Radically redesigning the industrial kitchen
(2zones2 : No, it's not a boy band but today's most innovative industrial kitchen !)

In the South Pacific Ocean, east of Australia, lie the Loyalty islands of New Caledonia, a French territory. Three islands – Maré, Lifou and Ouvéa – form the Loyalty archipelago and there, sea breezes gust over pristine beaches and aquamarine lagoons shimmer in the sun. On Maré, a raised coral atoll of 642 km², exists an unexpected construction of advanced technology: an innovative industrial kitchen which provides hot meals for the island’s schoolchildren.

Maré is home to the indigenous Kanak and the island’s population numbers a mere 6,896. The Kanak generally live in huts; running water was only introduced to the island in the late 70s and an electricity supply was only initiated in the late 80s. Prior to the construction of the 2zones2 kitchen, few of the island’s 16 primary schools had canteens; those that did operated in conditions of poor hygiene and produced meals of questionable nutritional value.

Invented by French architect François Tesnière, the award-winning 2zones2 kitchen system has been deemed one of the five most important kitchen innovations – after the microwave oven, ultrasonic washer, induction cooker and disposable packaging – within the last 30 years by French food service magazine Neo-Restauration.
In creating the 2zones2 system, Tesnière set out to improve the existing format of industrial kitchens. Before 1974, the industrial kitchen in France was a single room fulfilling many varied functions. The emergence of the marche en avant (forward flow) concept revolutionised the industry by expanding kitchen space, dividing it into different rooms/areas and introducing different lines of workflow (raw material, finished products, etc.).
Today, the “forward flow” principle remains a central part of the various civil codes and guidelines that govern restaurants in France. According to the concept, all foodstuff move through the kitchen in such a way that “clean” items never cross paths with “unclean” items, thus minimising cross-contamination. HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) guidelines control the points at which the workflow do cross.
Tesnière is no fan of HACCP procedures, seeing them as a crutch for a
system riddled with innate flaws. “The ideal kitchen doesn’t need HACCP remedies,” he says. “In Europe, HACCP procedures can be taken too far. For example: ‘Cooks with red boots can take the No. 12 corridor from right to left between 10 and 10.15am; meanwhile, cooks with yellow boots are not allowed to cross at the same time’.
“With such regimented systems, chefs are unable to concentrate on cooking – they just repeat the same procedures over and over.”

With more space needed for the conventional “forward flow” concept kitchens, costs are higher and kitchen staff spend more time cleaning, transporting food items, etc. The 2zones2 system reduces up to 60% surface area and lowers costs. “In terms of running costs, the 2zones2 kitchen saves on labour, time and energy costs because there’s less cleaning and etcetera, to be done,” Tesnière said during a recent visit to Malaysia.
Within Tesnière’s system, the two parameters which need to be controlled are temperature and hygiene. “Instead of having to control external factors, HACCP parameters have been built into the design of the 2zones2 system,” Tesnière said. ”This makes the 2zones2 kitchen user-friendly and HACCP-compliant at the same time.”
In the 2zones2 kitchen, workflow
is linear and sequential. “The basic principle underlying the system is the direct flow of the food/work,” explained Tesnière. “The kitchen is considered as a logistical space, not just a cooking area. And with the revolutionary use of space, there’s no need for complicated procedures.
Rooms are each devoted to the receiving and processing of raw materials, the preparation of contamination-vulnerable food and the distribution of prepared food. The rooms are divided by storage areas with doors on both sides. When the cooks receive the raw materials, they put them into the “pass-through” storage areas, where they can be retrieved on the other side by the cooks handling the pre-preparation of food. This is continued within the food preparation chain until the stage that handles distribution of the finished products. Everything goes one way and there’s no crossing of workflow lines. Production time is shortened by two hours a day, thanks to the simplified kitchen system.
Instead of solid tabletops, long “canals” line the rooms. These canals accommodate stainless steel containers, which can be used to contain pre-cooked food and with a heat source placed under the containers, food can also be cooked in them.
To ease movement along the canals, there are modular “transfert” trolleys (made of a stainless steel wire bent into a three-dimensional form), which can be stacked and machine washed. Custom-made chopping boards are fitted onto the canals and all fittings are easily detached for cleaning in a centralised washing machine so that surfaces to be disinfected (also by machine) are minimal.
A circulation system filters the air and cools it to 10ºC; this is blown onto the workstations, from one side of the room to the other so that the airflow does not double back on itself.
Previously, the 2zones2 kitchen concept had been implemented in France. In the city of Montargis, the kitchen provides 1,000 meals daily to 11 schools and in Cognin, at an institute for the hearing-impaired, the kitchen supplies 400 meals internally and 300 meals to other primary schools and kindergartens. The Montargis facility in particular has been the focus of much attention, receiving many international delegations.

Tesnière is particularly proud of the latest installation at Maré. The kitchen there is a holistic project, with a design that factors in efficiency, hygiene and cost concerns, and also takes into account issues of conservation and sustainability.
“This is the first time that a development project has been successfully implemented in New Caledonia,” said Tesnière. He knew that if the kitchen was to be successfully implemented on Maré, it needed to be a simple and straightforward system. “The kitchen on Maré is not a labyrinth – it has a very simple design,” Tesnière said. “Maré’s kitchen is one of the most high-tech in the world but it doesn’t rely on gadgets – just equipment adapted to suit its needs.” He added that the 2zones2 system, which cost €777,000 (RM3.65 million) also worked out to be 32% cheaper than the original tender that the municipality had received.
According to Tesnière, the general timeline for a project such as this would be a year of study, followed by a year for construction. However, for the Maré project, his study took three months. “We built the kitchen into eight ISO 40-foot containers,” Tesnière said. “A lack of workers, equipment and materials on the island meant that construction could not be done there.”
This arrangement also saved time as the construction took only three months. While the construction was being carried out in France, the foundations were being laid on the island. Once everything was ready, it was a matter of shipping the containers and assembling the kitchen on the foundation. The manufacturing of the kitchen equipment was carried out simultaneously with the kitchen construction. The equipment was then assembled and integrated into the containers, saving even more time. The total surface area in the kitchen amounts to 240m2.
Because the kitchen was being implemented on an unspoilt island, environmental issues had to be taken into account. Conservation was a priority from the very start. The Maré kitchen uses solar energy and recycles the energy from the cooling system to the boiler. Water is pumped from a nearby underground lake to cool the kitchen and energy is saved by turning the cooling system in the cold rooms off at night. The cooling system automatically comes back on an hour before the cooks begin their work. In the coldroom, an organic antibacterial spray of essential oils prevents bacterial growth, and organic refuse is fed to the pigs.
A stream of air at 10ºC is concentrated onto the workstations, but the cooks enjoy a comfortable room temperature of 18ºC within the kitchen. Air is not recycled back into the kitchen, but is directed towards the insulating cloth façade that covers the kitchen’s exterior. Apart from its aesthetic function, the fabric also acts as a thermal seal which helps to optimise the indoor temperature. Natural light is used to illuminate the kitchen.

The cooks at the Maré facility are all local Kanaks. For their training, an “exchange programme” was worked out between Montargis and Maré. The local Kanak chef, Paulo Cimitru, went to the 2zones2 kitchen in Montargis to be trained while Montargis’ Pierre Silberling went to Maré to handle the opening of the kitchen and stayed for three weeks to train the local staff. The Maré team now comprises one chef, three cooks and three drivers.
Last February 24, the cooks served their first meal. The inaugurated meal for 850 children was bougna, the local specialty of chicken, root vegetables and coconut milk cooked in banana leaves. Today, several months later, the kitchen provides meals for 1,050 pupils.
Every day, the cooks begin at 7am. “Pre-preparation is done the day before and the food is ready to leave the kitchen at 10am. The cooks are usually done for the day by 12pm,” said Tesnière. This is a vast difference from the industrial kitchens where chefs start their day at 5am and end much later.
“The kitchen uses local produce and we came up with a one-year food plan,” Tesnière said. A co-op comprising the schoolchildren’s parents was created to supply meat, fish and vegetables. The island is famous for its avocados and yams, and bats are a favourite delicacy. The kitchen also prepares native produce such as manioc, sweet potatoes and mahi-mahi. In order to accommodate local cooking styles – such as cooking food wrapped in leaves in hot soil – a 4.5m cooking canal was created. The Kanaks’ practise a barter trade system and the co-op is successful because the parents are motivated to supply the produce for their children’s needs.

“In France, we have something called the ‘Week of the Taste’ in schools, which is held to introduce new tastes to school children and help them appreciate what may be unfamiliar,” said Tesnière.“On Maré, the programme is going to involve the community’s matriarchs and grannies who will help the cooks recreate traditional recipes that may have been ‘lost’.”
The successful implementation of the 2zones2 kitchen in locales as diverse as France and New Caledonia demonstrates the adaptability of its design. The concept can be implemented in hospitals, in-flight catering facilities, and army/national service camps, among others.
With Malaysia positioning itself as a destination for tourism, hygiene standards and regulations need to be upgraded. At the moment, very few kitchens in Malaysia are HACCP- compliant but with a concept like 2zones2 on the horizon, it would be possible to bypass training staff on HACCP-compliance by merely investing in a kitchen format which integrates the procedures into its design.

DESIGN visionary
François Tesnière was trained as an architect at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. The 35-year-old is a partner of the architectural firm 3bornes Architectes; he has worked with several partner companies on the 2zones2 project, including Arcelor (co-holder of the patents and a leading player in the steel industry) and Halton (specialist in indoor climate solutions for foodservice facilities).
In France, Tesnière is the secretary of the MERIA Association, an organisation that gathers specialists from the fields of kitchen design, culinary training, food psychology and microbiology. He also serves on Chambre de l’Ingénierie et du Conseil de France, the French union for kitchen designers. He is a member of AFEX (Architectes françaises à l’export) and the CPRC Committee (Comité Permanent pour la Restauration Collective), which gathers 20 experts culled from French ministries and institutions.
He has consulted on or written several professional guidelines for the foodservice industry in France.

SUZANNE LAZAROO
Flavours August 2005