FINALLY – we discovered a brand new kitchen for RecipeTin Meals!! 🙌🏻 (Our meals financial institution.) Are available in and take a peek inside – we moved in at present!!
Lastly – an even bigger, higher kitchen for RTM
After 18 months of searching, we have now a brand new house for RTM! That is the largest and most enjoyable factor that has occurred since….properly, since we began RTM in the course of the pandemic!
Our new RTM kitchen is positioned within the Ryde space of Sydney (about 10 km north of Sydney) and is far bigger than our present internal metropolis kitchen. We’ve been bursting on the seams in our present location for properly over a 12 months.
However this new kitchen – it’s arrange for precisely what we do: cooking and packaging giant volumes of meals!
It is a large milestone for the way forward for RTM and our capability to broaden the variety of meals we produce to donate to these in want. After 18 months of looking out, all of the dead-ends and let-downs, all of the analysis, I really feel like that’s the ache we needed to undergo to be rewarded with the grand prize – the kitchen of our desires! 🥰
The kitchen of our desires
Right here’s why that is the kitchen of our desires:
-
Bigger – 5 occasions bigger than our present kitchen! No extra sucking in our tummies as we squeeze previous one another lugging large pots of soup!
-
Much better gear – A plethora of economic grade gear together with two Rational ovens (fellow hospitality folks will admire that!), monumental soup and inventory cookers, a big bratt pan, tremendous highly effective QUIET exhaust followers (that is gold!), at least two Robotic Coups (magical meals processor-type issues), blast chillers, each pot, pan, bowl, small home equipment, and utensil we may ever dream of….the record is lengthy!!
Picture how a lot buttercream we will make with this stand mixer!! GIANT CAKES, HERE WE COME!
-
Stroll in fridges – It has FIVE stroll in
winefridge / freezers. The advantages of this are large for us for a lot of causes, one being that we will begin accepting produce donations. Particularly, meat donations, which is our largest value however we have now no freezer house to retailer them (it’s a “get what you’re supplied when it’s supplied” state of affairs).
-
Environment friendly structure – The present kitchen is a rabbit warren! Our new kitchen is one massive open plan house which implies we will work extra effectively.
-
Excessive quantity meals manufacturing – We bought this kitchen from a catering firm so it’s set as much as effectively cook dinner and bundle giant numbers of meals. It’s fairly completely different to restaurant kitchens that are set as much as serve diners. For instance, eating places are normally designed to maximise income producing eating house and minimising kitchen house. Whereas we would like all kitchen house!
There’s even a whole space devoted to only dishwashing. WHAT A LUXURY!!!
-
Single degree entry – Should you may SEE the precarious stairs in our present kitchen! The RTM group is not going to miss lugging heavy bins full of cans of beans up the steps then a whole lot of meals down the steps every single day. Additionally, simply usually, it’s a security hazard that at all times anxious me.
On this new kitchen, supply vehicles and our meals supply vehicles can drive proper as much as the again door and it’s flat entry proper into the kitchen!
-
Near me – It’s solely 5 minutes from my house. Tremendous useful! Not only for visiting, but additionally to drop meals that we make at RTE or I make myself so as to add to the RTM meals we donate.
-
Glorious location to service the entire of Sydney – it’s positioned close to the intersection of main roads for straightforward entry in all instructions of Sydney.
-
Reasonably priced hire – It’s positioned in a suburban space on a small strip of native retailers so the hire is way more inexpensive than the place we are actually within the metropolis. And parking is free! We at the moment need to pay for parking within the internal metropolis – ouch, it hurts! However obligatory – for meals supply.
Different essential issues….
And on prime of all of this, there’s a complete bunch of different issues that may make the work surroundings higher for the group, together with:
-
The truth that there’s a bathe (pan frying rooster for six hours is messy work!)
-
There might be a group lunch desk….there’s nowhere in the intervening time!
-
Stephen (RTM boss Chef) has an workplace (he is not going to miss working sitting on milk crates utilizing the chest freezer as a desk). Right here it’s….he assures me he’s not going to overlook this!!!
Ah sure, right here he’s at his plush new workplace desk! Doubled as a lunch desk for at present. 
What subsequent?
This information is coming to you in actual time as a result of we moved at present! There was/is numerous cleansing and organisation to be finished in each our outdated kitchen and new one. The group wants to make sure they know precisely how you can use all of the gear within the new kitchen. I couldn’t even work out how you can activate the lights. 😂
GOAL – MORE MEALS!
Proper now, we’re making 400 meals a day, plus desserts, with a full time kitchen group of three (RTM Boss Chef Stephen, Chef Hannah and Dan The Man!). That’s 100,000 meals per 12 months. JB (The RTE Huge Boss Chef) estimates that we will produce as much as 1,500 meals per day in our new kitchen, with a bigger group. That’s 375,000 meals a 12 months!!!
I hope to extend to 450 meals every day with our present group, as quickly as attainable, simply by means of the efficiencies of working in a greater kitchen. And to double this inside 12 to 18 months. Then, onwards! Develop into new cities!
Donations and funding
With progress comes the necessity for funding by means of donations, volunteers, company companions and authorities funding. I’ve held again on elevating funds as a result of I need to “do it correctly”.
What do I imply by this? Right here’s the factor about RTM. Whereas I can and do “transfer quick” in lots of facets of my enterprise, with regards to massive, vital selections. I take a way more thought-about method.
Failing isn’t an choice with RTM. I can’t “give it a go” or “have a crack at it”. There are folks counting on our meals each single day. We have now by no means missed a supply since we began RTM, and this should proceed to be the benchmark.
So, growth must be finished correctly. I refuse to embark on a wild fund-raising program till I’ve the best group to run bigger operations, managing exterior stakeholders, implement the best processes and assist infrastructure.
And placing all this in place will take time. My objective is for RTM to proceed lengthy after I depart this world. I need to do that proper than to hurry and make errors.
Our benefactor, Dozer ❤️🐶
So for now, with the revenue-generating aspect of my enterprise persevering with to develop, thanks partially to my cookbook doing fairly properly, Dozer will proceed to sacrifice his deal with price range to assist RTM.
Why do I do RTM? Firstly, let’s be clear, I’m no angel. Or, if I’m, I’ve horns. 😈
To make use of an analogy shared by a clever man*, I do that as a result of enterprise progress isn’t what fills my cup. Income or growing public profile doesn’t make me joyful nor make me really feel glad. The final 12 months has confirmed that, definitively.
However with the ability to do RTM – this is what makes me spring off the bed at 5 am each morning! It’s my ardour. It provides me objective. It provides me job satisfaction and makes me joyful.
And so, with that, I’m signing off.
Monday is our first full day cooking within the new kitchen. I can’t WAIT!!! – Nagi x
A really massive thanks to Chef JB
Truly, I’m not finished but as a result of I forgot to say somebody vital! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Many individuals helped with the transfer, most particularly my complete group, placing in massive days main as much as transfer day.
However I’ve to do a particular very massive thanks to our Chef JB for his dedication and efforts over the previous 18 months to discover a new RTM kitchen, going above and past serving to me with the acquisition of this kitchen (I do know nothing about industrial kitchen gear), making this transfer occur and principally, for his unwavering dedication to working RTM, every single day since we first launched it in the course of the pandemic.
RTM wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. He was the driving pressure behind the preliminary arrange, hiring the group, getting it began. He’s the one who runs it for me (our 3 cooks at RTM report back to him), he’s the one I depend on to make sure prices are managed and the meals high quality is of what I name “RecipeTin customary”.
That is on prime of every thing else he does on the RecipeTin Eats aspect of the enterprise, working alongside me for all of the recipe improvement and testing, travelling Australian for the Good Meals & Wine Present, weekly recipe contributions to newspapers!
So a really massive shout-out to JB, an enormous thanks for being the protector of an important a part of my enterprise – RTM. – Nagi x
Lifetime of Dozer
Satirically, having given Dozer all of the credit score for the existence of RTM, he won’t ever step paw in right here as a consequence of strict well being laws. However he was right here on spirit on transfer day!
The put up BIG NEWS: New RTM Kitchen! appeared first on RecipeTin Eats.
