With the right oven, expanding your foodservice offerings to include grab and go is easy. Grab ‘n go meals range from those that are ready to eat, to dishes that are prepared raw and cooked at home. Year-over-year data shows consistent growth for grab ‘n go food for supermarkets, making it one of the highest-performing segments in the industry. Prepared food satisfies the needs of a busy customer and spikes impulse food sales.

Benefits of grab ‘n go
Grab ‘n go food benefits foodservice operators and customers alike. Ready-made meals serve customers who are running into the supermarket for salad, sushi, wraps or soup on their lunch break. They also steal share-of-wallet from meal kits, by giving shoppers the taste of homemade without the effort of cooking. Plus, grab ‘n go meets demand for holiday shoppers who want a family-style meal made easy. Foodservice operators celebrate grab ‘n go for its added revenue streams, as many pre-cut or prepared foods can be sold at a premium compared to their fresh, unprepared counterparts. Not only that, grab ‘n go creates efficiencies for your kitchen. Chefs can use grab ‘n go to sell leftovers from lunch from the deli or prepared food section.  The take-and-go cooler also reduces the burden on staff while keeping sales up. For example, if a shopper can purchase a premade wrap from the cooler, they will keep lines down at the made-to-order deli counter.

Finding the right features
As with any new endeavor, having the right oven features will ensure ease of execution. Here are oven features that can help your supermarket prepare grab ‘n go items with consistency and efficiency.

1. Impingement technology
Impingement nozzle technology blows concentrated hot air on food with precision and speed. Our data shows it four times faster than a conventional oven. The concentrated air jet blasts through the cold air “halo” or bubble that typically lingers over food after it enters the oven. Without the cool “halo” of air, food cooks more quickly, which can increase your scale of production. Experiment with the distance of the nozzle from the top and bottom of the food to produce different results based on what you’re cooking.

2. Multi-load trays
Ovens that have one tray on each side of the cooking box are multi-load, which is another way to say it can multitask. If you are excited about grab ‘n go for the efficiency it can create for your kitchen, then you’ll love how multi-load trays make your kitchen work even faster. Take sausage and biscuits for example. One side of the oven can cook sausage while the other side cooks biscuits. Another beneficial feature is auto load and unload trays. This prevents busy kitchen staff from accidentally burning a dish.

3. Flexible temperature control
Grab ‘n go menus are extremely diverse as they span across breakfast, lunch and dinner. With such a variety of menu items, having an oven with flexible temperature control is essential. Flexible temperature control allows chefs to switch temperatures quickly and efficiently. By not having to waste precious time for ovens to change temperatures, more food can be cooked to achieve scale.

4. Combination of convection and steam
Whether you are crafting a menu of speed-scratch cooking, comfort food or adventurous cuisine, you’ll want an oven that can keep up. That’s where combination ovens answer the call. Combination ovens offer both convection and steam cooking, which means veggies, bread, meat and fish can all be cooked with precision.  What oven features do you hope to incorporate in your grab ‘n go menu?