Cookal’s “Omega” cooking plate. cooking
The small company from Nancy offers restaurateurs a product that aims to be innovative and spectacular. She now hopes to seduce individuals.
With nearly 70,000 to 80,000 sales since its marketing last year, restaurateurs are buying it every day. Proposed by the Cookal company, which specializes in culinary innovation, the Omega plate has met with some success. This allows professionals to offer their customers a show meal, by cooking their food directly in front of them, on their plate. Something to surprise gourmets.
At the start of the project, there was no question of inventing a new type of plate. The founder of Cookal, Laurent Probst, had to respond to a problem posed to him by an alcohol manufacturer: to relaunch the consumption of his spirits. “In recent years, strong alcohols have been on the decline. For example, cognac is consumed less in France. Young people turn more to wine and beer, by comparison“says this trained chemist and water specialist. A question of generation which therefore pushed the market to reinvent itself. And it is in a rather special way that this professional engineer responded to the needs of the industrialist: “I created a cooking alcoholexplains Laurent Probst. But politically correct alcohol!he says.
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The chemist has made organic alcohols called “Aromatics“. These can be produced from organic barley or wheat, available in several flavorings, such as thyme, rosemary or black pepper, from organic farming. The difference with a classic alcohol? It is not necessary to preheat it to make it flambé. “With Cookal, combustion is simplified: the alcohol is placed directly on the meat or fish placed on a skewer, it is ignited and the fat flows underneath“says Laurent Probst. The plate, too, is part of this eco-responsible approach. In porcelain, the latter is made in Limoges, in one of the last five companies specializing in the field of the city.
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80,000 sales since last year
“Today, large catering groups are beginning to take an interest in this plate“, welcomes the founder of Cookal, whose company has received seven innovation awards in fifteen years. At the beginning of the year, he even launched into the creation of his own restaurant in Nancy, his hometown: “The Chef’s Flame» was born with the objective of using exclusively the range of plates «Omega“.
With nearly 80,000 sales since its launch last year, more and more restaurateurs are taking the plunge. “ Today, large catering groups are beginning to take an interest in this plate. “, notes Laurent Probst. A great success for this company of about ten employees. This product is unanimous among all generations: “Older people think it’s good and younger people say it works well on social media because it’s visual and spectacular.“, he specifies.
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With his invention, the most complicated is “to have been able to create an art of living around this experience. We couldn’t come up with this innovation and present it like in all classic restaurants. This had to be thought of in order to make the meal spectacular.From now on, the businessman wants to market his product to the general public: Laurent Probst estimates that 100,000 of his plates can be sold to this target. In a few years perhaps, during a meal with friends, you will see this innovation at your table.