CGI Aromi was introduced in the Swedish food service industry in 2019 when Burlöv became the first municipality in Sweden to choose Aromi for meal management. Since then, many cities and municipalities have followed Burlov's lead. Malmö and Enköping also have chosen CGI Aromi as their food management system, and there are ongoing discussions with other cities and municiplaties as well. How is CGI Aromi helping these clients to date? We asked them to share their insights and experiences in using CGI Aromi:
Enköping’s Deputy Food Services Manager Petra Björklund has been using CGI Aromi since the beginning of 2022. CGI Aromi is used to plan and serve meals to people in nursing homes and to provide food services to elderly people living at home. Petra tells us that Enköping chose CGI Aromi because it's a new solution within the Swedish market and because it's user-friendly with a simple layout.
What do you think about CGI Aromi?
"We are really happy with the solution," says Petra. "Of course, there are issues in the beginning that had to be addressed, but now working with the solution is easy and efficient, and it provides us with all of the information we need."
Petra says that one of the biggest benefits of CGI Aromi is the ability to place online orders. Not only can orders be placed easily and securely, but it's also possible to monitor orders. In addition, the time from order to delivery has been shortened from a week to four days.
"In addition, tasks previously performed manually, such as those relating to bookkeeping and invoicing, are now handled directly via CGI Aromi's integration with our financial system, eliminating the need to enter figures manually in many different solutions," notes Petra.
A health care environment can be fast changing, shares Petra. For example, often a patient will need to be transferred to a hospital on short notice, changing meal plans. With a shorter order-to-delivery cycle made possible by CGI Aromi, staff can modify orders quickly as needed, says Petra.
Petra also is looking forward to using CGI Aromi's eMenu feature, which enables online menu posting, including pictures and other information relating to menus, such as special diets.
Pilot project in Malmö
The city of Malmö purchased CGI Aromi in 2021, and the implementation city-wide is in progress. In the future, CGI Aromi will be used to plan and deliver more than 40,000 daily meals to students in the city’s preschools, elementary schools and high schools. It will be implemented in about 90 school kitchens altogether. This extensive project is lead by Joel Noren who is Operations Development Officer for the city of Malmö.
In March of 2022, Malmö initiated a pilot project with four of the professional school kitchens that will adopt the solution later on. "We believe that it is better to begin a project of this size with small steps and with just a few pilot kitchens instead of involving all 90 of them," says Joel.
Joel explains an ambassador in each school kitchen will be chosen to support and promote CGI Aromi's rollout. "After all, it is not only a new solution that will be introduced, it also is a new way of working for many,' he notes. "It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are or how efficient the system is if the kitchen professionals using the solution do not embrace it. We need to get direct feedback from the users and that is why we are contacting them right at the beginning of the project. They can ask us questions and challenge our ideas."
Joel also has engaged a chef who is working full-time to test the solution and develop manuals and handbooks, so that the voice of kitchen personnel will be heard and understood from the start.
How is the Malmö project going?
Only positive feedback has been received to date, shares Joel. "Of course, we get questions like, 'Is this how we need to do things every day,' and similar questions. For some, the way of working introduced by CGI Aromi is completely different from the old way, and they may not yet see the benefits of the new system yet. However, the general opinion of our employees is that introducing a new food management solution is a positive thing, and they are excited to finally be able to use it."
"If all goes well, as it evidently will, we will see significant improvements in our operations," says Joel. "Our employees will be able to focus less on administrative tasks and more on improving the customer experience."
About CGI Aromi
CGI Aromi is an intelligent modular solution that supports the entire food service delivery cycle in commercial kitchens—from menu planning and cooking, to delivering and serving meals, to invoicing and customer communication. The solution can, among other things, take into account allergies and special diets, calculate food waste, and recommend raw ingredients according to the season. It also can calculate the carbon footprint of food through a collaboration with the Swedish state-owned research institute RISE.
