Maintaining Your Small to Mid-sized Butcher Kitchen with Reiser

Downtime for your small to mid-sized butcher kitchen can result in a waste of time and ingredients, upend your production schedule, impact client relationships, and affect your bottom line. With so much depending on the functionality of your equipment, proper routine maintenance is the best investment you can make in the long-term success of your small butcher kitchen.

At Reiser, we partner with our small and mid-sized butcher customers to ensure that they have the knowledge, spare parts, and support to keep their production up and running and maintain the long-term health of their machines.

Common maintenance issues in small to mid-sized butcher kitchens

At some point in the life cycle of every machine it will need some degree of upkeep and repair. Machines that get used every day for a large throughput will experience greater wear and tear, and require servicing more regularly.

Many small and mid-sized butcher kitchens do not have a dedicated maintenance staff, and integrating routine maintenance into the existing production schedule can feel prohibitively difficult. The responsibility may fall to the owner outside of business hours, and smaller maintenance tasks often get neglected in lieu of more time-sensitive needs. But issues that seem insignificant in the moment, such as bent linking horns or dull knives, can ultimately result in catastrophic failure down the line if not addressed.

Some of the most common issues I see in our customers’ kitchens come from neglected maintenance. The machines experience strain that, over time, can result in significant damage. Dull knives can cause the motor to overwork. Improperly maintained grinder components affect product consistency and throughput. Vacuum pumps running with low or contaminated oil can result in water getting sucked into the system. These issues are not overly complicated to fix, but when they go unnoticed, can result in costly repairs and lost production time.

If done correctly, introducing automation into your small to mid-sized butcher kitchen should increase your production and efficiency, reduce labor costs, and put you in a position to be able to scale responsibly. So while maintaining new machines may seem daunting at first, there are simply steps you can take to create a manageable, sustainable process.

Create a regular maintenance plan, or use Reiser’s

To keep your small to mid-sized butcher kitchen running like, well, a well-oiled machine, maintaining your equipment should be proactive, not reactive. This is why it’s critical to create a maintenance plan that includes daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly checklists. By doing so, you are taking all of the necessary steps to lower your maintenance costs in the long run, decrease downtime, and extend the life of your equipment.

All of our machines come with manuals that detail what to do and when, so you are never left guessing about the maintenance process. Routine maintenance should ideally occur on a daily basis, but Reiser does offer routine maintenance programs, such as quarterly checks, for companies that lack a dedicated maintenance staff.

Maintain a spare parts inventory

Any time you purchase a machine from Reiser for your small butcher kitchen, you have the option to order a spare parts kit as well. This includes replacement parts for the elements of your equipment that will experience the most wear and tear, and will need to be replaced most frequently.

While this may seem like an unnecessary added expense, it is the best investment you can make in preventing even costlier downtime. Reiser does maintain an extensive parts inventory that allows us to ship to customers overnight (or in some cases same-day) to keep your business running, but in a small butcher kitchen especially, those hours of downtime can be extremely costly.

I also recommend that small butcher owners hold onto older equipment if it still functions, and if your budget and storage capacity allows. No machine is perfect, and even the highest quality well-maintained machines can experience unexpected technical difficulties. Rather than trading older equipment in for a small amount of money, these machines can serve as a safety net for your business to minimize downtime.

Utilize Reiser’s 24/7 helpdesk and service technician network

At Reiser, we understand that technical difficulties can arise at any hour of the day (typically at the least convenient time for your business). We have a dedicated 24/7 help desk where you can speak to a real person, not a machine, to receive real-time assistance. Reiser also has an extensive network of field service technicians located throughout the United States who are available on demand to travel to customers in need of support.

Reiser is your partner in maintaining your small to mid-sized butcher kitchen

At Reiser, we pride ourselves on being more than just a supplier of machines. We partner with our customers to find solutions that meet their current needs and account for their future growth. Whether you have a small butcher shop that has recently introduced automation, or a medium operation looking to implement best practices into your maintenance routine, we have the solutions and expertise to meet your goals and the unparalleled service to help you succeed.

Contact Reiser today to learn more about how we can help you maintain your small butcher kitchen.

Post Provided by

Stefan Neumann

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