FINALLY – we discovered a brand new kitchen for RecipeTin Meals!! 🙌🏻 (Our meals financial institution.) Are available and take a peek inside – we moved in at present!!
Lastly – an even bigger, higher kitchen for RTM
After 18 months of looking, we’ve got a brand new dwelling for RTM! That is the largest and most enjoyable factor that has occurred since….properly, 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 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 massive volumes of meals!
This can be a huge milestone for the way forward for RTM and our capacity to develop 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 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 tools – A plethora of economic 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!), at least two Robotic Coups (magical meals processor-type issues), blast chillers, each pot, pan, bowl, small home equipment, and utensil we might ever dream of….the listing is lengthy!!
Picture how a lot buttercream we will 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 huge for us for a lot of causes, one being that we will begin accepting produce donations. Particularly, meat donations, which is our largest price however we’ve got no freezer area 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 area which implies we will 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 bundle massive numbers of meals. It’s fairly totally different to restaurant kitchens that are set as much as serve diners. For example, eating places are normally designed to maximise income producing eating area and minimising kitchen area. Whereas we wish all kitchen area!
There’s even a complete space devoted to only dishwashing. WHAT A LUXURY!!!
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Single degree entry – In case you might SEE the precarious stairs in our present kitchen! The RTM workforce is not going to miss lugging heavy bins full of cans of beans up the steps then lots of of meals down the steps day by day. Additionally, simply usually, it’s a security hazard that at all times apprehensive 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!
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Near me – It’s solely 5 minutes from my dwelling. Tremendous helpful! 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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Inexpensive lease – It’s positioned in a suburban space on a small strip of native outlets so the lease is far more inexpensive than the place we at the moment are within the metropolis. And parking is free! We at present must pay for parking within the internal metropolis – ouch, it hurts! However needed – for meals supply.
Different important issues….
And on high of all of this, there’s a complete bunch of different issues that may make the work atmosphere higher for the workforce, together with:
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The truth that there’s a bathe (pan frying rooster for six hours is messy work!)
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There can be a workforce lunch desk….there may be nowhere in the intervening time!
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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 a whole lot of cleansing and organisation to be finished in each our previous kitchen and new one. The workforce wants to make sure they know precisely how you can use all of the tools 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 workforce 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 workforce. That’s 375,000 meals a 12 months!!!
I hope to extend to 450 meals day by day with our present workforce, as quickly as doable, simply by way of the efficiencies of working in a greater kitchen. And to double this inside 12 to 18 months. Then, onwards! Increase into new cities!
Donations and funding
With development comes the necessity for funding by way 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 terms of large, necessary choices. I take a way more thought of method.
Failing just isn’t an choice with RTM. I can not “give it a go” or “have a crack at it”. There are folks counting on our meals each single day. Now we have by no means missed a supply since we began RTM, and this should proceed to be the benchmark.
So, enlargement needs to be finished correctly. I refuse to embark on a wild fund-raising program till I’ve the fitting workforce to run bigger operations, managing exterior stakeholders, implement the fitting processes and help infrastructure.
And placing all this in place will take time. My aim 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 facet of my enterprise persevering with to develop, thanks partly to my cookbook doing fairly properly, Dozer will proceed to sacrifice his deal with funds to help 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 growing 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 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 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
A really large thanks to Chef JB
Truly, I’m not finished but as a result of I forgot to say somebody necessary! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Many individuals helped with the transfer, most particularly my complete workforce, 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 industrial kitchen tools), making this transfer occur and largely, for his unwavering dedication to operating RTM, day by day 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 workforce, 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 high of every little thing else he does on the RecipeTin Eats facet 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 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
Satirically, having given Dozer all of the credit score for the existence of RTM, he won’t ever step paw in right here resulting from strict well being laws. However he was right here on spirit on transfer day!
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