The award-winning dubbing and subtitling studio is celebrating two decades of success in the industry and its expansion to 14 international locations.
The Kitchen, the subtitling and dubbing studio, is celebrating 20 years in the industry. Over the last two decades, the company has grown from a staff of 3, to over 100 full time and hundreds of part-time and freelance team members around the globe.
The Kitchen began with three dubbing booths in Miami, and now has 17 locally, with another 50 globally. The studio grew from one location, to 14 (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, MENA; Hungary; Israel and the US), in addition to its European translation department in the UK, and its European sales office in Spain.
To commemorate the occasion, Ken Lorber, CEO and President of The Kitchen, shared a letter with the company’s friends and clients:
There were boxes and boxes of video tapes arriving daily. There were no digital files. It was an analog world, tape in and tape out. Shelves upon shelves of tapes infiltrated the entire facility. No instantaneous uploads or downloads of material were able to be sent around the world. Every tape had to be sent via FedEx, every email or manifest had to be manually typed by a person, and there was no day and date opportunity, unless the playout operation was local.
There were Betacam machines for NTSC and PAL; there were BetaSP machines, DigiBeta units and transcoders for converting from NTSC to PAL and vice versa. That was our business just 20 years ago!
In reality, the evolution to a true end-to-end digital operation happened about six years ago. There is no doubt however, that in the years since, we have seen as much advancement in our industry as we have seen in the last 40 years.
Today, as The Kitchen celebrates 20 years of business, we affectionately smile in wonder at how far we have come as an industry. And as we dare to envision what the next 20 years will be, we welcome all the anticipated and even unexpected changes that our astute technical and engineering teams foresee on the horizon.
Our global management team consists of some of the most talented and experienced professionals in every realm of the business, from engineering and technology, to sales and marketing and everything in between.
We are not the biggest language localization studio, but we do feel we are among the best! Our personal, customer service guarantee is part of who we are. We believe in old-fashioned, one on one, service and truly answer our phones 24/7.
Today’s “generation x” may not have even held a Betacam videocassette, worried about missing a day and date delivery schedule, or freaked at delivering 100 episodes, in the form of 100 tapes, but tomorrow’s “generation z”, may be in for some big surprises. And you can bet on The Kitchen continuing to grow and add services and technical advancements, at the speed dictated by this accelerated, fast-moving industry.
We look forward to the next 20 and hope you will be there with us!
