Café at The New York Times, New York City
This new glass building housing one of the world's largest and most prestigious newspaper publishing companies features a foodservice operation that boasts custom-designed counters, tray slides and single glass sheet food shields, and equipment that's both quiet and energy-efficient.
By Donna Boss, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 5/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
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In June 2007, The New York Times Co. began a phased move from its former neo-Gothic home that it occupied for nearly 100 years into a looming office tower at Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. The looming multi-tenant tower is located in one of the busiest business districts in Manhattan, on the edge of Times Square and across the street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The newspaper occupies floors two through 28 of the 52-story building and manages a large conference center on the first floor. The Times' space accounts for slightly more than half of the building's total 1.5 million-square-feet.
An international design competition awarded Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Paris, France, in association with FXFOWLE Architects, the contract for the $200 million project. Soon after, The Times invited Richard Hopkins and his firm, Hopkins Foodservice Specialists Inc., to compete with other firms for the programming and design of the building's foodservice system that caters to staff and special-event meal service for The Times' 2,600 headquarters-based employees. Hopkins won and began working on the project early in 2001.
“My firm began by analyzing The Times' specialized requirements and produced a comprehensive program that included benchmarks of similar operations in Manhattan,” Hopkins says. “We described each point of service, its objectives, spatial allocations and the relationship of individual components with the whole system. We then provided a streamlined operation that will eliminate or dramatically reduce the need for corporate foodservice subsidies. The new building will be able to hold marketing events and banquets, which will save thousands of dollars spent on off-site catering.”
The foodservice areas had to fit into a building featuring a double-skin curtain wall of clear glass with a screen of ceramic rods. In an interview for a press release by Forest City Ratner Cos., the developer, Architect Renzo Piano, says, “I love the city and I wanted this building to be an expression of that. I wanted a transparent relationship between the street and the building. From the street, you can see through the whole building. Nothing is hidden. And like the city itself, the building will catch the light and change color with the weather: bluish after a shower, and in the evening on a sunny day, shimmering red. The story of this building is one of lightness and transparency.”
From the moment one enters the building, the open space is apparent. Walking from the Eighth Avenue entrance to The Times' lobby, a visitor sees a text collage called “Movable Type,” a collection of 560 small digital-display screens that produce an ever-changing portrait of The Times as it reveals its daily content and 156-year archive.
In the light-filled lobby, visitors can see a glassed-in garden/park, an open-air birch-and-moss garden with seven 50-foot-high paper birch trees that were planted before the grand opening in December 2007. The garden/park is adjacent to a 378-seat auditorium/performance space that The New York Times Co. operates.
Sustainable design elements include a dimmable lighting system and shading system that help The Times realize a 30-percent energy savings on its floors. In order to provide tenants with floor-to-ceiling ultra-clear glass windows that open to city views, the horizontal ceramic rods on the building's exterior provide a sunshade to block half of the sun's energy. The windows also allow passersby to see inside the building.
The Times' employees and guests enter the café on the 14th floor. From the elevator bank customers enter the 358-seat dining room occupying 5,568-square-feet. Light penetrates into every square inch of the space through a titanium steel structural curtain wall. The chrome-based, white round tables, chrome chairs, red carpet and red and yellow ochre accent walls come alive in this space. Views of neighboring buildings are visible on three sides of the space.
“We wanted to design a cafeteria that would keep The Times' employees in the building during lunch and very happy,” Hopkins says. “The cafeteria was to help nurture a strong sense of collegiality in the organization. The foodservice system also was to help the company save on hiring outside caterers and particularly on having to rent conference meeting and event space for their many sales departments and their own holiday events.”
Hopkins' firm, along with Gensler, the interior architects, faced strict parameters. “Renzo Piano's office wanted to ensure a design compatible with the building's look,” Hopkins says. “As a glass building it was important that no furniture or equipment be located against the perimeter wall. The 14th floor-to-floor height could not vary from that of other floors. Regular meetings were held with the engineers, other specialty consultants and the client to fully integrate foodservice into the building.”
Placing and customizing equipment to be compatible with the designers' specifications proved to be a unique career experience for Donovan Espeut, project manager, and Angel Gonzalez of H. Weiss Equipment Corp., the project's equipment dealer. They and the entire foodservice design team continually had to find a balance between function and form. “The seams and lines of the equipment had to be in line with the windows and ceiling grid,” Espeut explains. “Window mullions were a benchmark for the entire servery. We have never had to do that before.”
The floor-to-ceiling windows extend into the open, airy, 6,975-square-foot servery, which Restaurant Associates manages along with catering, executive dining, a coffee bar, coffee pantries on floors, and conference center dining. The estimated foodservice volume is $5.7 million, according to Patricia Sharp, general manager with Restaurant Associates. This contract management company is the first to operate The Times' foodservices after decades of self-management. “We've had to find the right balance between offering new, trendy menu items and traditional favorites, like hamburgers, pretzels and popcorn,” Sharp says.
“The servery is predominantly stainless-steel, light wood and pastel paint tones with great views of Manhattan. The colors in the space all come from the food, which creates the visual focus of the servery, the palette being the menu variety,” Hopkins says.
A balanced scatter system, with some self-serve, some staff-assisted stations and an exhibition cooking station, allows customers to pass through the servery quickly. “Rather than a pass-through design, this servery has a U-shaped configuration in which patrons leave from the side of the area they entered on,” Hopkins says. “This ordinarily would be difficult and unfavorable, but it works here due to ample servery width.”
Immediately upon entering the servery, a visitor can't help but to notice the quiet in contrast to the jarring sound often heard in cafés. “The high ceilings and water-cooled refrigeration help to dramatically reduce background noise. Instead one hears conversations,” Hopkins says. Drop-in plate and tray dispensers typical to entrances of some designers' layouts are not provided due to perceived fears of “black-hole” dust bunnies. With disposable trays in hand, customers first walk along refrigerated cases displaying beverages, yogurt and other to-go items.
Along the north bank of windows, customers encounter a deli station, with a cold rail holding ingredients, an undercounter refrigerator, a conveyor toaster, microwave oven and deli case. Specialty sandwiches here include curried chicken salad with green apple and walnuts, and Black Forest ham with Brie cheese.
A sushi station containing a countertop refrigerated display case follows to the left, where a staff member prepares sushi and sashimi using specialized knives and techniques. “This is the second most popular station — the salad bar is the most popular — and we prepare 140 orders daily,” Sharp says.
Adjacent to the sushi area, the exhibition station's hot food cabinet, heated shelf, mobile plate dispenser, four-soup well, an infrared food warmer and heated shelf with granite top allow staff to serve several varieties of these menu favorites daily. This action station also offers wraps, noodle bowls and tapas. At breakfast, staff serve oatmeal from two of the soup wells and cover the other two with a wood board that holds brown sugar and other toppings.
At the end of this line are pretzel and popcorn machines. “Employees wanted a lot of tradition to be preserved from the other building,” Sharp says. “These comfort foods were available in the past.”
Throughout the servery, customized monolithic glass sheet food shields protect menu selections. The counter and tray slide feature a custom design profile. No signage exists because the café serves only The Times' employees and guests, so they quickly familiarize themselves with the offerings. Each menu item display is labeled with a description and price.
Moving toward the room's center, customers select from a prepared salad/antipasto bar whose ingredients sit in refrigerated cold pans. “All of Restaurant Associates' accounts now offer cheese and olives served on cold block marble,” says Sharp, who adds that these stations can double as specialty counters for theme menus.
“Power, drainage, and food shields and open counter space are provided so staff can quickly switch the station from retail display, take-away items or food display as the needs of the café shift through the year,” Hopkins says.
Also in the center is a bakery, dessert and fruit station in which tiered display equipment and refrigerated cold pans present enticing options. Menu items also sit on a frost top. During special presentations, staff replace the counter model breakfast toaster with an induction cooker to prepare crepes, sauces and flambé items.
A few steps toward the west end of the servery, a 25-foot-long salad bar invites customers to make their own sides or entrées from a combination of ingredients sitting in refrigerated cold pans. During dinner service, only this salad bar remains open.
“Salad bars here have both shallow and deep perforated false bottoms to allow management to vary container size according to the quantity of food to be displayed with flaked ice around the platters. The flexibility of this station allows frequent replenishment of toppings while offering larger quantities for quicker moving items such as lettuces,” Hopkins says. “Nowadays, operators prefer to display their offerings on ceramic dishware instead of stainless or plastic inset pans. The quantity of flaked ice needed is dramatically reduced and so is cleanup time at the end of the day.”
Hopkins, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, also believes salad bar designs should leave space for condiments. Poorly designed salad bars, he says, end up overflowing with too many salad ingredients.
Along the servery's west side, an international station features a different global cuisine each day. Staff have access to a hot food cabinet and a heated shelf with overhead warmers and lights for displaying heated foods. Exhibition cooking at this station provides entertainment as staff assemble custom plates of foods from varied theme menus and condiments.
Adjacent to the station, an opaque glass wall-enclosed space with a counter and hand sink allows staff to prep and wash their hands invisibly. This area is just steps from the door to the kitchen.
The grill, whose menu resembles a New York steakhouse, sits on the south side of the servery. To the left of the grill, customers can select from a variety of hot casseroles, which sit on a hot shelf. On Fridays, the station features special themed menus such as pizza or flatbread pizza. The adjacent carvery station displays pans of ice holding salmon, fish, and flank steak to be cooked on the adjacent grill and griddle. An adjacent fryer battery with an integral oil filter continuously sizzles fries. An open-top convection food warmer keeps fried food crisp. The grill is the only servery station containing an exhaust hood. Staff manning this space face customers behind plate glass. “The glass wall enables the hood to be properly balanced to keep odors and vapors from permeating the entire servery,” Hopkins says.
The grill area contains a mobile plate dispenser, heated shelf, food warmer drawers and a hot food merchandiser. Along the station's back wall, staff store ingredients in a freezer, refrigerator and mobile hot food cabinet. A conveyor toaster heats items on demand. Another counter with a hand sink allows staff to maintain sanitation standards. A deck oven can flash-heat fresh-baked pizzas before they are put on display.
“Full-spectrum color-corrected fluorescent lamps are used on all food displays and the food shields,” Hopkins says. “Lighting is specified according to the food color of the foods served at each station, not with a color index of one-size-fits-all. Halogen lamps are not used, due to excessive heat that radiates from halogen lamps to the food and into the room.”
Food shield light housing conceals the heat lamps over entrée counters. This creates a low-profile look while heat lamps keep foods set out on black glass heat shelves hot on the top as well as at the bottom of the platter.
Labor efficiency factored into the café design equation. “Only three-to-five staff members are needed to man the counters during slow periods, despite the size and variety of the menu offerings,” Hopkins says. “With this efficiency, the servery can be held open for a longer period.”
After selecting menu items, customers walk east toward the exit, perhaps adding another dessert or beverage to their selections and pay the cashier with an employee debit card or credit card. The cafeteria does not accept cash. They exit into the dining room, go up onto the mezzanine seating above the dining room, or return to the elevator bank.
When leaving, customers drop off trays onto a rubber-band tray conveyor that connects the dining room to the dishroom. “A carousel warewasher recycles rinse water to a power pre-rinse compartment at the dishwasher entrance saving both time and labor,” Hopkins says. The dishwasher comprises most of the dishroom. A breakdown table with a water-conserving re-circulating disposer also sits in the room.
“A food collector can be substituted for the garbage disposer if or when regulations stipulate elimination of disposers because they harm the environment by sending grease-laden foods into the waste stream,” Hopkins says. “The Times may elect in the future to recycle food waste for off-site composting and further reduce waste stream impacts.”
In the 3,985-square-foot back-of-house kitchen, which seems invisible to customers because there is only one entry and exit point at the far end, staff prepare all foods that aren't cooked to order in the servery. They can also transport catered menu items out through two sets of kitchen doors opening out into the service corridor either midway in the kitchen or at the north end.
“Throughout the operation, we selected energy- and space-efficient equipment, water-cooled refrigeration systems, ultra-violet exhaust hoods, low-radiant grills, and thermal air-dried food warmers,” Hopkins says. “Much of the equipment is multi-function.” Though servery and catering staff share food processing equipment, they each have their own prep areas.
Food deliveries come into the kitchen through dedicated elevators and dumbwaiters from the service corridor next to the kitchen and dishroom. Staff place food and supplies in dry storage and walk-in coolers, one for vegetables and meat, another for fish and dairy. The first cooler also contains a freezer. A third cooler holds prepared food that is wheeled in on carts and dollies. “Walk-in cooler air is scrubbed for impurities and off-odors by air cleaners while it is circulated by the evaporators that extend product shelf life and reduce trim loss,” Hopkins says.
Also in the back of the kitchen adjacent to the catering area sit a mobile ice cart, ice bin and cube ice machine. A potwash room includes a mechanical pot/pan washing machine and a powerwash three-compartment sink.
Ample worktables allow servery and catering staff to prepare large quantities of food without bumping into one another. A 60-quart floor-model mixer, which stands on a structurally reinforced floor pad, makes dough for pizza and flatbread. Mobile ingredient bins sit nearby.
In the cold prep area, staff use a food processor, food cutter, vegetable dryer and a 20-quart mixer. Two roll-in blast chillers stand in between the cold prep area and walk-ins and the hot prep area.
The hot prep areas contain an array of equipment. One hot cookline contains a combi oven-steamer for vegetables and roasts, a double-deck convection oven, a blast chiller and a slicer on a mobile table. Also in this area are a 20-quart mixer and hot food cabinets that keep food warm for transport. Utensil racks hang overhead so staff have easy access.
In another section, cooks use a hot-top range, open-burner range, charbroiler and tilting braising pan to make sauces, soups, pasta and entrées such as veal picata.
At the south end of the kitchen, an exhaust hood covers a convection steamer, 25-gallon tilting kettle, 40-gallon tilting kettle, a kettle filler and twin 12-gallon kettles with stands. Another blast chiller brings food quickly to safe temperatures. “Heating elements in the combi ovens, steamers and brewers are protected from lime scale buildup using permanent water ionizers,” Hopkins says.
As requests for catering and private dining increase, the kitchen will be able to efficiently handle the volume. “We have plenty of capacity here and can easily increase production,” says George Nikolopoulos, executive sous chef.
As the foodservice staff continue to support employees who produce one of, if not the most highly respected newspapers in the world, they realize they, too, are raising expectations for their craft. In this new building that lets in so much light and is so transparent, every facet of the foodservice, from the food preparation to the equipment design and placement, is subject to scrutiny. That is certainly a call to remain alert and inquisitive.
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The photo in the gallery with the following caption
"Executive Sous Chef George Nikolopoulos, Restaurant Associates, inspects the facility after a busy lunch period." is incorrect. The photo is of Angel Gonzalez of H. Weiss Equipment and not the RA Sous Chef.
Donovan Espeut - 5/19/2008 6:46:00 AM PDT
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