The pasta cooker experts

‘Watching how my grandmother prepares pasta alla norma, how she fries eggplants, plucks basil and cooks the tomato sauce – this is one of my most vivid memories.’ When Giancarlo Conoscenti, METRO Academy Chef in Bologna, talks about pasta, one thing is clear: to this Sicilian, pasta is much more than simple sustenance. Pasta is passion. ‘I grew up with pasta, and it will always be part of my life – to us Italians, it’s memory, past and future,’ Conoscenti says with enthusiasm. So it was just as clear to Hilal Ayva, METRO Expert International Offer, that Giancarlo Conoscenti was the perfect choice to help develop a pasta cooker for the METRO Professional product line. Under this own brand, METRO distributes non-food gastronomy products like frying pans, refrigerators and deep fryers – and even pasta cookers. The entire range includes several thousand articles that cover all the main needs of HoReCa customers.

Innovative technology for perfect pasta

Conoscenti belongs to a group of 7 chefs from Austria, France, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy who regularly support Ayva and her colleagues’ team in the development of new products. ‘At the end of the day, these are the people who work in the kitchen and who use our products or recommend them to other customers. Their feedback is very valuable to us, because it gives us suggestions that we might never have thought of otherwise,’ explains Ayva, who was responsible for the development of the pasta cooker as project manager. Thanks to his close contacts to fellow HoReCa professionals, Conoscenti is also very familiar with other customers’ needs. He brings this knowledge to the creation of new products: ‘As a METRO Academy Chef in Bologna, I meet a lot of different restaurateurs every day. I share new techniques, recipes and ideas with them and try to understand what machines, ingredients and products they need. My job is to help them grow.’

Teamwork par excellence

Developing new products is a real team effort – starting with the first idea. New suggestions come through the METRO Chefs’ inspirations, competition analyses or internal brainstorming sessions. ‘For example, we’ll sit down with the purchasing people from our 5 countries with the highest sales, and think about current trends in their markets. Together, we define what articles we need internationally. And then we get going,’ Ayva reports. METRO France put the idea for the pasta cooker on the table. The team there was already enjoying very successful sales for a similar article.

The desire to develop a new, more advanced pasta cooker for distribution under the METRO own brand was born. Conoscenti also loved the idea from the get-go: ‘In Germany, Italy, France, Spain – we eat pasta everywhere. That’s why we thought about what a machine would have to look like that could be used to cook pasta all over the world, a machine that prepares pasta quickly and easily and also in top quality.’

The development of the ideal pasta cooker

Once the idea is accepted, Ayva and her colleagues collect important tips and experience from the METRO Chefs: what does a pasta cooker have to be able to do in order to be suitable for daily use? Next comes the benchmarking phase. That means that Ayva compares competitors’ products to see what functions the METRO Professional pasta cooker needs to have, as well as what price it can be sold at to be competitive. On the basis of this analysis, she draws up a list of requirements for the new pasta cooker and sends it to her colleagues in sourcing in Asia and Europe: ‘Our colleagues look for possible offers and preselect a list of suppliers for us. They are supported in this work by a technical engineer who visits the suppliers in the factories to take a very close look at everything on site. Then we decide together which offer is the best.’ After this, product testing begins.

Thoroughly testing

In order to ensure that the products fulfil their intended purpose and are safe and high-quality, METRO puts them through their paces: in laboratory tests and self-tests within Hilal Ayva’s team, and they also put their heads together with the After Sales division at METRO France. ‘For technical devices like the pasta cooker, our colleagues in After Sales check the articles and tell us things like what cable we have to change in order to eliminate the main causes of error. After all, they are the ones who end up repairing the products, so they are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to potential sources of technical faults,’ Hilal Ayva says. The final green light for the products comes from METRO quality assurance once lab tests by agencies like TÜV are in.

Practical tips from caterers

Of course, feedback from the METRO Chefs is also a very important part of the testing process. For example, when Giancarlo Conoscenti saw the pasta cooker for the first time, he immediately noticed some issues: the holes for the pasta strainer were too large, so thin noodles like spaghetti could easily fall out during cooking; the maximum possible portion size of 80 grams per pasta basket was too small; and the basket handles didn’t have the optimal placement.