Alternatives for restaurants with small kitchens and without smoke vent

You have found the perfect place, at a reasonable cost in an unbeatable location, however, the kitchen is not very big, and it does not have a smoke vent, with the challenges that this entails, such as.

The limitation of space for a certain number of workersThe little storage space that increases replacement needs thus increasing product costsThe limitation of the culinary offer

What do we call a small kitchen?

Although each professional kitchen can vary in size, most tend to be between 46 and 186 square meters, so everything smaller than 46 square meters is considered a small kitchen.

This can respond to different models of restoration, such as: food tracks, dark kitchens, bakeries or Take Away stores just to name a few.

What is the smoke vent?

The smoke vent is a conduit that is responsible for transporting the fumes and vapors that are generated in a kitchen, or even from boilers or heaters to the outside of the building or corresponding premises.

Its installation, in addition to implying a great technical difficulty, and being very costly economically speaking, requires the express and unanimous authorization of the community of owners to enable it.

Alternatives

An alternative is to serve cold meals or those that do not require any type of cooking, such as: salads, ice creams, smoothies, or sandwiches. But if you want to offer a selection of hot dishes, the Sous-Vide technique can be a very successful solution.

Sous-vide is a culinary technique that, through vacuum packaging, cooks and maintains the integrity of food by cooking it at relatively low temperatures. Thanks to this technique, the nutrients and organoleptic values ​​of the product are preserved, and its shelf life is extended. A technique initially used for haute cuisine that is now a standard in kitchens of all kinds.

In addition, sous-vide results in a very productive working system since vacuum packaging combined with individual portioning favors both longer expiration periods and assembly cooking.

Thus, we can say that it is a system that improves performance, productivity and versatility in restaurant kitchens, hotels, catering, and catering groups since:

• It favors the kitchen assembly free of waste.

• It is easy, profitable, and productive.

• Controlled inventory and stock.

• Enables the preparations of a high-quality dish in a matter of minutes.

• Portions without waste ready to work.

• Reduces cross contamination.

• Ensures quality replicability.

The production of this type of product can be done in several ways:

1. Own central kitchen: The Sous-Vide technique makes it possible to produce large quantities of food in a traditional way, to pack them and store them for later regeneration. This makes it possible, on the one hand, to adapt kitchen hours to ones that are more like office hours and reduce the workload at the service moment.

2. Vacuum-packed 5th-range supplier: More and more restaurants are turning to specialized 5th-range food manufacturers to expand their menus in a more efficient way. These products only require a controlled retherming to exploit their potential, thus leaving room to focus on the service and the final touch of the dishes.

There is equipment from various manufacturers that allow controlled retherming to be carried out, but only Sammic’s SmartVide offers the possibility of connecting to the JANBY Track, to digitize and automate the entire Sous-Vide process.

Here we see two very simple equipment configurations:

The first consists of a SmartVide 7 and a 28-liter tank. The second configuration consists of 2 SmartVides, ideal if you need to retherm the products at two different temperatures. With a JANBY Track device, you can control up to 3 SmartVides simultaneously.

What the integration of the JANBY Track contributes to this method is that it manages to control, standardize, and optimize the culinary process efficiently by measuring the cooking time and temperature for each preparation. In addition, it automates the cooking or regeneration process through the language incorporated in the QR code, resulting in the need not only for fewer personnel but also for a less qualified one.

In addition, all processes are automatically registered in the JANBY Cloud, which allows monitoring of all events and incidents in one or more kitchens remotely and centrally.

With this combination of the Sous-Vide technique and process digitalization, a new horizon opens allowing restoration concepts to be created in previously unimaginable places and with much less resources. All of this is achieved, maximizing productivity and operations in a sector that is slowly but unstoppably adapting to the new digital environment.