[nicko]

Seems that more and more chefs are getting connected to the internet. With the expansion of business to business site on the internet I believe most of the ordering process will no longer be done over the phone, but will all be done from the Internet. I have spoken with one chef who uses his palm pilot to take his orders for the next day and then just transfers them to his PC, and then emails the orders in. That is really amazing. Along with that the use of automatic scheduling software will make it possible to just set up an automatic schedule on your pc (or mac, don't forget about the mac guys) and have your regular produce, meats and fish automatically ordered for you.

In addtion to that I think it will also give chefs more opportunity to find the best product and not just limit them to local purveyors.

It is interesting to consider how the Internet is going to affect Chef industry and if the affects will be positive or negative.

Any thoughts?

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Best Regards,

Nicko
[email protected]

 

[jim berman]

I know that I rely on the internet to bring me information that I may not be able to find easily. Specifically, I did a meal based on a Hawaiin Luau and was able to get information on food and presentation from people in Hawaii by way of a Hawaiin chat room. I just completed a v.i.p. and had quite some time trying to get information on intermezzo; I relied on web-based bulletin boards to get the information I needed and in a short amount of time. It seems that whatever the topic, the information is but a few key strokes away.
Also, products are more plentiful than ever. The variety of items available through speciality vendors is more abundant than ever; its almost like when trains first criss-crossed the country in the late 1800s, and there was an explosion of new products available. Not to mention 'grocery' vendors. I do twice-weekly general-inventory purchasing over the 'net. I am one of those people that has an automated inventory package integrated with my ordering. What once was an all day event, is now but a small chore.
The onset of the cyber-chef revolution, I think, will go hand-in-hand with the creation of some wild food. My thinking is that new foods that were difficult or impossible to find, will creep on to the menus of the tech-savvy chefs who partake in the new availibility of specialty items teamed with the explosion of useful information.