If you are setting up your own catering business, then blast chillers are a great way to guarantee consistent quality and hygiene. Catering is one of the UK's fastest-growing sectors for small businesses, with many people turning their cookery skills into a way of making an income.
When you are first starting out, then you may well find that a small kitchen with basic refrigeration and freezing equipment is enough for you. However, once the business takes off and you start to serve more customers, it won't be too long before this basic equipment is likely to prove inadequate, for a number of reasons.
1. Demonstrating Hygiene Standards
If you are selling to other retailers, such as supermarkets and restaurants, these retailers will want proof of compliance with hygiene standards. This especially applies to the larger companies, who are keen to ensure quality.
Major stores and cafes are regularly audited to ensure top standards of cleanliness, and they will want to make sure that all their suppliers live up to these levels in order to give their customers the best quality and to maintain their own reputation. This means that, as well as making sure that your premises are spotlessly clean, it is also vital to ensure that your products are properly and quickly chilled in line with the best hygiene practice.
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2. Keeping Up With Demand
As your business grows, you may find that you need increased production, but can't afford a move to a bigger kitchen. In this case, blast chillers are the answer, because they increase your capacity by cutting the amount of chill time needed to prepare each new batch of freshly-cooked produce to be sent out to your customers.
So, after investing in a chiller, you will no longer have to keep your customers waiting while food is chilled to the right temperature. Commercial chillers also have a holding mode which means that it is possible to keep chilled food safely until it is required, increasing your storage capacity.
3. Longer Shelf Life
At first, you may only be providing food to customers in your immediate area, but as word travels this is likely to change. Once food is travelling further, or being displayed in stores before being bought, then shelf life becomes increasingly important. It is essential to prevent food wastage, which can often mean lost income if you only get paid for what you sell.
Chilling food more quickly can add significant time to your product's shelf life and so increase your sales and profitability. It will also please customers when they find that the food they have bought lasts well.
4. Food Inspectors
All businesses preparing food are subject to regular food hygiene inspections, which are carried out by environmental health officers from their local council. These inspections are a fact of life for any food business, regardless of size.
However, smaller businesses can be especially vulnerable and as a result owners need to take particular care to keep up their standards in all areas, especially if they are new and still establishing their customer base. Using a chiller/freezer with Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) monitoring is a way of helping to demonstrate your professional hygiene standards.
5. Meeting Deadlines
If you have a deadline to meet for a specific order, it may be impractical to leave food to chill or freeze overnight in order to be sure it has reached the required temperature. Another problem is that when using a static chiller/freezer, you cannot be absolutely sure when the food has reached the target temperature and therefore when it is ready and safe to send to a customer.
However, with Porkka blast chillers and freezers you do have that certainty, because indicators on the outside of the unit show when the target temperature has been reached. As soon as you see the indicator, food can be sent or collected immediately, cutting out the need for time-wasting delays. This results in greater productivity/efficiency, and makes a small catering business able to be more responsive to larger customer orders.
If you have decided that the time is right to invest in blast chillers for your small catering business, the Porkka range is bound to have one which will meet your requirements. The company produces a wide range of models, all using the latest state-of-the art technology. All the chillers have probes which ensure precise temperature control and built-in automatic defrost systems. If space is an issue, the smallest blast chiller, BC 720SH, has a footprint of just 850x750, meaning it will only take the same space as a normal-sized fridge-freezer.
Porkka's blast chillers all meet all DHSS and Codex standards and combine great performance with guaranteed quality, making them the perfect choice for your catering business.
Blast chillers and freezers – Click here to view our range of products.
