Labor Savings & Food Safety: Undercounter Dishmachines vs. 3 Comp Sinks

In the spring of 2024, a new Hobart CLeN Ventless Conveyor Type Dishmachine was installed in the central kitchen of Albany Unified School District (AUSD) in California, thanks in part to grant funding from StopWaste, a public agency focused on reducing waste in Alameda County. The dishmachine allows the school district to switch from disposable to reusable ware, reducing the amount of waste being sent to the landfill each day by the district’s six schools.

Each year, an estimated 7.5 to 8 billion breakfasts and lunches are served to K-12 students across the United States. The type of ware used to serve those meals in some ways is just as important as the food that’s on it, and plays a big role in determining the budget, labor needs and waste management for a food service operation.

Many school systems relied on disposable ware programs during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, even if they had a reusable ware program before the pandemic. Disposables made it easy to package and deliver to-go meals to students doing remote school and helped address concerns over contamination for on-site education. Now as we emerge from COVID-19 restrictions, K-12 food service is being impacted by additional factors including budgets, availability of supplies and storage space, labor costs, and sustainability expectations and mandates. Many schools are reconsidering their ware programs and making the switch to reusables.

Effective July 27, 2021, all commercial dishwashers sold with the ENERGY STAR label will have to meet new, more stringent guidelines and testing requirements set by the ENERGY STAR program, a joint program between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Hobart is ready with dishmachine models from across our entire product line that are certified to the new standards. 

Time is money, and no one understands that old adage more is better than an employer who pays employees by the hour. What if there was a way to reduce the amount of time dishroom operators have to spend pre-soaking and scraping dishes before loading them into the dishmachine, and instead gives them more time to do other productive tasks around the kitchen? The Automatic Soil Removal (ASR) technology on select Hobart commercial dishwashers reduces time spent prescrapping, leading to dishwashing labor savings by 20% or more.