FINALLY – we discovered a brand new kitchen for RecipeTin Meals!! 🙌🏻 (Our meals financial institution.) Are available and take a peek inside – we moved in right this moment!!
Lastly – a much bigger, higher kitchen for RTM
After 18 months of searching, we’ve got a brand new dwelling for RTM! That is the most important and most fun factor that has occurred since….effectively, since we began RTM through the pandemic!
Our new RTM kitchen is situated within the Ryde space of Sydney (about 10 km north of Sydney) and is way bigger than our present internal 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!
It is a large milestone for the way forward for RTM and our means to develop 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 goals! 🥰
The kitchen of our goals
Right here’s why that is the kitchen of our goals:
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Bigger – 5 instances 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 gear – A plethora of economic grade gear together with two Rational ovens (fellow hospitality individuals will recognize 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 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 price however we’ve got 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 huge 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 cook 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 wish all kitchen house!
There’s even a whole space devoted to simply dishwashing. WHAT A LUXURY!!!
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Single degree entry – Should you may SEE the precarious stairs in our present kitchen! The RTM crew won’t miss lugging heavy packing containers stuffed with cans of beans up the steps then a whole lot of meals down the steps day-after-day. Additionally, simply usually, it’s a security hazard that all the time nervous me.
On this new kitchen, supply vans and our meals supply vehicles 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 dwelling. 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.
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Wonderful location to service the entire of Sydney – it’s situated close to the intersection of main roads for simple entry in all instructions of Sydney.
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Inexpensive lease – It’s situated in a suburban space on a small strip of native retailers so the lease is far more reasonably priced 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 essential – for meals supply.
Different important issues….
And on prime of all of this, there’s a complete bunch of different issues that can make the work atmosphere higher for the crew, 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 will probably be a crew lunch desk….there may be nowhere in the intervening 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 right this moment. 
What subsequent?
This information is coming to you in actual time as a result of we moved right this moment! There was/is a variety of cleansing and organisation to be performed in each our outdated kitchen and new one. The crew wants to make sure they know precisely how you can use all of the gear within the new kitchen. I couldn’t even determine 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 crew 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 crew. That’s 375,000 meals a 12 months!!!
I hope to extend to 450 meals day by day with our present crew, 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 development 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 wish 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 features of my enterprise, in relation to huge, essential choices. I take a way more thought-about strategy.
Failing shouldn’t be an choice with RTM. I can not “give it a go” or “have a crack at it”. There are individuals counting on our meals each single day. We now have 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 best crew 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 wish 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 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 sensible man*, I do that as a result of enterprise development shouldn’t be what fills my cup. Income or rising public profile doesn’t make me completely satisfied nor make me really feel happy. 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 function. It provides me job satisfaction and makes me completely satisfied.
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 huge thanks to Chef JB
Really, I’m not performed but as a result of I forgot to say somebody essential! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Many individuals helped with the transfer, most particularly my complete crew, placing in huge days main as much as transfer day.
However I’ve to do a particular very huge 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 largely, for his unwavering dedication to operating RTM, day-after-day since we first launched it through the pandemic.
RTM wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. He was the driving pressure behind the preliminary arrange, hiring the crew, 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 prime of every part else he does on the RecipeTin Eats aspect of the enterprise, working alongside me for all of the recipe improvement and testing, travelling Australia for the Good Meals & Wine Present, weekly recipe contributions to newspapers!
So a really huge 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
Mockingly, having given Dozer all of the credit score for the existence of RTM, he won’t ever step paw in right here on account of strict well being rules. However he was right here on spirit on transfer day!
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