What Type of Equipment Do I Need to Automate My Prepared Meals Business?

pizza ingredient applicator

When your company offers frozen prepared meals, you might be asking “How to automate my prepared meals business?” After all, automation can increase profits and productivity after choosing the best automation technology. Even one automated unit can drastically transform the way that your company makes prepared meals for millions of customers to enjoy worldwide. Automation makes your meal preparation more efficient and consistent, as well as helps save your company on labor and waste expenses. It’s important to recognize the benefits of automated meal preparation, but where to start? 

We’ll answer the question of “How to automate my prepared meals business?” and more in this article. Prepared meals are an in-demand product and automating your production only simplifies the process. There are many different types of equipment that you can use to automate your prepared meals business such as dry ingredient and topping applicators, sauce applicators, and conveyors. But first, let’s go into what automation can mean for your business. 

Prepared Meals To Go

The prepared meals industry is more than a $500 billion-dollar business. There is high demand for prepared meals, and in order to keep up with it, automation makes it easier to produce more prepared meals to go. Customers around the world enjoy prepared meals to go because of their convenience and selection, and automating your prepared meals business only makes connecting with existing and new customers easier. Automation saves your business time and money in multiple ways, such as cutting down on labor expenses and decreasing material waste. So, let’s get into what type of equipment you need to automate the production of prepared meals to go.

Automating Producing Premade Dinners

When you’re asking “How do I automate my prepared meals business?” it’s elucidating to know that you can enlist a range of equipment types to simplify the process of producing premade dinners. Let’s go through different types of equipment that your business can benefit from. Producing premade dinners shouldn’t be difficult. That’s why automation is a great solution for your prepared meals business. 

Dry/Granular Ingredient and Topping Applicators

For your dry and granular ingredients and topping needs, there are applicators designed specifically to apply these materials during the process of producing premade dinners. These units can easily apply ingredients and toppings such as nuts, spices, sesame seeds, and other similar ingredients to your product. These applicators even have the ability to recycle these ingredients should they fall off the product or miss the product on the assembly line. This way, these machines can save you resources and lost product expenses. 

Sauce Applicators

Sauces are particularly tricky to apply to your meals in a consistent manner. With specialized sauce applicators, you can control exactly how much sauce your prepared meals get, without wasting any sauce. These sauce applicators also keep the amount of sauce consistent, which is critical in producing high-quality products and maintaining brand guidelines. Manual sauce application can lead to waste and inconsistent application. On the other hand, automated sauce application removes these problems, saving you time, money, and resources. 

Bulk Feeders

Bulk feeders help automate feed products to the assembly line when used in conjunction with an applicator. They ensure that the line moves on time and keeps production on schedule in order to avoid any costly delays.  

Water Spray Conveyors

The last type of automatic equipment we’ll describe is water spray conveyors. Water spray conveyors can be one of the last steps in the automation process because they apply a light spray of water just before freezing or baking. These water spray conveyors attach to your plant water source or an optional dual diaphragm pump and has a sanitary drain connection. This unit helps freshen the freezing and baking process, as it applies the light spray of water after the meal is assembled.

The list above can serve as a go-to guide for what equipment you need when you ask the question “How do I automate my prepared meals business?” These are just a few of the most important types of equipment that you need to automate the process. It also provides insight into what the automation process entails. Next, let’s look into what goes into automating the best premade meals. Automating the process of making prepared meals has many benefits from efficiency to quickly exceeding your ROI.

Automating the Best Premade Meals

When you ask “How do I automate my prepared meals business?” you’re likely looking to increase profits while simplifying the process of preparing the meals. However, when you acquire new automation systems or upgrade your existing ones, doing so can result in products of better quality. You want your brand name to be synonymous with consistency and excellence, and an effective way to achieve this is by relying on automation to make the best premade meals. Automating your food preparation process also makes the workplace safer, since the equipment includes multiple safety measures and decreases the number of employees that have to be on site. Another benefit of making the best premade meals with automated equipment is flexibility. Depending on the economy and demand, automated equipment that uses conveyors allow you to easily add additional units to increase production. You’ll be able to add or remove units to seamlessly assemble your food products. Even if you’d like to add another ingredient to a meal, you can easily add another unit within the assembly line. With an automated process, you’re sure to have consistent results that elevate your brand name.

In this article, we described what type of equipment you’d most likely need to automate your prepared meals business. Automating your preparation process has multiple benefits even before you meet your ROI. 

Automate Your Prepared Meals Business With Quantum

At Quantum, we believe in simplifying the process of preparing premade meals. We offer the best automated applicators for your prepared meal needs to effectively meet demand. From dry ingredient applicators to conveyors and topping applicators, we offer a number of solutions to automate your process.