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Metro

PINK SHELL’S POST-HURRICANE OVERHAUL

In 2022, Hurricane Ian battered Florida’s Gulf Coast. The Pink Shell Beach Resort & Marina, an iconic 200-room resort on Fort Myers Beach, saw its foodservice facilities wiped out. “Fortunately, we were OK structurally,” says Mathew Mitnitsky, Pink Shell’s chef and executive director of food and beverage.

The restoration included a re-visioning of Pink Shell’s foodservice infrastructure to reconfigure backof- house spaces to maximize and centralize storage, create efficiency and a smoother flow of products to the foodservice venues. Metro® shelving, transport products and space-saving SmartWall® wall shelving played key roles in the update.

“I wanted to create a Pink Shell 2.0 that would be better designed and equipped for its next 70 years,” Mitnitsky says. In the resort’s main kitchen, Mitnitsky seized the opportunity to create dedicated stations to improve organization. A new walk-in cooler was a prime target for introducing upgraded storage strategies. Metro’s high-density Top-Track® overhead track system fit the bill, significantly expanding the cooler’s storage capacity by enabling productive use of its interior space.

Two Metro SmartWall units were installed in the main kitchen to provide convenient storage space for freshly washed pots and kitchen utensils. Pink Shell’s back-of-house redesign and restoration also introduced Metro SmartWall units, which enabled Mitnitsky and his team to take advantage of unused wall space. Each SmartWall unit features adjustable, interchangeable grid brackets and a variety of shelf, hook and basket accessories. Shelves, supports and grids can be easily removed for cleaning of walls and fixed elements.

Portability was also a priority. With the main kitchen and storage areas remote from the resort’s poolside, beach and banquet venues, fitting rolling transport racks down hallways and into service elevators was crucial. “The rolling rack system enables us to push the shelving units together when we don’t need additional capacity but roll them apart for extra storage and easy access when we do need more shelving capacity.

We had to do lot of careful measuring but were able to go with Metro all the way,” says Mitnitsky. More operationally efficient than ever, Pink Shell’s food and beverage program was back to 95% operational by mid-2024.

Belshaw

The whole package at Duck Donuts

Customization and quick service are key to Duck Donuts spreading its wings internationally. The Mechanicsburg, Pa.-based chain opened stores in Northern Ireland and the Bahamas in fall 2024, bringing its international presence to 15 stores on top of its 150 across the U.S., with plans to open 30 or more stores annually.

Crucial to its expansion has partly been thanks to Belshaw’s efficient, standardized equipment package. Inspired by donuts he enjoyed on vacation, Russ DiGilio opened the first Duck Donuts in Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 2007. By 2013, the brand had received numerous requests from vacationers who missed its sweet treats after returning home, prompting the decision to franchise.

“Demand became so high that my dad thought himself silly if he didn’t look into that venture,” says Marissa Heath, franchise director of onboarding and daughter of DiGilio. Each Duck Donuts store prepares its donuts to order in front of customers, and then customizes them with dips, toppings and drizzles. The experience is customizable, and it’s fast. Each donut takes 115 to 125 seconds to cook in a Donut Robot® Automatic Fryer from Belshaw.

They cool for about 30 seconds, then an employee dips, tops and drizzles. Stores have two Belshaw fryers in case there’s an equipment problem, so they don’t need to halt operations. Each store has a complete equipment package from Belshaw, including an EZMelt shortening melter-filter that keeps oil hot and melted. It also functions as a filtration system, removing all particulates from the oil, which extends its usability and reduces the frequency of oil changes.

For those rare occasions when a repair is necessary, Duck Donuts has equipped each location with a spare parts kit from Belshaw. They also recommend each franchisee buy the same package from Belshaw, which includes hand-held depositors, plungers and hoppers, to allow stores to offer different flavors, shapes and sizes.

Duck Donuts has also considered using Belshaw’s Insider unit, which would allow it to move into nontraditional locations where there’s no hood; instead, the unit recirculates air within itself. “The focus is trying to get into these nontraditional spots,” says Heath. “They would all probably use this Insider unit unless there was a hood system already established.”

XpressChef

HEATED TO PERFECTION

At Maisie Eatery, an artisan eatery inside Calgary’s Sam Centre, beautifully displayed made-from-scratch creations never fail to stop customers in their tracks. With a daily changing menu of some 100 SKUs including salads, sandwiches, savory baked goods and pastries, maintaining a well-organized kitchen is essential for chef and founder Barbara Spain. When designing the kitchen, Spain found an ideal solution in the MRX2 XpressChef® from Accelerated Cooking Products (ACP, Inc.).

After running four restaurants in Dublin, moving to Calgary and opening Cleaver restaurant and Gringo Street, Spain met the people behind Sam Centre. She envisioned a destination restaurant where visitors could visit the galleries and then have lunch with their families. Customers could also stop by for a coffee and pastry in the morning, a hearty lunch or a cocktail and snack in the late afternoon. “Everything on offer at Maisie is literally right in front of you on the display line,” says Spain. “Everything is down to a T. We are enjoying what we are doing because we are organized.”

Prior to purchasing equipment, Spain spent the day at one of the test kitchens of Food Service Solutions, a North American distributor of commercial foodservice equipment led by chef consultants. Mark McEwan, executive chef consultant/western sales director, walked Spain through the equipment. Initially, Spain was interested in combi ovens, but McEwan had other ideas. Now, at Maisie Eatery, two MRX2 XpressChef countertop high-speed ovens perform a variety of duties in a very fast process.

“By the time customers are done with their transaction, they have a hot beverage and hot food in their hands,” says McEwan. The ovens also play a key role in re-serving food. Microwave technology helps penetrate heat all the way through the product. “We are re-temping things like sausage rolls and pasties,” says Spain. “The oven creates a crispy, flaky pastry when it’s re-temped and heats the internal as well. So, you are giving back the product that might have been cold, but it tastes like it came fresh out of the oven.”

The XpressChef high-speed oven also provides consistency with its preset capabilities. “There’s no guesswork for our staff,” says Spain. “It’s brilliant and does exactly what it’s meant to do.”