"The whole kitchen management system starts with hygiene... For us, eWater is a major part of that."

Founder of Rockpool Dining Group, Neil Perry is one of Australia's leading and most influential chefs.

While his restaurants, books and tv appearances have made him a household name, many will not know that Neil has long ensured that sustainable practises have been engrained into all his ventures -

"Sustainability is a part of our complete DNA. It's about doing our part to look after the planet - for example producing less packaging waste and not introducing chemical waste into our water systems is super important to me personally and to my businesses."

The food industry is one of the biggest users of hygiene chemicals in the economy and with a demand for both food safety and cleaning products, many kitchens are full of chemical products that can be both hazardous to use and pollute our environment.

Getting Kitchen Hygiene Right

As Neil highlights however, 'Kitchen hygiene is fundamental to looking after your customers. That's that's one of the basic parts of a really well run kitchen that you know can't be overlooked and should never be overlooked'.

The challenge therefore was to ensure the highest standard of hygiene, but not at the cost of his team and the planet. This underlying challenge lead Neil to seek out an alternative for his restaurants that ultimately lead him to eWater.

Offering the same standards of efficacy but without the downsides, eWater enabled Rockpool Group to dramatically cut their endless reliance on chemical consumables. Today, eWater has been installed across many of the Rockpool Group restaurants including their flagship Rockpool Restaurants and their premium burger offering Burger Project.

"The difference between eWater and other products is that one's natural and one just isn't. For us to have a simple water-based cleaning and sanitising product is much better than pouring chemicals into the water table for us, and we just think it's much more preferable."

Pushing the boundaries

Since eWater has been implemented, not only has the group been able to cut their chemical reliance, but they have also been able to introduce new offerings because of the system. Neil shares one example at Burger Project -

"eWater has allowed us to do some amazing things, particularly with our Burger Project restaurants, because we've been able to wash the whole muscle meat on the grill, to cook and serve a medium burger which is an extremely rare thing to get permission to do. The water was a vitally important part of proving that the old bacteria on the outside of the meat was killed before the meat was served, avoiding any issues with bacteria."

The Future of Kitchen Hygiene

With Covid-19 bringing the mundane subject of hygiene to the front of our minds, business owners across the country (and world) are considering what solutions offer a truly resiliant solution for their operations.

"One positive thing after the pandemic and Covid-19 is that actual sanitation and hygiene practices are going to be much improved on what they were. People are going to be very focused on sanitation. 

For us, eWater will be a major part of that. And it's the same with wellness and personal and public health. We'll be forever getting rid of this idea of let's just go to work and soldier on if we're sick and spread viruses - I think that's going to be out the door, and it will be an overall approach to better and more sustainable hygiene practices."

One thing that is certain is that sanitation and hygiene practices will never be the same again. Ultimately this is the biggest wakeup call for industry and regulators alike. Today we need modern solutions to our problems.. not the endless pursuit and reliance of a bottle of chemical covered in warning labels. As Neil summarises -

"Hopefully at some stage it will be mandated by local councils and governments that that every kitchen has to have some kind of natural sanitation scenario, whether that's eWater or a similar product, because it cuts down on chemicals, so hopefully the standard practice will be to actually look after the environment as well as to look after the customer."