The Sodexo Success Story - Featuring Brian Wagner

Just an hour south of Chicago, you will find a hardworking chef with a big job on his hands.  Olivet Nazarene University has over 5,000 students and faculty on its campus and it is Chef Brian Wagner’s job to make sure they are all fed.  Chef Wagner works for Sodexo and has had a passion for cooking for decades but just recently found a new tool to help him serve thousands of meals every day.

Chef Wagner has been using the GAME CHANGER in the ONU kitchen for almost six months and has found it to be revolutionary for how his staff is able run a large kitchen.  Traditional smokers require constant monitoring and adjusting, but the GAME CHANGER is not a traditional smoker.  Chef Wagner remarks, “It allows me to cook more meat at once, I can adjust the temperature, time, smoke, and the hold all at the press of a button.”  The GAME CHANGER allows the kitchen to not only increase their yield, but also make to a better quality product every time.

For years, Chef Wagner cooked with a Southern Pride smoker that held half the amount of food as his new GAME CHANGER Smoker.  He would have to spend 3-8 hours monitoring and smoking only enough brisket for one meal.  Now, Chef Wagner is able to put all 15 briskets in the GAME CHANGER, set the temperature, leave it to smoke overnight, then serve the next day to the hungry students - improving the efficiency of his kitchen immensely.  “They [the briskets] were beautiful and tender!  It saved me so much time,” Chef Wagner exclaimed.

With the GAME CHANGER’s extensive features, Chef Wagner can cook anything from cold-smoked butter and avocados for students in the cafeteria, to a whole hog for hungry players the Bears training camp.  However, his favorite feature is the “smoke-and-hold” feature because he is able to maintain a specific temperature overnight while keeping a great flavor profile. His only complaint about the GAME CHANGER is that he doesn’t have enough time to experiment and be creative with all of its features!