The Brasserie Express vending machine will mean that the Express by Holiday Inn hotels in Castle Bromwich and at the NEC Birmingham will for the first time be able to provide guests with hot meals and snacks 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without having to employ any extra staff.

Owned and operated by London-based company Brasserie Express UK, the machine works by combining a rotating stock freezer with a high speed combination oven which moves air at jet velocity; a rate of over 1,200 metres per minute. This allows heat transfer of up to 60 times that of a conventional oven and when combined with microwave technology, the oven can reheat frozen food faster than ever before without compromising food quality. Uniquely it will also brown, bake and crisp, depending on the item being cooked.

Menu options include a cooked English breakfast, pizzas, pasties, savoury slices and fries; as well as a range of healthy options. Food choices can be changed to suit individual market needs and ingredients are only sourced from UK specialist food suppliers to ensure the very highest standards of hygiene, quality, taste and freshness.

Brasserie Express UK has completed successful trials across the UK over the past 14 months and is currently placing a number of machines into the marketplace. A similar roll-out programme by a separate company in the USA has seen the concept placed in over 2,000 locations.

Clive Nicholls, Operations Director, Butterfly Hotels, Castle Bromwich Holiday Inn Express, comments: "We are always looking for ways to improve the service we provide our guests to ensure that we are their preferred choice. Since installing the Brasserie Express UK service we are now able to offer our guests a quality hot food option 24/7. This combined to other service initiatives has contributed to an increase in occupancy"

David Batchelor, Managing Director, Brasserie Express UK explained: "Brasserie Express is creating real excitement in the hotel and hospitality sector and we are currently in talks with several hotel groups and FTSE brands which are keen to provide their customers with our hot food 24/7option.

The American originators of Brasserie express came from the foodservice industry. Having owned and operated a number of high quality restaurants, they were intimately aware of the high operating costs associated in providing traditional foodservice. Ensuring products were prepared and delivered consistently, by well trained staff was a constant challenge.

Nonetheless, it was also evident that there was a growing demand by consumers, for quality convenience food, and research showed that food purchases away from home represented the fastest growing segment in the food service industry.

They believed that traditional foodservice alone would struggle to meet this 24-hour demand for quality and convenience, and set out to develop a contemporary, automated foodservice solution that could deliver quality products to the consumer 24 hours a day, without the high operating costs associated with traditional foodservice.

At the time there was nothing available that could produce a range of quality foods, quickly, and they realized that they would have to develop their own solution. So they looked at the technology used in the fast food industry for inspiration. They discovered Enersyst Development Center, an intellectual property developer and strategic marketer of food related technology, which had invented and developed the revolutionary air impingement cooking technology for NASA in the 1980s, and went on to transform the fast food industry, reducing pizza cooking times from 27 minutes to six.

Air impingement technology now dominates chain restaurants' conveyor belts the world over and is today used in more than 125,000 professional ovens to dramatically reduce cooking time while maintaining the taste, flavor and appearance of foods cooked in traditional ovens.

Brasserie Express recognized the potential to utilize this technology in its automated solution and went on to secure the license for the use of air impingement cooking technology in vending for European markets.

With access to this technology the company then appointed RWE AG/AEA Technology, a science and engineering service business to develop a working prototype of an automated hot food dispenser, capable of delivering high quality prepared food in a proprietary food container from a frozen state in about a minute, which could ultimately be mass produced.

The result is an oven, which moves air at jet velocity; a rate of over 1,200 metres per minute, resulting in a heat transfer rate of up to 60 times that of a conventional oven. When combined with microwave technology, this powerful oven can reheat frozen food faster than ever without compromising food quality. Uniquely it will also brown, bake and crisp depending on the item being cooked.

To complete the vision Brasserie Express partnered with Dutch Foodservice equipment manufacturer Fri-Jado to incorporate the oven and develop the frozen storage, transport and IT systems required to complete the project.

The unit itself is a self-contained and fully automated system. The built-in freezer storage holds up to 144 individual portions, in eight varieties. The customer makes a food selection by touch-screen. The food is then automatically transferred from the freezer to the oven, then heated, crisped and browned as appropriate using a specially designed and patented combination oven. The food is then re packed and delivered directly to the consumer. This whole process takes about 90 seconds. While waiting for their food, customers are entertained by music, and videos displayed on the screen. Stock levels and critical operating conditions are monitored remotely via GPRS or internet systems ensuring safe and continuous supply of product.

The oven technology lends itself to the preparation of a wide range of products. A wide range of filled savoury slices and sausage rolls are served hot and baked to perfection. Pizzas, with melted cheese, crisped and browned potato products, fries and wedges, chicken and fish products. A full English breakfast has also been developed in response to customer demand, and a range of pasta and rice based dishes is under development.

Products are sourced to suit individual market needs from Europe's top specialist food suppliers, to ensure the highest standards of hygiene, quality, taste and freshness.

The standard machine uses a cash facility. However, knowing that many organisations operate cashless systems of different descriptions, it can accommodate cashless solutions which can be incorporated into the machines at the factory.

Brasserie Express says that it sees a huge opportunity of broadening foodservice into vending, and vending into foodservice, creating many new opportunities as a result of innovation. To fully capture the opportunity, the company plans to provide national cover through a network of regional operators - for whom it claims that the concept can attract new, non-traditional customers and markets, plus add value to existing customers.

 "Since launching in the UK", concluded David Batchelor, Managing Director, Brasserie Express, "the concept has been incredibly well received by our target sectors, especially hotel groups. We're providing a real solution to consumers who are demanding a high quality, hot foodservice 24 hours a day. Having worked closely with each target sector, our product range has been developed to maximize sales and customer satisfaction in each one, whereby we are able to offer a range of quality hot products with a range of selling prices up to £3.00. As a result we are on track to install our forecast number of machines in 2008/9 and we are really confident that we will achieve our intended volumes in subsequent years".

http://www.brasserie-express.com/

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