The Best Commercial Garbage Disposal Alternative For Pizza Kitchens
Pizza is one of the country’s most popular foods. There are a wide variety of commercial pizza kitchens, from corporate franchises to upscale wood-fired pizzerias.
Running a successful commercial pizza kitchen comes down to much more than just having the best recipes. It’s also about having an efficient operation. Your commercial pizza kitchen can face several problems while cooking for the public.
The Role of Advanced Preparation
The battle for having a successful lunch or dinner shift can be won or lost before you even open the doors. The success of any culinary endeavor is rooted in preparation. Prepping ingredients ahead of the lunch and dinner rush can drastically reduce the time taken to serve each customer.
This means ensuring that all toppings are chopped, cheese is grated, and pizza sauces are made in advance. Consider portioning out toppings and cheese in individual containers so that they can be quickly accessed and evenly spread on each pizza.
Ensure that you rotate your ingredients to keep them as fresh as possible. Fresh ingredients not only taste better, but they also reduce the risk of serving spoiled food.
This is particularly crucial for ingredients that have a shorter shelf life. By regularly checking stock and maintaining an efficient inventory system, you can ensure that your ingredients are always at their peak.
Your Staff Is Just As Important As Your Food
You might have the best pizza in town, but that won’t matter if it isn’t always consistent or delivered to the customer in a timely fashion.
Your employees must be well-trained to maintain speed and efficiency. Topping pizza, kneading dough, and taking orders are all necessary skills.
Managing the high volume of orders during peak hours can be demanding. This means your employees need effective time management training to figure out their strong suits.
One may have great customer service, but isn’t good at topping the pizzas. Another may be a whiz at toppings, but struggle to knead the dough properly. Utilize this diversity to make the most of your team.
In a pizza kitchen, there’s a certain choreography involved in ensuring that staff do not get in each other’s way. This is where training and repetition come into play.
By establishing specific workstations for various tasks and ensuring that each staff member is well-versed in their role, you can reduce inefficiencies and potential mix-ups.
Another factor to consider is baking times. Timers need to be acted upon as soon as they go off.
Keeping a record of which order is finished is also key. A mix-up means a loss of profit. Even worse, certain customers might be allergic to the toppings on someone else’s order.
Your Equipment Is Key
Choosing the right oven for your pizza kitchen is paramount. Traditional wood-fired ovens, for instance, can give your pizza a distinctive smoky flavor and crunchy texture that many patrons love.
But they require a deft hand and a keen eye to operate effectively. On the other hand, conveyor ovens might lack the authenticity of wood-fired ones, but they are consistent and can handle a larger volume of pizzas simultaneously, making them ideal for businesses that anticipate a high volume of business.
A dough mixer is crucial if you’re making your crusts from scratch. The right mixer can save time and ensure consistency across all your pizza bases.
Refrigerated prep tables keep toppings fresh while ensuring they’re easily accessible. Pizza screens can assist in even cooking, while pizza peels help safely place and retrieve the pizza from the oven.
Cleaning And Maintenance
Even the best equipment can falter if not properly cared for. Regular maintenance checks can prevent unexpected breakdowns, which could lead to operational disruptions.
Ovens should be cleaned daily to remove any ash or burnt food particles. Other equipment like mixers, prep tables, and refrigerators should also be routinely checked and serviced.
Managing grease is another major challenge for any commercial kitchen. The excessive use of cheese, oils, and fatty toppings in pizza preparation leads to a significant amount of grease being generated in the kitchen.
Too much grease is a fire hazard, especially if your kitchen has a wood-fired stove. It also attracts pests.
It’s also a hazard to employees. Excess grease on the floor can create slip hazards for kitchen staff, increasing the risk of accidents and injuries.
Regular and thorough cleaning of kitchen surfaces and equipment are essential to control grease buildup and reduce fire hazards. This includes your commercial kitchen’s pizza oven, making sure it is ready to handle a busy work day no matter what.
A routine sanitization cycle and keen eye help combat the threat of cross-contamination.
It’s All About The Dough
Underneath all the toppings is dough, the building block of all pizza. Preparation, handling, and proper dough storage maintains freshness and prevents contamination.
Keep your dough temperature range around 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. A dry environment also dries out your dough. A warm and moist habitat can be accomplished by wrapping it in plastic and storing it out in the open. The heat from the kitchen allows the dough to keep a set temperature throughout the day.
The plastic traps any yeast fumes, keeps it wet for later use, and prevents cross-contamination.
If using frozen dough, allow it to thaw over the course of a day. An even thaw helps the dough to slacken and be easily kneadable.
Unused dough can be formed into breadsticks or garlic knots for side orders at the end of the day.
Dough also presents a danger in disposal. Many commercial kitchens are equipped with a commercial garbage disposal. Leftover dough that gets flushed down the sink could kill the disposal, as the sticky dough will jam the blades.
To keep your commercial pizza kitchen running smoothly, consider using our commercial garbage disposal alternative.
Save Dough With Our Commercial Garbage Disposal Alternative
The Drain Strainer™ can help you avoid issues with what gets put down your drains. No matter how much you focus on employee training, short cuts are always going to be taken and items are going to be put down your commercial garbage disposal that can harm it.
If you want to avoid issues with clogged grease traps or garbage grinders that are leaking or have burned out motors, The Drain Strainer™ is an effective and affordable commercial garbage disposal alternative that doesn’t require the use of water or electricity.
Invented by a former restaurant owner, The Drain Strainer™ can eliminate issues with mangled silverware or dangers from employees putting their hands down the commercial garbage disposal trying to clear out a clog.
Click here to find out more about how our product can keep your commercial kitchen drains running smoothly.
The magic behind the perfect pie isn’t just in the recipe. Operating a successful pizza kitchen requires the coordination of skilled staff, high-quality equipment, and streamlined processes.
By investing in quality equipment, ensuring regular training and maintenance, and giving paramount importance to preparation and freshness, you’ll be well on your way to crafting pizzas that are consistently delightful and building a reputation that draws patrons time and time again.
Let The Drain Strainer™ help make your commercial pizza kitchen a success by avoiding any plumbing problems.