At a time when most onsite operators are looking for new ways to build revenue or cover overhead costs, many consider whether one solution may be leveraging their extra kitchen capacity. After all, your equipment is already in place and you may have available labor and production capacity.

If you can find a suitable outlet for that additional production, you can use it to generate extra revenue or subsidize the operation you already have. Many are doing so successfully. Consider the Meals on Wheels program that has a contract to make 500 trays for a hospital every day. Or the hospital that provides bulk prepared food to another hospital. Or the college that ships meals over to a daycare center regularly. When you find customers for your excess capacity, you're providing a service that can spell real savings for both parties.

“The savings can be tremendous,” says Carol Sherman, a principal at CS Services, a consulting firm that specializes in healthcare foodservice. “If facility A has a big kitchen and an executive chef and a pastry chef, and they're shipping to facility B, think of all the costs: labor, power, equipment. The second facility takes advantage of the economics of scale that the first has already achieved, and the first facility can offset some of the costs of its own operation.”

That said, it doesn't mean this approach is without its challenges. Labor, logistics, taxes, sales and marketing, safety, town and gown or other “political” concerns — all can create roadbumps along the way. This article will look at some of these issues and professionals who've confronted them.

A real juggling act

Picture this: You have to deliver to more than a dozen different sites, trying to keep track of delivery windows, daily production orders, and transportation. Things really get hectic between 9 and 10:30 a.m. because that's when everyone is scrambling — preparing to serve lunch at your own operation, the residential dining halls on a 2,800-student campus. But — you're also trying to ensure your kitchen is ready to ship out a couple hundred trays for a senior home service and a hundred more congregate meals for a senior center.

Meanwhile, three hundred pounds of peas are staring you in the face, and have to be divvied up among the different orders. (You've got to achieve economy of scale to make this work.) But that's not all. You've got specialized daycare meals needs that have to go out today, too. Everything must be accurately labeled, and you have to make sure the right meals go to the right places. Oh, and don't forget to manage your HACCP procedures. Yikes!

While this description may seem a bit dramatic, it accurately describes a typical day for Janet Paul Rice, associate director of dining services, Concordia College, Moorehead, MN. “Nothing is reheated or re-thermed,” she says. “Everything is prepped on a daily basis in our central production kitchen. Seniors get a cold sack with milk and a pat of butter and then a hot tray. We have staff that preps the cold food and our chefs prep the hot. Then, the two come together and are loaded onto a truck. There are actually not many errors.” The staff use customized labeling and many checklists as tools to keep things in order, she says.

One of the first lessons to keep in mind is that you may end up with clients whose needs are very different than your own operation. Concordia has five different contracts, including a daycare center and a Meals-On-Wheels program. The first contract — the county jail — came in 1998.

“We learned a lot and we were a little more sheltered than we had thought,” Rice remembers.

As is always the case in a corrections environment, desserts had to be cut into exactly the same size, or run the risk of a fight — or worse. All the meals had to be prepared so they could be eaten with a spoon or by hand.

“We started off each day sending a cold breakfast the night before,” Rice says. “That meant about 120 breakfasts, unless there had been a bust — then they'd need a few more.” That fluctuating population factor was challenging, Rice says, but not unmanageable, as long as there was good communication.

The jail, and another early customer, a psychiatric hospital, are no longer clients, but communication still rates high in helping Concordia keep its program running smoothly. Currently, Concordia communicates with its Meals on Wheels client with periodic meetings. “They tell us what they like, what didn't work so well, and what they'd like to see,” Rice says.

Finding menu items that will appeal to all of those served is like catching lightning in a bottle for an operation like Concordia's.

“There is a lot of menu engineering that goes on,” she says. “We'll identify items from our residential dining area that could work elsewhere. For example, Salisbury Steak is popular with students, seniors and children. It's like striking gold to find something like that.”

Strict HACCP-or Else

One of the biggest things to worry about is transporting the food and keeping it at a safe temperature until it is served, cautions Beth Torin, RD, associate executive director, Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“People think, ‘This is easy,’” she says. “But if something goes wrong, they'll blame you.”

“You must take the time to plan it out and do it right, not just assume you can start loading meals in the back of a truck.”

Regulations for transporting food and other functions vary from state-to-state, so you should investigate them carefully.