foodservice design

Foodservice design can get complicated, especially when working at the South Pole. Imagine that all your equipment and supplies have to be shipped during the Antarctic Summer, because that's the only time planes can take-off and land safely. That's what foodservice is like at the South Pole Station, where the average year-round temperature is 56 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. You have to pre-plan an entire year's menu, and make sure that there are plenty of spare parts in case anything breaks.

These were only a few of the challenges facing Rob Perry, Account Manager for TriMark Raygal, which supplied foodservice equipment to the newly-constructed Wing A2 cafeteria, as well as Antarctica's McMurdo Station.

In the September 2003 issue of Foodservice equipment & supplies magazine, Jon Emanuel, the station's foodservices supervisor and head chef, described the difficulties of feeding between 60 in the winter and 220 people in the summer.

Gas ovens and open-flame stovetops are forbidden because the air at the South Pole is so dry that they would be a fire risk. A new walk-in refrigerator not only saves time in the kitchen, it also means reducing the number of trips outside to the primary dry and frozen food storage area.

Since it wasn't practical for TriMark Raygal to travel to the South Pole for site-visits, the Antarctic staff went to TriMark Raygal's Irvine facility for training in use, installation and maintenance. "We coordinated installation information and problem solving through numerous phone calls and faxes," Rob Perry explained.

TriMark Raygal also made sure that the station was equipped with two years of spare parts. TriMark Raygal service technicians will also be on-call by telephone year-round to talk the Antarctica staff through repairs -- because if something breaks you can't overnight a spare. One simple addition to the facility was an in-cafeteria refrigerator where leftovers are stored along with reheating instructions so that hungry staff can have a midnight sun snack.

What happens when Jasper White, the champion of New England Seafood, decides that he wants to slash the size of his next Summer Shack in half?

He calls Al Nunes at TriMark United East for a problem-solving conference. The challenge was to maintain quality, cut the size of the kitchen, maintain efficiency, and design a model that could be easily reproduced for future expansion.

Scaling down the number of fry stations from five to three was only the first step. Nunes helped design the kitchen layout and equipment for efficiency. Equipment and tables were arranged to eliminate steps. Doors on refrigerators and cooling units were redesigned to minimize expense and maximize speedy access. The entire kitchen was pre-assembled and then disassembled before being moved to Back Bay to minimize on-site electrician and plumbing expense.

White's commitment to quality and the environment helped make decisions easier. The deep friers that TriMark United East installed feature built-in filters, allowing French fry oil to be filtered and reused in fish friers. Since the "clam shack" theme requires a lot of paper use, a gigantic pulper was installed, eliminating the need for a dumpster and reducing waste by 80% -- to only two covered push buckets.