’s speed of service, allowing operators to prepare food in advance of peak service times. Overall, each unit helps to save time and labor while reducing stress for their kitchen staff.

“We feel by having the best kitchen technologies, this will allow us to retain and attract the best staff to our restaurant,” said Patrick Gallagher, Owner at Thunder Road Café, “We also liked that they are low energy, waterless and ventless meaning we saved on our energy and water bills.”

"I was really impressed by the energy data collected from our busiest Vector Oven over the Christmas period which showed average consumption of less than 3kw per hour off a connected load of 12.7kw which translates into huge energy savings compared to what we were using and other equipment available."  

The investment in energy and labor-saving equipment throughout the kitchen design is helping Thunder Road Café save on operating costs so much that they will achieve a very quick return on investment, as well as having very happy kitchen staff. 

To learn more about Alto-Shaam’s Vector Multi-Cook ovens, Cook & Hold Smoker ovens and heated holding solutions, visit our product page.