BIG NEWS: New RTM Kitchen!

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 now!!

Lastly – a much bigger, higher kitchen for RTM

After 18 months of searching, we’ve got a brand new house for RTM! That is the most important and most enjoyable factor that has occurred since….properly, since we began RTM through the pandemic!

Our new RTM kitchen is positioned within the Ryde space of Sydney (about 10 km north of Sydney) and is way bigger than our present inside 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!

This can be a huge milestone for the way forward for RTM and our capacity to increase 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 instances bigger than our present kitchen! No extra sucking in our tummies as we squeeze previous one another lugging large pots of soup!

• Much better tools – A plethora of business grade tools together with two Rational ovens (fellow hospitality individuals will respect 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 are able to make with this stand mixer!! GIANT CAKES, HERE WE COME!

• Stroll in fridges – It has FIVE stroll in wine fridge / freezers. The advantages of this are huge 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’ve got no freezer area to retailer them (it’s a “get what you’re provided when it’s provided” scenario).

• Environment friendly format – The present kitchen is a rabbit warren! Our new kitchen is one huge open plan area which suggests we are able to 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 package deal 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 often designed to maximise income producing eating area and minimising kitchen area. Whereas we would like all kitchen area!

  There’s even a whole space devoted to only dishwashing. WHAT A LUXURY!!!

• Single stage entry – In case you might SEE the precarious stairs in our present kitchen! The RTM crew is not going to miss lugging heavy bins crammed with cans of beans up the steps then a whole bunch of meals down the steps every single day. Additionally, simply usually, it’s a security hazard that at all times frightened me.

  On this new kitchen, supply vehicles and our meals supply automobiles 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.

• Inexpensive lease – It’s positioned in a suburban space on a small strip of native retailers so the lease is way more reasonably priced than the place we are actually within the metropolis. And parking is free! We at present need to pay for parking within the inside metropolis – ouch, it hurts! However needed – for meals supply.

Different vital issues….

And on prime of all of this, there’s a complete bunch of different issues that can make the work setting higher for the crew, together with:

• The truth that there’s a bathe (pan frying hen for six hours is messy work!)

• There might be a crew 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 right now.

What subsequent?

This information is coming to you in actual time as a result of we moved right now! There was/is a whole lot of cleansing and organisation to be finished in each our previous kitchen and new one. The crew wants to make sure they know precisely easy methods to use all of the tools within the new kitchen. I couldn’t even determine easy methods to 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 Massive Boss Chef) estimates that we can 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 every day with our present crew, as quickly as attainable, simply via 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 progress comes the necessity for funding via 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, on the subject of huge, essential selections. I take a way more thought-about method.

Failing just isn’t an choice with RTM. I can’t “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, growth needs to be finished correctly. I refuse to embark on a wild fund-raising program till I’ve the precise crew to run bigger operations, managing exterior stakeholders, implement the precise processes and assist infrastructure.

And placing all this in place will take time. My aim 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 properly, Dozer will proceed to sacrifice his deal with finances 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 smart man*, I do that as a result of enterprise progress just isn’t what fills my cup. Income or rising public profile doesn’t make me pleased 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 objective. It offers me job satisfaction and makes me pleased.

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 huge thanks to Chef JB

Truly, I’m not finished but as a result of I forgot to say somebody essential! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Many individuals helped with the transfer, most particularly my entire 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 business kitchen tools), making this transfer occur and largely, for his unwavering dedication to operating RTM, every single day since we first launched it through the pandemic.

RTM wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. He was the driving power 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 customary”.

That is on prime of all the pieces else he does on the RecipeTin Eats aspect of the enterprise, working alongside me for all of the recipe growth and testing, travelling Australian 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

Paradoxically, having given Dozer all of the credit score for the existence of RTM, he won’t ever step paw in right here because of strict well being rules. However he was right here on spirit on transfer day!

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