Pizza technology was a popular trend at NAFEM, with several iterations of top-of-the-line ovens on display at the conference. One that caught our eye was the Marra Forni rotator brick oven. The rotating brick oven allows multiple pizzas to be cooked in the oven automatically, with the ability to program two different cooking styles/temperatures simultaneously. 

The pizza comes out after 90 seconds and is meant to replace the “person that is flipping pizza all day,” Francesco Marra, cofounder and managing partner of Marra Forni said. 

“In a pizzeria, we usually throw away about 3-5% of pizza daily because of overcooked pizzas […] In the pizza industry, we don’t have a lot of qualified laborers these days so having a machine that automates this quickly gives you a big advantage.”

Efficiency is everything in the foodservice industry, especially for coffee shops. The Hardtank nitro cold brew machine creates cold brew coffee or tea in an hour, as compared with the typical 12-24-hour brewing process, Justyna Suder, a representative for Hardtank said. 

How does it work? According to Suder, the secret to the product – which launched in 2019 — is constant water recirculation and a metal holding basket for the coffee or tea, allowing you to extract the liquid quickly. The company has also launched Baby Hard tank (a smaller version of the product) in 2021, which they’re mainly marketing toward small café chains. 

“You can create your own very unique drink each time, everything depends what you're going to put inside of the [machine] and how you're going to work on your recipe, including brewing time, for example,” Suder said. “[…] You can brew different coffee each time and receive a completely unique product each time.” 

Are buffets coming back? With origins in the contactless craze of the pandemic, the Vollrath VBBC3-37 is an automated refrigerated dispenser that is designed for use in salad bars. With separate, temperature-controlled chambers, it’s ideal for automatically dispensing portions of lettuce, and salad toppings. This way, you can fill up on buffet items or drinks without having to worry about germs.  

While the name of this product might be unclear, the purpose of the Styrogenie is to liquify polystyrene (Styrofoam) to turn it into an infinitely recyclable product and stop filling up landfills. 

The Styrogenie machine essentially compresses the polystyrene – removing the air from the product — and converts hundreds of polystyrene containers or trays into a small compact rectangle, which can then be picked up by one of their trucks, distilled, and turned back into reusable polystyrene products. 

Although the product is currently designed for school lunch trays, founder Jason Womack said that the company did pilot a test with a Chick-fil-A franchisee, so it is possible to utilize in the quick-service or fast-casual industries.   

Womack says this is preferable to compostable trays because compostables often contain PFAS in them and are not actually biodegradable. Plus, the return on investment can outweigh the cost of the more “Earth-friendly” materials. 

While the Quik ‘n Crispy greaseless commercial air fryer has been around for a while, it gained steam again as the popularity of air fryers for home use exploded over the past several years. While the Quik ‘n Crispy can’t make food from scratch, it can heat up pre-made products.

Right now, the Quik ‘n Crispy is in a lot of hospital cafeterias, since health and nutrition is such a priority for these places, and they also have a large market in schools that are concerned with serving grease-free food to students. The company has also been talking to some quick-service restaurants that don’t primarily do fried foods.

“I am in talks with a deli concept that just does tater tots as a side dish, which is the only reason they need a fryer,” CEO Paul Artt said. “It gives you a lot of other versatility.”

Although robots were — and usually are — the stars of the show at equipment and technology conferences, we were not expecting to find this doughnut-making robot from Belshaw. Surprisingly though, this automatic doughnut-maker actually was invented in 1965 as a futuristic invention on display at the World’s Fair. 

“If you look at the outside of the machine, it's very similar to the original [model from 1965],” Alan Craker, international sales manager at Belshaw said. “The internal parts have changed. Some of the electronics have changed. We've had some new controls on the temperature, and the drives that the […] but it’s a robust machine that’s built to last so not much has changed.”

The machine itself can make 300 doughnuts an hour and is fully automated and doesn’t require ant human intervention. The machine has been of use especially at bakeries, supermarkets, theme parks, and even for food trucks.