Foodservice is a tough business. While restaurants and other types of commercial operations face enormous challenges in profitability, you could make the argument that school nutrition is the most difficult of them all.
Just think about it. Constantly changing regulations, staffing and training challenges, decreasing budgets -- these are just a few of the issues school nutrition directors face day in and day out. As a result, school districts are getting creative and are turning to different concepts to make their service delivery more efficient and more cost-effective.
One direction in which schools are looking is the commissary/central kitchen concept. Instead of kitchens spread across the district in each and every school, many directors are finding it easier and cheaper to cook and process meals in a single location. If infrastructure across the district is aging, for example, and multiple locations are in need of an upgrade, it can be more cost-effective to build out a single, commissary where much of the work is done.
This type of operation centralizes the receiving process, production, and distribution across other campuses within the district. Of course, this can also create some challenges, especially when you consider the large volume of food that must be stored and produced.
When considering the volume of food that needs to be cooked and stored in a school district's central kitchen, blast chilling can be an efficient and effective way to move cooked food products into ideal storage conditions.