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 this time!!
Lastly – an even bigger, higher kitchen for RTM
After 18 months of looking, we have now a brand new house for RTM! That is the largest and most fun factor that has occurred since….effectively, since we began RTM throughout 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 interior metropolis kitchen. We’ve been bursting on the seams in our present location for effectively over a 12 months.
However this new kitchen – it’s arrange for precisely what we do: cooking and packaging massive volumes of meals!
This can be a large milestone for the way forward for RTM and our means to increase the variety of meals we produce to donate to these in want. After 18 months of looking, 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:
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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!
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Much better tools – A plethora of business grade tools together with two Rational ovens (fellow hospitality folks will recognize that!), monumental soup and inventory cookers, a big bratt pan, tremendous highly effective QUIET exhaust followers (that is gold!), a minimum of 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 checklist is lengthy!!
Picture how a lot buttercream we are able to make with this stand mixer!! GIANT CAKES, HERE WE COME!
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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 are able to begin accepting produce donations. Specifically, 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).
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Environment friendly structure – The present kitchen is a rabbit warren! Our new kitchen is one large open plan house which suggests we are able to work extra effectively.
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Excessive quantity meals manufacturing – We bought this kitchen from a catering firm so it’s set as much as effectively prepare dinner and package deal massive numbers of meals. It’s fairly totally 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!!!
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Single degree entry – Should you may SEE the precarious stairs in our present kitchen! The RTM staff won’t miss lugging heavy containers crammed with cans of beans up the steps then a whole lot of meals down the steps daily. Additionally, simply typically, it’s a security hazard that all the time frightened me.
On this new kitchen, supply vans and our meals supply automobiles can drive proper as much as the again door and it’s flat entry proper into the kitchen!
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Near me – It’s solely 5 minutes from my house. Tremendous useful! Not only for visiting, but in addition to drop meals that we make at RTE or I make myself so as to add to the RTM meals we donate.
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Wonderful location to service the entire of Sydney – it’s positioned close to the intersection of main roads for simple entry in all instructions of Sydney.
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Reasonably priced lease – It’s positioned in a suburban space on a small strip of native outlets so the lease is way more reasonably priced than the place we are actually within the metropolis. And parking is free! We at the moment should pay for parking within the interior metropolis – ouch, it hurts! However essential – for meals supply.
Different vital issues….
And on high of all of this, there’s an entire bunch of different issues that may make the work atmosphere higher for the staff, together with:
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The truth that there’s a bathe (pan frying hen for six hours is messy work!)
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There might be a staff lunch desk….there may be nowhere in the mean time!
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Stephen (RTM boss Chef) has an workplace (he won’t 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 this time. 
What subsequent?
This information is coming to you in actual time as a result of we moved at this time! There was/is lots of cleansing and organisation to be performed in each our outdated kitchen and new one. The staff wants to make sure they know precisely methods to use all of the tools within the new kitchen. I couldn’t even determine methods to activate the lights. 😂
GOAL – MORE MEALS!
Proper now, we’re making 400 meals a day, plus desserts, with a full time kitchen staff of three (RTM Boss Chef Stephen, Chef Hannah and Dan The Man!). That’s 100,000 meals per 12 months. JB (The RTE Massive Boss Chef) estimates that we will produce as much as 1,500 meals per day in our new kitchen, with a bigger staff. That’s 375,000 meals a 12 months!!!
I hope to extend to 450 meals every day with our present staff, as quickly as attainable, simply by 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 development comes the necessity for funding by 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 points of my enterprise, with regards to large, necessary selections. I take a way more thought-about strategy.
Failing just isn’t an possibility 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, enlargement must be performed correctly. I refuse to embark on a wild fund-raising program till I’ve the precise staff to run bigger operations, managing exterior stakeholders, implement the precise processes and assist infrastructure.
And placing all this in place will take time. My purpose 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 partly to my cookbook doing fairly effectively, Dozer will proceed to sacrifice his deal with funds 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 sensible man*, I do that as a result of enterprise development just isn’t what fills my cup. Income or rising public profile doesn’t make me completely happy nor make me really feel glad. The final 12 months has confirmed that, definitively.
However having the ability to do RTM – this is what makes me spring away from bed at 5 am each morning! It’s my ardour. It offers me function. It offers me job satisfaction and makes me completely happy.
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
Learn extra about what we do at RecipeTin Meals right here!
A really large thanks to Chef JB
Truly, I’m not performed but as a result of I forgot to say somebody necessary! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Many individuals helped with the transfer, most particularly my complete staff, placing in large days main as much as transfer day.
However I’ve to do a particular very large 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 business kitchen tools), making this transfer occur and largely, for his unwavering dedication to working RTM, daily since we first launched it throughout the pandemic.
RTM wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. He was the driving power behind the preliminary arrange, hiring the staff, 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 normal”.
That is on high of every little thing else he does on the RecipeTin Eats aspect of the enterprise, working alongside me for all of the recipe growth and testing, travelling Australia for the Good Meals & Wine Present, weekly recipe contributions to newspapers!
So a really large 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
Sarcastically, having given Dozer all of the credit score for the existence of RTM, he won’t ever step paw in right here attributable to strict well being rules. However he was right here on spirit on transfer day!
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