Kitchen Spencer in 2008 (above) and in 2011 (below)

2011 in hindsight

2011 in hindsight has been a busy year for Cooking Space. Time certainly flies quickly when the first client is in at 8am and the last finishing up at midnight on a daily basis. Cooking Space is privileged to have a list of highly qualified food businesses working on a regular schedule. We are even more fortunate that they are a group of open-minded individuals that are considerate of the “shared space” concept. It is with this attitude and guideline that we believe is the only way a concept such as ours will work.

We have accommodated a varied list of tenants in 2011, with start-up, home grown businesses accounting for a large part of our enquiries. Inspecting the kitchen is the easiest part of starting any food business. However, we have found that most start-ups are far from being operational. Though we have been pleasantly surprised when people call back 3 months later when they have built the solid foundation to start their business. And we have often invested in equipment to accelerate the growth of new tenants.

A key strategy we have put in place is to invest in our tenants, specifically purchasing equipment that increases efficiency and volume of production. With more combination ovens, blast chiller and a vacuum packaging machine to name a few. This resulted in scale able production for our tenants at the same low hourly rate.

2012 thinking forward

Cooking Space is excited about 2012 and we have a strategy in place to execute. Obtaining more space is central to this strategy. In 2011, we have moved walls, put in more benches and created more storage but what we really need is a second facility altogether. More on this at the next regular update.

Blast Chiller

Blast chilling: A critical control in food production
Blast chilling is a method of cooling food quickly to a low temperature, rendering it safe for storage and later consumption. The advent of ‘instant foods’ have made blast chillers a constant feature in the serious commercial kitchen.

Cooking Space observed the food that our tenants were pushing out and recognised the urgent need to bring in a blast chiller. More than just a complicated oversized refrigerator, a small unit can be more expensive than a large cool room. The time saved in food production is significant.

“We use to wait up to 90 minutes for a tray of pasta to cool before we could store it in the cool room, now it takes 20 minutes” – Komplete Catering

At Cooking Space we use the GBF-7 Blast Chiller/Shock Freezer unit from Nutrifaster Food Service Equipment. It has capacity for 7 x 1/1 gastronorm pans with 18 kilo output from +70ºC to +3ºC in 90 minutes or 11 kilo output from+70ºC to -18ºC in 270 minutes.

If you are serious about your food production and don’t want to purchase an expensive blast chiller. Come in and speak to us about hiring one instead and see immediate benefits.

QR Code for cookingspace.com.au

Marketing trend
Technology and the world wide web is growing at a pace that is unimaginable and has become the critical marketing tool for the 21st century business. But with over 8 billion pages how does a prospective customer find you?

QR code (shortened from Quick Response code) is a technology that was initially designed for the automotive industry to track vehicles during the manufacturing process. It stores a comparatively large amount of data that can be deciphered quickly with a QR reader, available on smartphones.

It is now being used to store website addresses and company details in a relatively small label. This label can save expensive advertising real estate in food packaging and direct customers to more information on the web.

A company assisting businesses in QR labeling as featured in springwise.com can be found here http://www.remakes.biz/.