Customer Back Innovation: How it Continues to Shape our Products

At Vulcan, innovation doesn't begin in a lab or a boardroom. It starts in kitchens. Commercial kitchens face constant pressure. Labor shortages, training, rising costs, and increasingly demanding service expectations require equipment that works harder and smarter. 

By working closely with chefs, operators, and consultants, we uncover the challenges that impact productivity, consistency, labor, and profitability. Those insights shape the combis, ranges, ovens, griddles, fryers, charbroilers, and steam equipment we build, resulting in solutions that address real-world operational needs. Here’s a closer look at four examples of Vulcan products which exemplify our commitment to customer back innovation.

Combi ovens are among the most versatile appliances in any kitchen, but historically they've often come with a steep learning curve. Through conversations with chefs and foodservice operators, we recognized a common challenge: kitchens needed the capabilities of a combi oven without the complexity often associated with operating one.

The result is Chef'sCombi. Chef’sCombi incorporates an intelligent approach to cooking with Chef'sGuide, an innovative feature that simplifies the cooking process for any skill level. Operators just answer a few quick questions to set their desired outcome, and Chef'sGuide will generate the ideal cooking settings to produce high-quality results. Chef'sCombi helps kitchens achieve consistent, high-quality results while reducing training time and operator guesswork.

After conducting extensive research, we learned that operating combi ovens was a major pain point for school food service personnel. Complicated modes and other fussy details were confusing operators and causing issues in the kitchen. In response to this problem, we developed the ABC Combi Oven with simple, intuitive controls.  Operators just need to set the time and temperature and the humidity adjusts automatically. The result? Greater ease of use and a smoother flow in the kitchen.

When fryers struggle to recover after a basket is dropped, cooking times can increase, food quality can suffer, and service can slow. Enter QuickFry.

The QuickFry 70 lb. fryer delivers an impressive 14-second recovery time, helping operators quickly return oil to cooking temperature between loads. This fast recovery supports greater consistency from batch to batch, and the ability to meet customer demand without sacrificing quality.

Also when using fryers, operators felt filtering could be time-consuming and sometimes unsafe. Vulcan's optional KleenScreen® PLUS built-in filtration system gets operators back to cooking in approximately three minutes while making filtration quicker, easier, and safer. Combined with built-in safety features like Boil Out ByPass™ and dry-fire prevention, QuickFry is another example of how customer feedback directly shapes Vulcan innovation.

The VC5G Convection Oven acknowledges a significant pain point in the food service industry: equipment cleaning and maintenance. A “lift-off” feature — the only one of its kind in the industry — means oven doors can be easily removed and run through the dishwasher or 3-compartment sink, thereby minimizing the amount of time and effort needed by the operators to clean the doors. Factor in window transparency from clean oven doors to take the guesswork out of consistently cooking excellent food; cut-out racks to allow safer, more efficient oven access; easy-to-use controls; and the industry’s highest energy efficiency, and the VC5G is positively packed with user-forward features.

At Vulcan, there’s nothing more important to us than helping food service professionals consistently deliver high-quality food to their customers. In maintaining our focus on the end-users, we are uniquely positioned not only to understand their pain points, but to respond with innovative products with the potential to transform how kitchens operate.