I will be continuing to highlight a different part of Facilities each newsletter and in this edition, I would like to focus on the Produce Bin equipment.
The Produce Bin is a vital piece of equipment for maintaining safe food holding temperature. Proper daily use and care will enable your Produce Bin to provide as many as 20 years of useful life. The Produce Bin must be switched off and the product must be removed at the end of each day following carryover standards, per brand standards. This is required not only for food safety, but also the cold wall construction of the Produce Bin requires defrosting each night. DO NOT use hot water to clean the Produce Bin. Water that is too hot will damage the refrigerated Produce Bin by separating the refrigeration coils from the bottom of the Bin, leading to costly repairs.
Cleaning Instructions
- Remove any food debris or other solid waste. To prevent clogs, DO NOT wash food waste down the drain.
- Spray the inside of the Produce Bin with Multi-Purpose Cleaner. Wipe with a clean, sanitized blue towel. Rinse by wiping with another clean, sanitized blue towel.
- Wipe with a clean, dry paper towel, then allow the Produce Bin to air dry.
- DO NOT use hot water, pizza cutters, quesadilla cutters, or hammers to break up ice as this will damage the Produce Bin (see photos below).
Warped Produce Bin from cleaning with hot water. Damaged Produce Bins take weeks to replace. The cost to replace one Produce Bin could be used to buy 8 Split Lid Grills.
In the world of POS/Technology, there are many new and exciting additions on the horizon as the Taco Bell brand moves to the NextGen/Smart Kitchen by the end of 2022. This includes the Touch Kitchen Display System (TKDS), SmartHub, & NextGen POS. TKDS replaces the current KDS system and addresses existing pain points, including speed and accuracy through order sharing, color-coding modifiers and more. It also has training mode, integrated menu item build cards, LTO build cards and full menu item names. Smart Hub is a server that is the “brain” of the Smart Kitchen. It eliminates the additional hardware and processing that comes with old equipment and reduces the cost of future in-restaurant technology, which makes both the store level and home office experience much more efficient. NextGen POS is in its very early stages, but it will bring a new software that will allow for enhanced integration with the line via TKDS to bring more control over both quality and speed.
Loss Control continues on towards finishing another solid claims performance year in July. After a few years absorbing the effects of the learning curve that goes with store acquisitions, we are poised for a second consecutive top 5 finish out of 28 franchisees for claims performance in our insurance captive, FIG.
By: Alexi Achilleos
Director of Facilities, Maintenance, & Loss Control