The Royal Oak
Lukasz Kobus
One man really can do it all- how Lukasz Kobus bagged a 5 Star hygiene rating from the chaos of a one-man kitchen.
Head chef, Lukasz Kobus, of the Royal Oak independent pub, tucked away near the edge of lake windermere in the idyllic fells of the lake district, shares his story of how Leafe revolutionised his kitchen, leading him to bag a hygiene rating of 5 after only a few months of chef work.
Lukasz describes how he was thrown in the deep-end, having only worked as a chef a few months before finding himself cooking up a storm, working alone as the only chef for all 150 covers of this popular Lindale pub. Locally known as the 'top house', the Royal Oak welcomes walkers, tourists and villagers alike with its expansive menu and stunning beer garden.
“it's hard,” he confides in us, “very long hours as you can imagine”
“I don't really have time to sit down and do all the paperwork at the end of the night.”
He goes on to describe the chaos of messy admin, how it was always “covered in food, oil or tomato ketchup”- he was at his wits end. “there are lots of businesses that don't even do their records properly.” Lukasz tells us how, before Leafe, he would sometimes even have to fill in paperwork retrospectively at the end of the week, “that's not how that's supposed to be.” he looks pained, then continues, “so then I saw an ad (…) and thought yeah, let's give it a try and see what happens”.
What happened changed the game.
“It helped me to control pretty much everything: temperature checks, getting our targets right.” he describes how everything in his kitchen became more efficient, even estimating that going back to paper records would add another day of work to his schedule. The main thing was to save time- that was the biggest change for me.” we ask him when he fits Leafe into his working day and for a second he looks confused,
“I mean all the time- it's in real time”,”when I'm prepping anything, I can just quickly put a record in. That's very convenient.”,”let's say I take a five minute break for a quick smoke, I can still do records. Everything is controlled.”
“Congratulations on your five star hygiene rating” we prompt him, But he remains modest.
“The inspector was quite happy with our app. So brilliant. That was great.” He continues, “I'm still learning (…) I'm learning from the app, which is, you know, quite cool.”
As we finish up he tells us that he is now able to employ another chef in the kitchen and has passed the app onto him to use too- “it's very convenient”, none of that faked, end of the sheet bollocks!”
