Smells.
When they’re good, they can lead to increased foot traffic. When they’re bad, they can send your potential customers running to a competitor.
During trainings, I refer to this as aromas vs. odors. The best-case scenario is an aroma of burgers being cooked on the grill as you walk by a restaurant. Your mouth waters and you find yourself hungry – you must stop in and place an order!
Unfortunately, we’ve all also been around restaurants and cafeterias where your nose was sending you warning signs before you even looked around.
That’s why it’s important to find equipment that helps keep things clean and tidy, so you can avoid those less-than-pleasant odors.
If Things Aren’t Kept Clean, Commercial Kitchens Can Be Grounds for Odors
Almost every process in a commercial kitchen and dish room can create the right environment for those not-so-good smells. When grease builds up in the vent hood, that can smell pretty bad. The same happens in the dish room when soiled plates and trays start to stack up. Plus, any spillage means a chance for bacteria to accumulate, and create odors if things aren’t cleaned up properly.
Combine that with the struggles finding and retaining adequate staffing, and it spells a tough situation (and odor) for any owner-operator.
That’s where Avtec can help make life easier.
EcoArch Exhaust Hoods Are Built to Be Easy to Clean
Our patented EcoArch exhaust hoods include an easy-to-clean radius rear and cartridge extractors located at the front:
Heat energy produced by the cooking equipment pushes the smoke, grease, and steam towards the specially designed scoop cartridges at the front. This requires 30-50% less air to be exhausted than standard ventilation – plus makes cleaning much easier.
Because the cartridges are at the front and above the head of a chef or operator, they can be removed for cleaning when the shift ends. You don’t need to wait for the cooking equipment to cool before reaching across (or worse, climbing on top of) it.
This is safer and can be done when the rest of the kitchen is being cleaned at the end of the shift – instead of hoping that an employee, without the same supervision, will remember to clean them later in the evening.
The same is true of the EcoArch’s curved rear. The entire surface that heat and grease touch during the cooking process is a smooth rolled surface, making it easier to wipe down. Heck, our test kitchen has a dedicated sponge mop to use when standing on the ground because cleanup is so quick and easy on the EcoArch.
Avtec Conveyors Help Keep Things Cleaner in the Dish Room
There’s more to preventing an odor-filled kitchen than ventilation. Proper conveying can also help you keep any unwanted smells from forming.
For example, Avtec’s flat Slat Belt conveyors have a solid sealed top, factory programmed automatic wash system, and full-length return track. That’s a fancy way of saying it keeps all spills and soileds from building up in hard-to-reach areas.
What happens on the tabletop, stays on the tabletop for easier cleaning.
As the conveyor returns items to the dish room, it runs through the automatic wash tank area – where multiple sprayers dislodge and clean the conveyor before it runs under the table back to the drop off window.
This wash tank includes 2 easy-to-access scrap baskets. The return track includes an ultra-high molecular compound layer along the entire track, which the belt rides against when below the tabletop:
After the belt is cleaned, it rides on this layer and pushes any water still on the slats and chain back to the tail unit, where the belt emerges from below the table. We include an easy-to-access scrap basket for anything that might be deposited there, along with a drain that should be directed to a floor drain.
There’s no chance for anything to drip onto the floor or collection trough, both of which would be under the table and need to be cleaned.
The Avtec Bus Trac accumulator was designed specifically with this in mind. It uses the same ¾” wide chain to drive the carrousel around, but from the top of the assembly. We weld on stainless steel plates that the upright drops into, and the shelving tiers are designed as ¼” stainless steel rods welded in either 2-tier or 3-tier configurations.
All of these are held by gravity, designed to fit through a rack-type dish machine to be cleaned:
We standardize plastic inserts on the bottom tier for when a patron has only a cup or bowl. These dishwasher safe inserts clip into place and are easily removable without the use of tools. They can be effortlessly added in the factory or after the fact, for trayless operations.
Investing In Your Equipment Is Worth It
Commercial equipment is expensive, just like a car. And just like a car, the better care you take of it, the longer it will last – and fewer bad smells it could create! That’s why we make our equipment easier to clean, which lessens time-consuming hassles for staff and keeps the chances of odors away.
It’s just another reason that Electrolux Professional Group and Avtec should be at the top of your list!
Jefferson Kenney
Product Line Manager – Ventilation
Electrolux Professional Group – Avtec
800-621-8560 EXT 6492
