The concept of ready-to-eat meals tailored to specific customers has shifted from traditional culinary experiences or grocery store visits to the seamless process of ordering and delivering diverse dishes, sidestepping conventional dining in restaurants as a social food consumption practice.
The ready-made food delivery market has expanded significantly, with the global pandemic playing a role in this surge. Small enterprises frequently turn to the services of so-called "shadow kitchens" to fulfill their catering needs.
This emerging trend in the foodservice industry empowers entrepreneurs to vastly extend their geographical consumer base. The same principle applies to in-flight meal production, differing mainly in scale. Establishing a dark kitchen is sometimes as simple as incorporating a few small cooking kettles into the kitchen. However, more often, a professional kitchen is better suited for this business model, equipped with specialized installations like industrial scale pans, blanchers, Cooking kettles, Cook and Chill systems, compact conveyor fryers and deep fryers for the HoReCa segment, as well as vacuum fryers for healthy snacks, and much more.
A crucial equipment requirement in this context is maintaining the freshness of the product that is being processed, a characteristic that remains intact even during extended storage. Equipment like the Cook and Chill system embody this methodology, where the product is brought to an "almost ready to eat" state, resembling the al dente concept in pasta preparation. Following this, the product undergoes rapid cooling, packaging, freezing, and subsequent distribution. This thermal processing method is frequently applied in cooking grains, vegetables, fish, meat, meatballs, and various other food products.
