Summer is just around the corner and the demand for soft serve, frozen yogurt and frozen beverages is on the rise. Here are four categories of cold food equipment to help food service operators produce the most profitable frozen desserts and beverages while satisfying customers’ cravings as the temperature rise.
SOFT SERVE FREEZERS
Offer all the popular soft serve variations from low or non-fat ice creams to ice milk and yogurt products.
- Available as pressurized or non-pressurized.
- A pressurized machine feeds the freezing cylinder with a pump and drives more overrun (air) into the product.
- In non-pressurized equipment, the freezing cylinder relies on the forces of gravity to feed the product through a tube, which incorporates less overrun (air) through a tiny hole. Air is profit but too much “profit” can affect the taste.
FROZEN BEVERAGE FREEZERS
- Manufactured to produce either carbonated or non-carbonated products.
- Most non-carbonated equipment is capable of producing a variety of frozen beverages, including slush, milkshakes and smoothies.
- Frozen carbonated beverage equipment is available as pressurized and non-pressurized. Non-pressurized product dominates the carbonated slush market in Canada.
BATCH FREEZERS
- Designed to mix, agitate and freeze whatever is put into it.
- Typically delivers a premium product with variable overrun that is intended to be transferred to a holding cabinet.
- Many batch freezers are also capable of producing a granita-style slush.
BLAST CHILLERS OR FREEZERS
- Designed to quickly chill or freeze large quantities of food to safe temperatures, preventing the growth of bacteria and preserving the quality of the final product.
- Blast chilling quickly takes food through the “danger zone” (40 F/4 C to 140 F/60 C) in the cooking and chilling cycles. Foods that have gone through controlled cook-chill cycles will often gain additional shelf life.
Tara Wong is the product manager for TFI Food Equipment Solutions. TFI has been supplying compl
