Automation continues to dominate the industrial and manufacturing world, and that includes the frozen pizza industry. With an ever-increasing demand for frozen pizzas, how do you keep up with changes in the market while maintaining your bottom line? Maintaining and increasing profits can seem difficult in an uncertain economy, so the methods that you employ in your frozen pizza production matter now more than ever. Luckily, automating your production process can make the process easier as you adapt to the changing market and increase in demand. Automated topping dispensers such as sauce applicators, cheese applicators, meat and pepperoni slicers, and others are available to automate your production process. Automated topping dispensers can form a streamlined assembly that increases production. In this article, we’ll go through what automatic pizza production can mean for your business as well as discuss which automated pizza equipment is available. Pizza automation is here to help you realize an increased ROI.
Automatic Pizza Production
It’s true– when you automate more of your process, you meet your ROI faster. While investment in automatic pizza production might seem daunting at first, the results that automated topping dispensers are nearly unbelievable. There are many benefits to food automation, such as consistency, increased productivity, reduced labor costs, and reduction in wasted ingredients. All of these factors save your business time and money. When you invest in more automation, you can quickly meet your ROI since automating and streamlining your pizza production increases output. Now, let’s go through the various automated topping dispensers available in a typical pizza equipment assembly line.
Pizza Equipment and Pizza Topping Automation
There are numerous automated pizza equipment types available, each engineered to simplify the process and help you keep up with the demand for frozen pizzas. With an automated assembly line made up of different automated topping dispensers, you’ll be able to design your pizza products to your specifications, as well as switch out for similar ingredients when need be. Automation ensures consistent quality. Being familiar with the different types of automated topping dispensers helps you to decide which equipment is right for your pizza preparation business so you can get great results as soon as possible. So, here are some types of equipment to streamline pizza production.
Sauce Applicators
First on our list of equipment for pizza topping automation are sauce applicators. Once a circle and your crust are on the assembly line, a sauce applicator can apply the exact amount of sauce, without wasting extra by missing the crust or using more sauce than needed. Sauce applicators are very exact and help cut down food waste. Sauce application is even on the crust and excess sauce recirculates for reuse.
Cheese Applicators
Following sauce application, the pizzas continue down the line and pass next under cheese applicators. You can load shredded cheese into the applicator for even application on the pizza. Pizza topping automation really hits the mark here, where cheese that doesn’t make it onto the pizza gathers, recirculates, and applies to the following pizza. This ensures less ingredient waste, which impacts your bottom line.
Meat and Pepperoni Slicers
Next in the automation cycle are the meat and pepperoni slicers. Slicers are able to cut meats like sticks of pepperoni, Canadian bacon, and sausage into your specified arrangement on the pizza. You can choose the number of slices of meat that the slicer will cut onto the pizza as well as the pattern. This enables you to create a unique pizza to match your brand’s guidelines. Automatic meat slicers improve the consistency and quality of your product.
Dry and Granular Ingredient Applicators
Lastly, dry and granular ingredient applicators are also available for automation. These applicators are ideal for IFQ ingredients, spices, seeds, parmesan cheese, salt, and other similar ingredients. Some of these applicators are also designed to fit over existing conveyor systems so they’re easily addable to your assembly line. New models also recycle ingredients if they don’t make it onto the pizza the first time around. These applicators can handle different ingredients, so if one quarter you need them to apply parmesan cheese but the next you need IFQ ingredients applied, you can easily switch the ingredients they apply. You may also use more than one to increase the number of different toppings your pizza will have.
Water Spray Conveyor
While water spray conveyors aren’t automated topping dispensers, they aid in the freezing process ideal for distribution. At the end of the automated assembly line, pizzas can go through a water spray conveyor to have a light spray of water applied to prepare it for the freezing process. This light layer of water keeps the pizza fresh once frozen and helps to stop damage to the pizza during freezing and transportation.
This is a good list to reference when you’re deciding which automated topping dispensers you’d like to incorporate. Lastly, let’s briefly go through some other benefits of automated topping dispensers.
Other Benefits of Automated Topping Dispensers
Besides consistency, efficiency, and increased profits, there are other benefits of automated topping dispensers. They include ease of use and safety.
Ease of Use
These applicators require very few personnel for maintaining and loading, allowing you to cut down on labor expenses. They are also easy to clean in-house so you don’t have to worry about difficult repairs, and most don’t require any tools for disassembly for cleaning. These applicators are also built with wheels for easy maneuvering throughout a factory floor.
Safety
For the personnel that loads and maintains the applicators, the applicators have a range of safety measures to decrease workplace hazards. Most of the machinery is enclosed and protective barriers are set up around the units to protect employees as they work and oversee the production.
Streamline Your Pizza Production With Quantum
At Quantum Technical Services, we offer a number of standard equipment to engineered solutions to assist in your single- or multiple-lane automatic pizza production process. Our automatic topping dispensers are built to simplify the process while saving you time, money, and resources.