From patisseries to bakeries, to restaurants: Host Observatory sheds light on an ever-evolving sector that generates value and responds to emerging demands with quality solutions. The latest tendencies are toward sustainability and energy efficiency aiming to provide smart solutions that help the industry’s professionals serve up fresh, high-quality and on-time food to customers. As well as technology, when it comes to grasping new trends flexibility plays an important role for bakeries, patisseries and restaurants. The planning phase should incorporate current demands while sticking to easy-to-use principles that allow professionals all over the world to use these tools. These are the guidelines Zanolli follow: although the transition to digital started some time ago, the preference for electromechanical controls in many contexts is far from waning. Amongst the different macro-trends, the company pointed out that many professionals need to carry out different types of baking at the same time, constantly produce batches, and work free-from doughs. That’s why the new ventilated oven was launched on the market for bakeries and patisseries, with a core probe and touch screen version, allowing personalised production through 147 programmes, each with 6 baking cycles. Product quality and the capacity to broaden what they offer, are essential competitive qualities. This trend is reflected in the demand for machinery that upholds and enhances raw ingredients, given that the pandemic has accelerated the demand for products that are typically delivered, pizza being one of them. This year, Sigma’s best seller was their patented cold dough press for rolling pizza dough with raised edges and adjustable thickness. The micro-rolling system is specially designed for rolling dough that’s well-leavened, and therefore very easy to digest, ensuring the best results at all times, even in high pressure and reduced manpower situations.
From the Host Observatory’s research, we can see that the prevalence of take-away has led those working in the sector to concentrate on prepping products in advance, saving raw ingredients and reducing waste to a minimum. Safety is considered increasingly important, which is why blast chillers are in constant demand as they meet both safety and quality requirements. Today’s market is no longer satisfied with chillers that just blast chill and freeze. It wants increasingly technologically advanced, multifunctional equipment that meets multiple needs and saves both time and space in the kitchen. Techfrost, whose core business is producing blast chillers of all capacities, from the smaller domestic ones to the multi-trolley industrial ones, offer an intelligent blast chiller system: “that combines several functions (cooking, blast chilling, storage, food sanitising, etc.), while maintaining intuitive, user-friendly software. We’ve also recently developed the option of connecting blast chiller and freezing cabinets to a network through a wifi module, allowing customers to always have their units’ processing cycles at hand and under control, and plan their operations any time, anywhere through the dedicated app”.
The food industry has undergone a profound transformation due to the pandemic, where the focus on health, environment and craftsmanship has emerged more and more. Beyond healthy, organic ingredients, specialist, increasingly professional equipment is also playing a key role. As claimed by Bernardi, an artisan company that has been producing twin arm dough mixers for almost 40 years, paying close attention to green approaches: “All our professional mixers are powered by inverter motors: besides being able to adjust mixing speed according to each recipe, we can reach levels of energy efficiency that were inconceivable up until a few years ago. As a result, the same principle has been applied to batch machines, like kneading machines, as well as to counter-top machines which generally use universal motors that are inexpensive, usually noisy and have very low efficiency levels”. With a keen eye on the latest developments and high-tech innovations, and an ear open to market needs, Motor Power Company, an automation solution specialist, has addressed the world of ice-cream with revolutionary ideas in mind. They did this with an ice-cream machine, developed from a need to bring parlours a new ice-cream concept: fresh, rapid, “created then consumed”. The unconventional use of technological solutions, trialled in other contexts, allowed the company to go beyond current, traditional batch freezer market standards and create a premium product. The machine makes the ice cream in the carapina container itself, reducing waste, allowing 100% water saving, and enabling rapid ice cream production. One of its distinguishing specialist features is remote access. The idea even goes as far as to encompass the preservation phase: an independent station, modular and easily to move, with expandable components of two or four wells, which can be assembled as desired. The wells are equipped with technology that enables different temperatures to be applied to each component, consistently and appropriately for the stored product.
