Automating your pizza preparation process comes with many benefits. Among them are increased productivity, better quality, and reduction in waste in food ingredients and in value. However, how do you know which pizza equipment is the best? When you invest in automation, you want to be able to rely on your new equipment for both quality and quantity. Investing in automated pizza equipment also helps to increase profit margins and promote sustainability. Eco friendly pizza preparation is possible with state-of-the-art equipment as well as aid in the frozen pizza packaging process. In this article, we’ll go through pizza equipment for cost savings and sustainability. But first, let’s explore the economic benefits of frozen food automation.
Benefits of Frozen Food Automation
The benefits of frozen food automation are plenty, besides it being the future of the food preparation industry. The benefits of frozen food automation include flexibility, digitalization, and workplace safety. With automation, you can adjust which applicators you need in the assembly line easily in order to adjust to market demands. New pizza equipment technology also allows you to manage the assembly lines remotely and monitor production, which makes it helpful to catch any snags along the way. Automated units require fewer employees to manage production and the unit machinery is closed off, both of these factors decrease the chance of workplace hazards. These benefits of frozen food automation are economical, which strengthens your bottom line. Frozen food automation also provides consistency, which is critical in maintaining customer familiarity with your products.
While you may already be familiar with some of the benefits of frozen food automation, it’s always helpful to review them when you’re looking for new pizza equipment for cost savings and sustainability. Next, let’s explore automated eco friendly pizza equipment that’s available to increase productivity, such as sauce and dry topping applicators, just to name a few.
Eco Friendly Pizza Equipment
Automated pizza preparation equipment is eco friendly in a variety of ways.
Cardboard Circle Placers
The first pizza equipment for cost savings and sustainability used is a cardboard circle placer, which can also place cardboard rectangles and squares on a conveyor before the dough is placed. These units place the cardboard down on conveyor systems that protect the dough for the duration of assembly, freezing, transport, and shelf-life. Depending on the placer and the type of cardboard being placed, these placers can handle upwards of 180 circles per minute. These placers are accurate, which mitigates a waste of resources, effort, and expenses.
Sauce Applicators
Following the circle and dough placement, sauce applicators apply a specified amount of sauce to the dough. Because sauce application is efficient, these units also mitigate ingredient waste by applying the amount of sauce needed. There are also waterfall sauce applicators available, where the sauce is applied to the whole product and not a designated area. Nevertheless, the unused excess sauce is recirculated and reused on the following products on the conveyor.
Cheese and IQF Vegetable Applicators
While Cheese and IQF (individually quick frozen) vegetable applicators are usually waterfall-style, these applicators also have reclaim conveyors that recycle the ingredients that don’t initially make it onto the pizza product. Waterfall applicators are great for all-over application and recycling ingredients.
Meat and Pepperoni Slicers
Meats like pepperoni, Canadian bacon, and sausage go through meat slicers where you can specify how many slices per pizza and the design on the pie. Digitally controlling these parameters cuts back on food waste too, since the application is exact.
Dry and Granular Ingredient Applicators
Dry and granular ingredient applicators have reclaim capabilities just as the cheese and IQF vegetable applicators to cut down on waste. Once the leftover ingredients gather on the reclaim conveyor, the topping applicators can reapply them to pizzas until they finally stay on the product. Pizza is ever-popular, so limiting ingredient waste maintains your bottom line.
Water Spray Conveyors
The last of the pizza equipment for cost savings and sustainability that we’ll describe is water spray conveyors. Pizza going through the water spray conveyor portion of the assembly line is one of the last steps in the preparation process since the conveyor applies a light spray of water to the products before freezing. This step is critical before freezing to help maintain the products’ quality. Without water spray conveyors, the freezing, distribution, and shelf-life processes can be harsh on your product, and upon thawing, the product may lose its constitution, resulting in more food waste. Your company uses valuable energy, effort, and resources to connect your products to your customers. If this step of the meal preparation process is left out, your assembled product may not be as appetizing by the time it reaches customers.
Now that we’ve gone described pizza equipment for cost savings and sustainability, let’s go through how automation can help the frozen pizza packaging process.
Automation and Frozen Pizza Packaging
Automation can streamline the frozen pizza packaging process. With the right automated units for your business and prepared meals, your products can be ready for packaging faster compared to manual assembly. Automated preparation keeps products consistent, which simplifies the packaging process. Instead of constantly having to pull products because they don’t meet the quality standards, you can be confident that your products are ready to be packaged for distribution.
Savings and Sustainability at Quantum
At Quantum, we’re the number one choice when it comes to pizza equipment to automate your preparation process. For any part of the process, we have standard and engineered solutions available. You can exceed customer expectations and transform your food preparation business with technology from Quantum Technical Services.