I didn’t know whether to put this in General Questions or here.
My GF, ever so entrepreneurial, has started a business doing home made granola, granola bars, brownies, cookies and other frankly very yummy stuff.
There’s been a few problems though, one that it is going rather too well, picture us up to 3AM packing stuff to send out. The other is that the stuff in the kitchen obviously is not up to that sort of production. Case in point, she has been using a food processor (this one) to shred and mix the granola bar mixture and last night it gave up, pyrotechnically so.
The problem, evidently, is that sort of mixture, and the one for bean based brownies (don’t knock them off until you try them) is very thick and sticky and the processor just couldn’t handle the load; I don’t know what could be used to mix it properly though. I think one these things could be the solution, but then I know naught about cooking.
Any suggestions on what to use? I just bought a new food processor, I don’t want to make that a weekly routine, to say nothing of taking care of flaming appliances…
They will pay for themselves tenfold. Trying to use household grade equipment will never end well for a commercial application, even if you consider the business small.
You wouldn’t have a lot of success starting a business where you use your old Corolla as a dump truck, either…
Given the turnover in the restaurant business, there’s a pretty big market in used and refurbished commercial kitchen equipment. That might be a good way to get a sufficiently heavy-duty mixer on a budget. You should probably start looking around locally, so you can (hopefully) get good advice and you won’t have to pay shipping on hundred-pound lumps of steel and aluminum.
Oh, certainly she needs to use more professional stuff; the issue though is that I’m not sure which appliance is the most appropriate for the job. The first one SeaDragonTattoo linked to certainly seems like the right stuff.
Good idea on the second hand suggestion, I haven’t thought of it.
Have you looked to see if you can rent pro kitchen space in your area? There are fully-equipped kitchens that you can rent to make your goodies that not only have the pro equipment but also meet the sanitary guidelines one must meet to sell food commercially. You guys are meeting those requirements right?
The commercial mixer the other poster linked to might be a good idea, especially if you need large volumes. Look for used models.
For a mid-size operation, you might try a Kitchen Aid. It’s still three times the cost of the one you linked to, but about a third the cost of the larger commercial one.
They’re different tools for different purposes, really.
The food processor should be used if you’re needing to chop things up into small pieces, like turning whole nuts into little chunks of nuts. While they can be used to mix, they’re really best at chopping. So it might be useful at the beginning, to chop up individual ingredients that go into the bars. Even with a commercial food processor, I would think in terms of small volumes of ingredients at a time.
A mixer is what you want when it comes to stirring things up. So once you chop up everything separately in the food processor, you add them into the mixer and let it run until everything is evenly mixed, coated with liquids, etc.
