How to improve food service in a busy cafe’ environment
Australian cities and beaches surely offer some of the world’s most beautiful locations to enjoy the first meal of the day, a delicious breakfast. We’ve got heaps of cosy beautiful cafes, hidden beach-side gems that are teeming with people over the weekend. We have no fear to go through endless queues and waiting lists or drive significantly far to fix our morning craving.
On an average Sunday morning in a not particularly big Sydney’s café, hundreds of dishes came out of the kitchen within a few hours. Service must be quick and food must be of a good quality… I would say of excellent quality as customers’ expectations are becoming increasingly high due to our extremely competitive market always able to offer the fanciest culinary experiences and products.
Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to tick all the boxes in the long requirements list of “perfect catering”. Quality ingredients, food safety and staff organization represent key factors that should be continuously monitored and carefully planned if you don’t want your business to incur a severe loss of profits (and bad reputation on social networks) due to poor service.
Technology is absolutely playing a fundamental role when it comes to catering. Cafes can incredibly benefit from improving their kitchen organisation with an efficient refrigeration system that prevents food contamination and prolongs food shelf life. Fridges and freezers cannot be enough if you need to meet a very busy catering that involves quality and speed of service at the same time.
Frozen food isn’t always the right solution as the difference in quality with fresh food is well known. Although daily supplies of fresh food involve a considerable waste of staff energy focused on preparation and resources due to oversupply or undersupply.
Coldline, the Italian leading company in commercial refrigeration, is running an educational campaign about the correct use of blast chillers and blast freezers in the kitchen. With VISION multifunction’s blast chillers you can adjust the temperature from -40°C to +35° C, humidity from 40% to 95% and ventilation intensity from 30% to 100%, an innovation that allows a single unit to perform a surprising number of functions. Bacteria multiply faster between +8 ° C and +68 ° C, blast chilling is a treatment that allows to bring the food temperature down to + 3 °C from the cooking temperature in a very short time. This treatment allows eliminating dangerous bacteria that can grow in hazardous food like salmon, eggs and bacon.
Also, blast freezing is not the same as freezing. VISION can rapidly reduce the air temperature -40°C by micro crystalizing the water within the cells of the food. This means that the food will not lose any liquid during the thawing process. Traditional freezers are unable to achieve such a low temperature, resulting in prolonging freezing times. This causes the water to form into large crystals which destroy the fibres and leads to a loss of vitamins and nutrients, compromising the quality of the food. Blast frozen food keeps the original organoleptic characteristics, simple frozen food doesn’t. When you regenerate blast frozen food it keeps the same flavour, texture and properties of fresh food or freshly cooked food. You can now plan and schedule food preparation in advance. Consider concentrating the entire weekly preparation in only 2 days; You are not just saving you time and finance but you are also improving your staff workflow and quality of your service.
Thanks to these amazing features, you can also optimise your food stock, by purchasing certain ingredients when the price is lower. You can buy best quality meats and vegetables when the offer is larger and the price at its best and then blast freeze everything in single-use portions that you can use at your best convenience.
By introducing a VISION multifunction blast chiller into your kitchen you are improving your business performance under many different aspects, hygiene, quality and labour force. A moderate investment can generate enormous benefits.
VISION commercial refrigeration range
Photo credits: Coldline