Sebastiaan Koldenhof was already working in HoReCa at a young age. First as a dishwasher in a pancake house, subsequently as a waiter in a hotel. After that, he attended catering college and held management positions at various clubs and restaurants in the Netherlands and abroad. In 2017 he started his current job, general manager at The Uptown Meat Club in Amsterdam. With one clear goal: to make the business profitable.
FROM QUANTITY TO QUALITY
Located on Van Baerlestraat, with major attractions such as the Rijksmuseum and Vondelpark around the corner the Uptown Meat Club has focused entirely on tourism since it was opened in 2015. One of Sebastiaan’s first actions to improve the business was to take off spaghetti bolognese and ravioli off the menu and introduce the dishes that the restaurant is famous for today.
He changed the concept and reduced the menu to its essence: meat. No fuss, no sauces, not too many ingredients. Guests get a lovely piece of meat, crispy fries with home-made mayonnaise and a simple salad or grilled vegetables. All very pure and of top quality. Sebastiaan also tackles the interior, changes the structure among the staff and reviewed all suppliers. “This has allowed us to reduce costs significantly. And all this together has made The Uptown Meat Club the profitable business it is today," Sebastiaan states proudly.
DUTCH DUAL-PURPOSE COW
The Uptown Meat Club seats 60 guests. Downstairs there is a chef's table where another 20 people can enjoy the most delicious meat dishes. The meat comes from the Dutch double-purpose cow. This is a dairy cow that has grazed in the meadow for years and then gets a period of rest. Here the cow grows into a full-fledged beef cow. This makes the meat very tender. “You do get fewer pieces of meat from this cow, but the quality is much better than from a quickly fattened cow”. The meat is prepared on a Mibrasa charcoal grill oven. It gives the dishes their authentic taste, smell and structure. The most popular dishes are ribeye and tenderloin, but the absolute bestseller is the chateaubriand (500 grams).
BRILLIANT RESULTS
MEIKO has done the dishes at The Uptown Meat Club from the outset. With a DV 80.2 hood type dishwashing machine in the dishwashing area and a M-iClean UM glasswasher with reverse osmosis behind the bar. Sebastiaan had never heard of MEIKO himself. “However, the state in which the glasses come out of M-iClean U has never been better. We take them out of the machine, let them dry for about two minutes and then they are ready to be used again. Even the beer glasses.” He was told one should not wash beer glasses in a dishwasher. “But what a nonsense! Every glass that comes out is top-notch. No sprays of water, no streaks of milk, nothing. All that without polishing them.” This saves the crew many broken glasses and a lot of time. An important aspect is the handling. “You have to know how to handle them and not throw everything into the glasswasher.” says Sebastian. Therefore, coffee cups go in another dishwasher than glasses. “We are very careful with our machines and clean them every day".
EVERYTHING FROM A SINGLE SUPPLIER
In the past a service company performed the maintenance of MEIKO machines, while the detergent and rinse aid came from a different supplier. After a while, problems arose. “That was actually because of me. The detergent was cheap and turned out to be unsuitable for the machine. I also thought the cost of a MEIKO maintenance contract was too high, so I turned it down. However, it is smarter to have one. After all, the machines are getting older so you can't take the risk, because then you'll end up paying more. We now purchase the maintenance and the chemical products from meiko. Everything from a single supplier, which is much smarter.”
Sebastiaan took out a MEIKO ACTIVE service package for this. “The MEIKO chemicals dosage is much lower. The machine used to beep regularly, which was a sign that it was running out of detergent or rinse aid. But I haven't heard anything for a while now. For a moment, I thought something was wrong, but the machines just consume less now. This results in fewer orders and less transportation which is a win-win situation for staff, management and environment".
Would you recommend MEIKO to other members of the HoReCa industry who are not yet familiar with the company? "Absolutely. I am very happy with them. For me they stand for perfect machines and the service engineer who comes here really helps us. It's great". Finally, he adds, laughing, "I was in Berlin the other day and I saw a MEIKO machine there and thought, "Hey, MEIKO is pretty big".
