The Sustainable Shift Drink

I’m often making recommendations to restaurant owners that they install high-efficiency (low-flow) pre-rinse spray valves at their dish sink. I’ve seen various types and have had many sites install the units, but with mixed reactions. Some people say they love them, others say they don’t see a difference from their previous unit, and a few other wind up telling that they had to put their old one back in because the low-flow didn’t work. Typically they say it took too long to rinse off dishes, which seems odd to me because the Food Service Technology Center has done extensive research on pre-rinse spray valves that proved otherwise. Not that they operators where wrong, but maybe they just have bad water pressure.

So, with all the back and forth I’ve seen with the sprayers I’m curious what others have experienced. Have you installed a 1.0 gpm or under sprayer? What kind did you buy? How did you like it? Did the dishwashers complain, praise it or not even notice? Did you see a difference on your water or natural gas bill?

Let me know in the comments or via the contact page and I’ll compile the results into a user review post.

Tags: pre-rinse sprayer, water efficiency
Posted in Equipment, Water | 2 Comments »

I recently found an article about all the updating going on with Energy Star commercial kitchen equipment. I missed it when it came out in early March, but I thought it was still a good article to post. Basically, they will be improving the efficiency standards, verification standards and adding new equipment to the program. Despite some concerns and debate from the manufacturers over the new standards, more efficient equipment is good news for all of us equipment buyers and users.

http://fesmag.com/features/foodservice-issues/9648-update-on-energy-star-for-the-foodservice-equipment-industry

Tags: Energy Star, kitchen equipment
Posted in Equipment | 1 Comment »

The Consortium for Energy Efficiency recently released a guide to energy efficiency for demand ventilation titled: Commercial Kitchen Ventilation: An Energy Efficiency Program Administrator’s Guide to Demand Control Ventilation. The guide was developed with CKV manufacturers. Additionally, CEE is considering a plan to develop performance tests for demand control ventilation.

It would be great to see some certified demand ventilation in the market…

Tags: demand ventilation, kitchen ventilation
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Our post today is from a guest writer, Greg McGuire, from The Back Burner.

If your restaurant or commercial food service operation uses steam tables to keep food hot before you serve the customer, then this post is for you. If this post is for you, then you already know how integral steam tables can be in your day-to-day operations. You also know they can eat up a lot of energy on a daily basis.

Making steam tables more energy efficient is easier than you might think. If you’ve got an older unit, the first thing to consider is buying a new steam table. Newer models are more efficient, more reliable, and create a better impression with your customer.

I know, you thought I said this would be easy. In the likely case you’re planning on keeping your current steam tables and just want to make them more efficient, read on for the really easy part.

Steam table pans are the essential moving part that keeps a steam table going. Those pans also act as a lid that helps trap the heat the table is creating to keep food warm. And as anyone who has worked with those steam table pans knows, over time the corners and edges become bent and wavy. In fact, my personal experience is that it only takes a trip or two through the dishwashing station in a busy kitchen for those corners and edges to start bending upward.

The problem with bent corners and edges on steam table pans is that their role as the lid on the heat generated by the table is compromised. The gaps between the edges of the well and the edges of the table allow steam to escape, and anyone watching a pot of water come to a boil knows that one without a tightly sealed lid is going to take longer.

It may not seem like a big deal to have a little steam escaping from a couple gaps where the pan meets the well, and by itself for an hour or two it isn’t. The problem is that if you’re using steam tables to keep food warm, you’ve probably got it running for several hours at a time many days in a row. Over time, those little gaps end up costing you significant amounts of money – as much as $30 per well per year!

This is where the easy part comes in. A pair of pliers and some time should be enough for you to straighten out the curled and bent edges of your existing steam table pans.

When you go to buy new pans, I would highly recommend The Edge steam table pans by Polarware. These pans are made from 300 series stainless steel and have a reinforced edge and corners that resists bending or curling. The edges are also specially designed for easy gripping, making the constant chore of replacing steam table pans much easier on your staff.

Sometimes the simplest solution, like making sure all the edges on your steam table pans are straight, can make a huge difference, especially in a business with historically thin profit margins like the food service industry. And sometimes, when all new steam table pans look the same, one has features that make it stand out from the crowd. Polarware’s The Edge steam table pans are definitely a standout.

Greg McGuire blogs about restaurant marketing and management at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and other food service supplies.

Tags: energy efficiency, steam table
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Our post today is from a guest writer, Greg McGuire, from The Back Burner.

The presence of a large multi-burner gas range at the heart of the cooking line is about as fundamental as it gets in any restaurant. That iron and stainless steel behemoth uses a lot of energy, throws a lot of heat, and requires a dedicated ventilation system just to keep the cooks from getting overwhelmed.

For decades no proper chef would have it any other way. That’s beginning to change, and the catalyst of that change is the induction range. Induction cooking works in a completely different manner than traditional gas or electric ranges. Instead of using a superhot medium like burning gas or an electrically heated element, induction ranges use the energy created by two opposing magnetic fields driven by an electric current to make the metal in the cookware itself become hot.

Sound a little geeky? It is, in a cool science project kind of way. For professional chefs, the most interesting thing about induction cooking are the practical advantages it can bring to the process, including:

Precision temperature control. While there is certainly a steep learning curve in the beginning, once a chef gets an induction range dialed in based upon the numbers on the knob, you can be sure you’ll get consistent, perfectly even heat every time. This is especially beneficial for low temperature and simmering applications, because an induction range can maintain a much lower heat than a traditional gas or electric range.

Speed. You’ve never seen a pot boil faster or oil heat up quicker than on an induction range. Because the metal of the pot or pan sitting on the burner becomes the heating agent instead of the medium, induction is by far the fastest way to heat whatever you’re cooking.

Efficiency. An induction range uses a fraction of the energy used by a traditional range. There’s also almost zero energy waste since the energy used to heat food is created in the metal of the cookware instead of below it. This energy is also created by a relatively weak electrical current, which can be much more inexpensive than natural gas.

Safety. An induction burner that’s turned on to full heat is still cool to the touch. As it heats metal cookware it will become hot, but the burner itself creates no heat. This makes induction much safer than traditional ranges. Some induction ranges even have automatic detectors that shut off the burner when there is no pan present, when the pan is empty, or when foreign objects fall onto the surface of the range.

Ventilation. Because induction ranges don’t burn fuel like a gas range, minimal ventilation is needed, and much less heat is created, even if you’re running induction all day on a busy line. This can save any restaurant a boatload of money on the ventilation and cooling costs normally associated with a traditional gas range. Make sure you consult the local regulations in your community when deciding how much ventilation you need to install for an induction range. In general, however, the requirements should be a fraction of those for a gas range.

Induction cooking isn’t for every restaurant. Some chefs don’t like the fact that cookware cools off rapidly when it’s not in contact with the burner – a distinct disadvantage for techniques that call for using the pan to flip or sautee ingredients as they cook. Induction also supports only certain types of cookware – usually stainless steel or cast iron – which means your aluminum cookware will be useless on an induction range.

If you are interested in induction cooking, Vollrath has been a pioneer in developing induction ranges, countertop burners, and even chafers for the food service industry. So far another factor slowing the widespread adoption of induction technology in restaurants has been the cost of equipment. As energy prices, especially natural gas, continue to rise and the cost of quality induction equipment comes down, however, induction cooking starts to make more and more sense.

Greg McGuire blogs about restaurant marketing and management at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and other food service supplies.

Tags: energy efficiency, induction cooking, kitchen ventilation
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