1. The production scale of group diet is large. Whether it is enterprise meals, College meals, primary and secondary students’ nutritional meals, or social group meals, the production scale is more than 5,000 units per class, or even up to 10,000 to 100,000 of units per class. Due to the expansion of production scale, the supply of raw materials, storage and cutting allocation increase accordingly; the quantity of heating conditioning, meal allocation, distribution, tableware washing and disinfection storage become very huge, which is a huge system of intensive procurement, intensive processing and intensive distribution.
2. Food safety and hygiene is the lifeline of group food enterprises. With the expansion of production scale, how to ensure food safety and hygiene has been one of the difficulties of group food enterprises. Because of the requirements of color, aroma, taste, shape and heat of fast food, it is difficult to match, control and guarantee the production time, distribution time and consumption time of group food, which has become the second difficulty of group food production.
3. There are many kinds of Chinese dishes and the cooking technology (stir-frying, boiling, steaming, frying and roasting) is very complicated. Can the mechanized and industrialized production of group meals be realized in the end? Can the preservation and taste of green vegetables be solved technically? It has always been a puzzle for group food enterprises.
II. Current status of kitchens in Group Catering Enterprises
At present, the kitchens of group catering enterprises are mostly in the condition of front stores and back factories. In front of enterprises, there are catering stores, and in the back, there are production rooms. This kind of kitchen is small in area and simple in equipment; the division of kitchen area is not standardized, and the logistics and human flow channels are generally indistinguishable; the storage, cleaning and cutting of raw materials often rely on suppliers; the function of kitchen is mainly embodied in cooking and simple packing, in addition to satisfying the catering of the front store, the remaining products are distributed to the outside world. Due to the restriction of facilities and equipment, it is difficult to expand the production scale of this type of group food enterprises, and it is difficult to guarantee food safety, hygiene and product quality. This type of group food enterprises, accounting for about 80%, mainly distributed in the social dining and primary and secondary school dining halls.
In addition, there are some group catering enterprises with a certain scale of production, a certain cutting center (or supplier supply), and an independent cooking and distribution system. However, the kitchen is limited in scale, lacking of systematic production technology and equipment, and the production of products is still mainly manual, so the quality of products is difficult to guarantee. This type of group meal enterprises, accounting for about 10%, mainly distributed in Colleges and enterprises group meals. Such group catering enterprises often face the renovation of kitchens to meet the needs of consumers.
There are also 10% of the group catering enterprises with large production scale (output value of more than 10,000 copies), standard central kitchen, clear production area, complete functions, advanced production technology and equipment. These enterprises have generally passed the ISO9000 and HACCP demonstration, established a sound quality assurance system and food safety and health assurance system. For example, our customers are Beijing Du Limeng Food Co., Ltd., Beijing YamiYami Student Nutrition Meal Distribution Co., Ltd., Shanghai Baosteel Staff Meal Center, Nanjing University Meal Center, Shenyang Ximi Nutrition Meal Distribution Co., Ltd., Fushun Xiaotaiyang Nutrition Distribution Center, Harbin Miqi Taishi Nutrition Meal Co., Ningbo Fulewa Fast Food Distribution Co., Ltd., and Guangzhou Riwei Health Food Co., Ltd. The central kitchen of group food enterprises has reached the international advanced level.