Automation is rapidly transforming the frozen food preparation industry, including how companies can make pizzas. Businesses are automating their processes more and more. It’s possible to automate almost every step of the pizza production process, and by doing so, your company can increase its productivity, efficiency, and profit margin. Your company can find automatic cardboard circle placers, sauce applicators, cheese and IQF vegetable applicators, and meat slicers to streamline your production process. While there are many benefits of automating these toppings during preparation, there are significant advantages of automated cheese applicators for pizza producers. In this article, we’ll discuss the advantages of automated cheese applicators for pizza producers. But first, we’ll briefly look at the current state of the frozen foods industry and food factory automation.
Frozen Foods and Food Factory Automation
Businesses in the frozen foods industry are turning to automation to keep up with demand. In 2021, research valued the frozen foods industry as worth about 252 billion dollars. Frozen pizza alone was valued at just over 6 billion dollars. Below are three reasons why food factory automation is becoming popular.
Flexibility
Automation allows companies to speed up production of their food products to meet demand. However, what if there’s a dip in demand? If there is a dip in demand or surplus in the supply chain, this could potentially allow food materials and products to go wasted, especially if the dip in demand outlasts their expiry dates. Food factory automation allows your company to adjust the production speeds of your product to match both increases and dips in demand.
Improved Quality Control
When your company employs automated equipment to prepare your frozen pizzas, your products will become more consistent and have improved quality. This is because you design how you would like them to apply the ingredients.
Better Traceability
Food factory automation also improves the traceability of your products, depending on which steps are automated. Quantum’s equipment has digital interfaces and offers status information, which can help you track the progress of your production line and identify any errors before packaging.
The benefits of automating your pizza production process are numerous. Now, let’s focus on the advantages of automated cheese applicators for pizza producers. After all, cheese as a pizza topping is perhaps the most iconic part of the pizza.
Cheese as a Pizza Topping
Cheese as a pizza topping is classic and a great topping to focus on to create a unique meal for your customers. While mozzarella is the typical cheese used on pizza, our cheese applicators can dispense several cheese types, from shredded to granular. As long as your ingredients fit the applicators, the applicators can dispense your cheese ingredients. Let’s look at the different cheese applicators we have available before discussing the advantages of automated cheese applicators for pizza producers. These applicators include shredded (primary) cheese applicators and dry/granular ingredient applicators that can be used for other cheeses.
Primary Cheese Applicators
Primary cheese applicators follow the automated sauce applicators. Once the sauce is applied to the dough, the dough can pass through a waterfall cheese applicator for cheese application. These applicators usually only apply one type of cheese. If your company wants other cheeses, you can add another applicator after the primary one.
Dry and Granular Ingredient Applicators
After the sauce, the primary cheese, meat, and other toppings are applied to the pizza. The pizza can pass under a dry and granular ingredient applicator. These applicators can dispense other cheeses, especially granulated cheese like parmesan, as the last topping for your pizza products.
Now that we’ve briefly described the different types of cheese applicators, let’s finally discuss the advantages of automated cheese applicators for pizza producers.
Advantages of Automated Cheese Applicators
As a pizza topping, cheese is quite versatile. Our machines can meet your brand’s specifications to create unique pizza products. The advantages of automated cheese applicators for pizza producers include customization, multi-purpose equipment, and saving materials and resources.
Customization
Automation simplifies the pizza production process, from meeting demand to product development, with minimal financial risk. At Quantum, our machines are easily set to meet your demands and adjust to fluxes in the market.
Multi-Purpose
Another benefit of our automated cheese applicators is that they have many purposes. Our dry and granular ingredient applicators not only dispense granulated cheese like parmesan or feta, but they can also dispense dry ingredients like spices and herbs and granulated ingredients like olives or diced pineapple. Depending on the model, The applicators we recommend for primary cheese dispensing can also handle IQF vegetables. Our multi-purpose machines allow extensive customization beyond cheeses.
Save on Materials and Resources
Lastly, our automated equipment is built with reclaim features, meaning any unused cheese that doesn’t make it onto a pizza is recycled and applied to pizzas down the production line. Collecting unused materials limits waste and saves capital otherwise spent on the wasted ingredients. Reclaim is conducted automatically, without any employees needed but your oversight team.
Automated Cheese Application With Quantum
At Quantum, you can fully customize your pizza production line to meet demand. Our customizable pizza equipment allows you to design and rearrange your production line to achieve your desired products. Between designated cheese applicators and dry and granular ingredient applicators, your brand can apply virtually any cheese onto your pizza products as long as the applicators can dispense it. Contact us at Quantum Technical Services today to start automating your pizza production line.