Culinary, cooking, food and restaurant

BatchMaster Software, Inc. has provided process manufacturing software solutions for over two decades with more than one thousand five hundred installations worldwide. BatchMaster’s customers can be found in every formula and recipe based industry segment, including food, beverage, cosmetic, personal care, paint, coating, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemical. Some of the key benefits of using BatchMaster software include keeping accurate inventory, lot traceability and lot recall, regulatory compliance and just-in-time manufacturing resulting in lower production costs and improved customer service. Flexible, easy to learn and use, and scalable to grow with a process manufacturing business, BatchMaster is the definitive solution for the challenges facing small to midsize process manufacturers. BatchMaster team consists of over a hundred professionals, bringing on-going innovation to product offerings and serving customers as trusted advisors for all process manufacturing and supply-chain challenges.

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The combination of BatchMaster Software, for superior operational efficiencies, and Microsoft Dynamics GP for mission-critical financial management and reporting tools, will realistically address the challenges Traditions Foods seem to be facing and eliminate current barriers to their growth by diminishing incurred losses in efficiency and profits, especially as Tradition Foods enters the contract manufacturing arena, where they may need to manage potential customer supplied inventory.

Inventory Control

• BatchMaster customers have reduced out-of-stocks by understanding demand. As a result, customer satisfaction is improved and sales increased, leading to an improved margin per year.

• On the other hand, other customers were over-stocking. In such cases, customers were able to run more lean by reducing inventory levels, allowing for better cash flow.

• Inventory Turns – After implementing BatchMaster ERP, the increase averaged to 7.9 with projections of 11.2 turns per year. On-time delivery averaged to 94.6% versus the 73.9% pre ERP.

• Once a wireless warehouse system is in place, data accuracy, efficiency, and tight inventory control is simplified even further by utilizing hand held devices to scan barcodes upon receipt of goods, for bin transfers, and for shipping. When shipping multi-media data formats are also supported in the case where you may want to include a picture of a palate on the shipping documents to decrease the number of lost packages that Traditions Foods occassionally encounters.

Nutritional Information

BatchMaster is a unique ERP system; as an industry specific solution it includes a very mature lab, recipe, and nutritional analysis toolset that other ERP systems do not supply. Traditions Foods already has a standalone system in place for nutritional management, however, Tradition Foods finds great value having such features available as part of an integrated system.

Regulatory Compliance

The BatchMaster product will support Bio-Terrorism Act, FDA, HACCP, and 21 CFR Part 11 requirements to the full extent of the regulations in place.

Integrated Environment

In an integrated solution, all major departments (recipe management, production, sales, purchasing, shipping, accounting) are integrated and share a common database. This allows for management reporting and analysis for decision support and determining key performance indicators. There is also one version of the truth.

BatchMaster’s vice-president, Ingrid Leon noted, “To understand why the Traditions Foods’ management team selected BatchMaster ERP requires looking the choices available. The evaluation was very structured and objective; they wanted a system built for food and beverage manufacturing as well as a supplier who understood their industry and was vested in their success. Since this was a long-term investment, they wanted the ERP system selected to be built on leading not bleeding edge technology. Traditions Foods was one of the few management teams who talked about a Return-on-Investment Analysis for the project…clearly world-class thinking.”

BatchMaster’s vice-president, Ingrid Leon noted, “To understand why the Traditions Foods’ management team selected BatchMaster ERP requires looking the choices available. The evaluation was very structured and objective; they wanted a system built for food and beverage manufacturing as well as a supplier who understood their industry and was vested in their success. Since this was a long-term investment, they wanted the ERP system selected to be built on leading not bleeding edge technology. Traditions Foods was one of the few management teams who talked about a Return-on-Investment Analysis for the project…clearly world-class thinking.”

The combination of BatchMaster Software, for superior operational efficiencies, and Microsoft Dynamics GP for mission-critical financial management and reporting tools, will realistically address the challenges Traditions Foods seem to be facing and eliminate current barriers to their growth by diminishing incurred losses in efficiency and profits, especially as Tradition Foods enters the contract manufacturing arena, where they may need to manage potential customer supplied inventory.

Inventory Control

• BatchMaster customers have reduced out-of-stocks by understanding demand. As a result, customer satisfaction is improved and sales increased, leading to an improved margin per year.

• On the other hand, other customers were over-stocking. In such cases, customers were able to run more lean by reducing inventory levels, allowing for better cash flow.

• Inventory Turns – After implementing BatchMaster ERP, the increase averaged to 7.9 with projections of 11.2 turns per year. On-time delivery averaged to 94.6% versus the 73.9% pre ERP.

• Once a wireless warehouse system is in place, data accuracy, efficiency, and tight inventory control is simplified even further by utilizing hand held devices to scan barcodes upon receipt of goods, for bin transfers, and for shipping. When shipping multi-media data formats are also supported in the case where you may want to include a picture of a palate on the shipping documents to decrease the number of lost packages that Traditions Foods occassionally encounters.

Nutritional Information

BatchMaster is a unique ERP system; as an industry specific solution it includes a very mature lab, recipe, and nutritional analysis toolset that other ERP systems do not supply. Traditions Foods already has a standalone system in place for nutritional management, however, Tradition Foods finds great value having such features available as part of an integrated system.

Regulatory Compliance

The BatchMaster product will support Bio-Terrorism Act, FDA, HACCP, and 21 CFR Part 11 requirements to the full extent of the regulations in place.

Integrated Environment

In an integrated solution, all major departments (recipe management, production, sales, purchasing, shipping, accounting) are integrated and share a common database. This allows for management reporting and analysis for decision support and determining key performance indicators. There is also one version of the truth.

BatchMaster Software, Inc. has provided process manufacturing software solutions for over two decades with more than one thousand five hundred installations worldwide. BatchMaster’s customers can be found in every formula and recipe based industry segment, including food, beverage, cosmetic, personal care, paint, coating, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemical. Some of the key benefits of using BatchMaster software include keeping accurate inventory, lot traceability and lot recall, regulatory compliance and just-in-time manufacturing resulting in lower production costs and improved customer service. Flexible, easy to learn and use, and scalable to grow with a process manufacturing business, BatchMaster is the definitive solution for the challenges facing small to midsize process manufacturers. BatchMaster team consists of over a hundred professionals, bringing on-going innovation to product offerings and serving customers as trusted advisors for all process manufacturing and supply-chain challenges.

Italian traditional food is known for its wonderful recipes and wines, but often an important side of it is hidden or even unseen.

This side is what eating means for Italians. It’s not just eating, it means much more.

If you happen in a major Italian city you may find some shops with continued opening time. But the most close from 1 to 4.30pm. Italians do stop for lunch.

Life has changed in Italy too, not allowing everyone to go home for lunch and maybe take even a rest. But most public offices close at 2.00pm and the ones that work from 9 to 5 have lunch time, where people go to restaurants and have a real meal.

I went to meet a friend who works in a bank office in Rome and we had lunch together. She suggested a small familiar restaurant (trattoria) where I ate wonderful potato gnocchi and unforgettable artichokes with potatoes. A real lunch, that is maybe served in luxury Italian restaurants abroad, eaten during a lunch break from job.

This idea lead to another interesting fact about restaurants in Italy and Italian restaurants abroad.

Usually, the Italian restaurants abroad are good and sometimes luxury restaurants. Very well decorated and often a very pleasant environment, many times tied to society fashions.

In Italy, the luxury and the “environment” are secondary. Often an Italian friend takes you to a very good restaurant, and it looks too poorly decorated. Don’t worry, he cares about you, because…you eat wonderful food, and that’s the important thing for your friend.

He does not think about taking you to a fashionable place where food is not good. He would fail towards you, and for an Italian, it hurts.

There are so many restaurants in Italy that are square spoiled rooms that are really not inviting…but their food is wonderful. They just don’t consider the decoration, but what you’re going to eat.

In Italy go out to have dinner is also a social program, as all around the world. But what you eat has a stronger role in the whole evening.

Among other cultures, the food may be medium, and people talk about other things and have a good evening.

In Italy, may be the most enjoyable people, but if the food is not good, they will feel like the evening was a little bit wasted for that. They will talk about it, comment it, showing that the food isn’t merely part of the evening, but quite the main attraction.

Another side of tradition concerning Italian food regards eating at certain times, following a established order in eating (never eat a meat dish before the pasta one, for example), and some other small but present rules.

Concerning time, Italians have lunch from 1.00pm to 2.00pm. Most restaurants close at 2.30 pm. It’s frustrating for a tourist visiting Rome, for example, to find the restaurant closed at 3pm.

Now some restaurants are offering different scheduled times, but these are the tourist restaurants, not the good ones. These keep pasta cooked and re-warm it. It’s better not to trust them if you desire a good Italian homemade dish.

A traditional Italian meal begins with the antipasto (which means before the meal). Usually it’s “from land”(di terra) or “from sea” (di mare). Those from land are usually Italian cold cuts, olives, cheese and so on. Those from sea are seafood salad and similar.

After the antipasto comes the first dish, that can be pasta, soup or rice (risotto). After then there’s the second, when you can choose between meat and fish. It’s necessary to add a side, because in Italy they are not included. If you ask for a steak, it will come by itself, with no French fries or salad.

After that, you can eat fruit and a dessert. Then a good coffee and a liquor called “ammazza caffè” (kill the coffee). It can vary between many choices, being the more used nowadays the lemon liquor (limoncello) and grappa.

At this point, your Italian friend looks satisfied. He will probably rest his shoulders on the back of the chair and take a long breath. After a perfect meal, these few minutes just enjoying it all are surely needed.

There is nothing like going for some Indonesian Traditional Food. Once you have filled your week with enough local and fast food, or you have gone a month with eating European and world fairs from the many restaurants located island wide, it would be time to visit one of the authentic Indonesian Traditional Food restaurants in Singapore. I think the word I would use to describe the food would be ‘flavour’.

There is just a burst, and explosion of savoury taste that I experience whenever I bite into a well prepared Indonesian meal. I just cannot say no to a well prepared ‘rendang’ meal, there is nothing like the heavy coconut gravy and the almost melt in your mouth chunks of meat that accompany it, a perfect complement to the bowl of fragrant rice that accompanies it. The meat is tender and the servings are always known to be extremely generous. They are no slouch when it comes to their chicken either, roasted or grilled, they are liberated from their tasteless forms with a whole variety of spices and chillies that make for an excellent dining experience. The meat just melts of the bone and the spices and chilli that they use are simply exquisite, a burst of flavour at every bite. Then how can we forget the ‘tahu telur’, one of the signature dishes of traditional Indonesian dishes.

A skyscraper of tofu deep fired with egg batter, decorated with vegetables and spices and served with a sweet sauces. There is also the ‘Garang Asam’, which is a traditional seafood soup that is made with a collection of spices like lemongrass, chills and condiments like ginger and a whole host of select spices. Look out for the ‘Sate Bebek Bumbu and Babi’, essentially, the Indonesian version of the popular ‘satay’ found all over Singapore. I don’t think there is enough space in this article for me to list all the great Indonesian foods that you can try all in a single day.

From starters, main courses and even deserts like the ‘Kue Pepe’ and the ‘Lapis Surabaya’, there are so many choices for you to choose from. And the best thing is that in all the Indonesian restaurants that I have been to, the service has been impeccable, the staff friendly and attentive and I have had no bad experiences what so ever. If you are looking for a good Indonesian restaurant to go to for lunch or dinner, and want to experience a crash course in Indonesian culture and taste some of their fabulous food, I would recommend going to places in town and areas like Clarke Quay and the River Walk – you will find many traditional Indonesian Restaurants where you can start enjoying their delicacies almost immediately.

Price range starts at $20 a person and can go significantly higher, but you always will get value for your money. With their rich spices, generous helpings and range of foods, you will never be’ not satisfied’ when eating Indonesian traditional food.