Bringing traditional Japanese hospitality to Taiwan

Challenge

Incorporating the authentic Japanese hospitality was one of the major challenges for the hotel management, especially with respect to its food and beverage services. Traditional Japanese cuisine relies heavily on specific facilities for ingredients processing under strict temperature and environmental controls to retain food flavor and quality. The hotel required a kitchen area on each floor to handle food orders from room service. Each kitchen area needed to be equipped with a fryer on top of a pantry to ensure food is served at precisely the right temperature. However, such cooking equipment is not common in Taiwan. Adding to all the complexity, there was a limited timeframe for preparation of the facilities. The teams were given less than eight months from planning and installation to trial and opening.

Approach

The DKSH team invested a significant amount of time studying the hotel’s requirements before submitting a comprehensive solution. Ensuring that the proposal met the hotel management’s specification of each required cooking apparatus before proceeding on sourcing was essential to ensure an appropriate and future-proofed solution was delivered. Leveraging their extensive network in Japan, the DKSH team could source exactly the right equipment to meet these needs.

The hotel incorporated four catering systems to accommodate different styles of food service, including a central kitchen, room service, a buffet and a themed restaurant. The DKSH team developed a diverse and flexible kitchen to tackle each catering system’s workflows. The required cooking equipment were then installed according to corresponding kitchen designs. The entire installation process was implemented within two months.

Result

With DKSH’s efficiency and expertise, the whole project was delivered two months prior to the targeted launch date. This gave the hotel an extra month to complete all preparatory work and enabled a smooth launch of the food and beverage services during the public opening. Following the work, the hotel’s management team indicated that they were not only satisfied with DKSH’s sourcing service but also happy with the expertise on kitchen configuration design.