Doing More with Less at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay: Improving Commissary Efficiency

Citation

Martel C, Bissell H. 2017. Doing More with Less at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay: Improving Commissary Efficiency. In Ward A, Coslik A, Brooks M Eds. Proceedings of the Twelfth Conference on Zoo and Wildlife Nutrition, Zoo and Wildlife Nutrition Foundation and AZA Nutrition Advisory Group, Frisco, TX.

Abstract

Maximizing the efficiency of food preparation is the goal of every commissary operation.  At Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, a number of process improvements have allowed us to take on additional projects and reduce our labor costs.  These include: a thorough re-design of our diet cards to minimize eye movement, maximize clarity, and reduce mistakes; pre-bagging dry goods to minimize traffic in the kitchen; a computerized system that prints specialized stickers that increase food safety and preparation accuracy, specialized reports that allow us to prepare and pull exactly what is needed the next day without wasting food, and underlies a new touchscreen system that we hope will continue the process of error-reduction and speed-enhancement.  Underlying all of this has been a philosophy of “let’s just try it” that has given us the flexibility to test out changes, discard ones that didn’t work, and adopt the ones that do.

[Martel] Martel_Commissary Efficiency.pdf     23 KB