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Feel The Burn with Nashville Heat!

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In the next few months, Henny Penny will be rolling out a “Nashville Heat” melt-on topical seasoning. We’ve tried it at here at the office and we’ve gotta say – – its’s got a KICK!

“A bold blend of spices that will treat your taste buds to the Music City’s famous hot chicken. Apply this topical melt-on seasoning to taste after frying in your favorite Henny Penny breading.”

In celebration of this new product, we’ve decided to give you the run-down on how the original Nashville Hot Chicken is made! Born at Prince’s Chicken in Nashville, TN, “hot chicken” has a pretty funny origin story.

“More than 70 years ago, Thornton Prince came home after a night of tomcatting to find his lady waiting at home, none too pleased. To teach him a lesson, she doctored his Sunday morning chicken with a wallop of spice. “Hot peppers from the garden, I’m sure,” says Andre Prince, the restaurant’s current owner, and great-granddaughter of that fabled philanderer whose infidelities birthed the now-iconic dish. “She was furious—but he liked it! He liked his punishment. It’s just a rumor,” she adds; “I wasn’t there, have mercy. But I know how the Prince men are. They’re known for being ladies’ men.”

There are plenty more hot chicken locations in the Nashville area now, so let’s see how Hattie B’s gets their chicken so hot!

How Do They Do It?

“Much fried chicken begins with brining, but since he’s not dealing with whole chickens, Lasater opts for a sort of mini-curing process. He first readies his breading mixture, another proprietary blend of flour, spices, garlic, and salt and pepper, in a contraption that shakes it into fine crumbs and weeds out any large clumps. When the bottom of the sifting bin is removed, the breading falls into a bin beneath, and it’s here that our raw breast takes its first dip in the breading.”

 

 

“Once the breast is thoroughly coated, Lasater dunks it in a wash of eggs, water, milk, salt and pepper, and a splash of Crystal hot sauce. Then it’s back to the breading for dip two. ‘Always keep one hand wet, one hand dry.’ A double-dip in the breading ensures that the chicken will have a thick, crispy crust, traditional Southern-style. Then the breast is off to the fryer. Hattie B’s uses a soy-based shortening for frying, ‘the closest thing we can get to lard,’ Lasater says. ‘It has a nice creaminess to it that mixes really well with our breading blend.'”

 

 

“18 to 20 minutes later, the breast is cooked through and ready to exit the fryer. This is the magic moment: Lasater readies a bowl of that blend of dry spices. Into it he pours in the magma of chickeny shortening, fresh from the fryer, to make a sauce. ‘If the oil is hot, it keeps the crust crispy,’ says Lasater, ‘You bite into it and get that crunch.'”

 

 

“As traditional preparation dictates, the breast sits upon a slice of white bread (Hattie B’s uses Klosterman’s, a Nashville bakery), crowned by a couple of pickle chips. It’s a fierce, mouth-watering sight: Hattie B’s has an especially rich, red hue, and their portions are not skimpy.”

 

[Excerpts via Susannah Felts’ article “The Bird That Bites Back: How Nashville Hot Chicken is Made” on SeriousEats.com]

Thrasher’s French Fries Experience Legendary Savings!

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[from hennypenny.com]

Thrasher’s French Fries has been an icon on the Ocean City, MD boardwalk since J. T. Thrasher served up the first batch from a window at the city pier in 1929. After 85 years Thrasher’s French Fries still offers only one item, made the way it’s always been made. Les Morris started working there in 1974 at age 16. Two years later he was running the place, and he’s been doing it ever since. Things don’t change much at Thrasher’s. So replacing the fryers at the 8th street location was a pretty big deal.

“I wasn’t overly happy with the current situation”

Thrasher’s goes through potatoes by the train-car load. His old-style manual fryers struggled to maintain temperature. They were constantly breaking down, and it was getting harder to find parts and reliable service. “I thought we could be getting more for our money. I wanted something that worked, that was reliable. I wanted fryers that would recover temperature all day long.”

“We needed fryers that would cook at temperature non-stop 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. every day. Henny Penny didn’t disappoint.” – Les Morris, General Manager

Thrasher’s worked with Taylor AFS, a Henny Penny distributor in Landover, MD, changing the first location over to the new Henny Penny 320 Series gas fryers. The initial conversion would match current vat capacity with 16 half basket drops. (The current configuration actually allowed for 18 drops to make up for slow temperature recovery.) What happened next was interesting. The Henny Penny fryers basically recovered temperature in seconds. The resulting increase in throughput made one of the new fryers unnecessary!

“My guy at that store wasn’t sold on the whole idea at first. But he went from ‘I don’t know if this is going to work…’ to ‘hey, take that extra fryer out. We don’t need it.’ It sold him and that sold me.”

Les Morris started out simply looking for fryers that were more reliable than what he had. He wound up needing fewer new fryers and using 15% less oil. Les plans to convert the other two locations of Thrasher’s Fries to Henny Penny.

“It’s been a great experience. Henny Penny has exceeded my expectations. Everything they said… the experience has been better.”

Prolonging the Life of Your Kitchen Equipment

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Proper maintenance and the right parts program can ensure top performance of your equipment.

 

[This post originally appeared as a Henny Penny sponsored blog post on Nation’s Restaurant News www.nrn.com]

 

Some of your kitchen equipment has seen better days. Your rotisserie isn’t cooking evenly, the way it used to. Your pressure fryer does not heat oil accurately. You are having food quality issues. But margins are tight. Plus, you’ve reduced labor so you depend on your equipment even more. You can’t afford to buy new. What to do?

Fortunately, there is a solution. Two solutions, in fact. You need a good preventative maintenance program to extend the performance of your equipment and, when parts wear out, you need to investigate replacing the affected parts rather than purchasing new equipment.

Peter Krause and Jim Anglin are experts in keeping equipment in prime working condition. Krause is the field support and technical training supervisor for equipment supplier Henny Penny and Anglin is the company’s director of parts and supplies. The two share some practices that can help operators prolong the life of their equipment and keep it running in peak order.

Planned Maintenance

To keep kitchen equipment in the best working order, one or more employees in the back-of-the-house needs to be trained to perform routine preventative maintenance, or, as Krause calls it, planned maintenance. The goal of planned maintenance, he says, is to keep all equipment working safely, decrease down time and reduce the total cost of ownership for the operator.

The main thing is to be proactive in scheduling both internally conducted maintenance and check-ups by a professional service technician. Krause suggests that when maintenance is performed by the end-user it is a good idea to plan maintenance to coincide with routine tasks. As an example, he points out that if a customer changes their oil approximately once a month on a pressure fryer, that customer can create a “Changing the Oil” checklist that directs their team member to perform all of the monthly maintenance on the fryer at that time.  A checklist might look like this: (1) Dispose of the oil. (2) Perform a clean-out procedure on the fry pot. (3) Lubricate lid components. To make sure maintenance tasks are getting done, it’s best to have a manager follow up with the team member assigned to the task and reinforce why these steps are important to the performance of the equipment.

There are common denominators for the care of each piece of equipment, according to Krause. If a unit is electric, the cord, plug, heating elements and contactors require a thorough inspection. If it is gas, the gas hose, quick disconnect and pilot-burner assembly would require inspection. For pressure fryers, it is necessary to make sure the lid, safety relief valve and lid components are checked.

It is also a good idea to have a service technician come in at scheduled intervals. The professional will inspect components to ensure that nothing in the equipment would compromise food safety or food quality or result in unexpected downtime. Service technicians also are trained to recognize when a part needs to be replaced rather than repaired.

Henny Penny holds training classes for end users on the steps they should be taking in-house. Henny Penny also holds classes for technicians which include training on the kind of maintenance that would be performed in-house as well as the critical inspections that require a trained service technician.

Replacement Parts

Replacing parts versus buying new equipment is a dilemma that can only be addressed on a case-by-case basis, according to Anglin. Generally, a well-maintained piece of equipment can last for decades. But this depends on consistent maintenance according to manufacturer specs. One key to longevity is parts replacement.

Some components within the equipment will not last decades. Anglin points out that most of today’s modern equipment is designed with wearable parts that can be replaced at regularly scheduled intervals. Examples include silicone o-ring seals, gaskets and oil filtration media.

Henny Penny recognizes the fact that operators, in tough financial times, need to extend the life of their kitchen equipment as long as feasibly and safely possible.  Down time is not an option.  Operators simply can’t be without working equipment to help deliver their brand experience.  Henny Penny recognizes how important it is to have the right parts at the right times for our partners and have recently upgraded their fulfillment operation to ensure expedient shipments to service and distributor partners to avoid that dreaded downtime!

Anglin recommends that operators use OEM-specified parts, that is, those parts specified by the original manufacturer’s design engineers, to ensure safety, reliability and proper fit. He says look-alike parts may appear to be similar, but may fall short on endurance or safety ratings. When this occurs the look-alike will have to be replaced sooner with associated installation costs or may compromise the safety of the equipment.

If the equipment is more than 10 years old and it breaks down, the operator must weigh the cost of repair against the cost of replacement. This decision must factor in the age of the equipment, return on investment in terms of labor savings, consumables savings such as cooking oil or food waste, and potential utility rebates.

Top-Performing Equipment Can Be Key to Addressing Margin Pressure

Labor issues, from increased labor costs to a shrinking pipeline of employees, are putting pressure on operators’ already slim margins. Many are responding by reengineering their kitchens, often with a smaller footprint and multi-use equipment. They are relying on modern technology and equipment to solve labor issues. Because of this, it is even more critical that equipment function optimally over a period of time.

Both planned maintenance and replacement parts and supplies play a major role in ensuring extended life and performance of every piece of equipment in the back-of-the-house.

Henny Penny Receives the Arby’s Red Hat Supplier Achievement Award!

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Henny Penny received the Arby’s Red Hat Supplier Achievement Award at the recent 2016 Arby’s Worldwide Franchise Convention. Henny Penny was specifically recognized for their high-quality products, responsiveness and exceptional service. See an excerpt from the press release below. To view the entire release, click here!

 

ARCOP Honors Suppliers with Red Hat Supplier Achievement Awards at 2016 Arby’sWorldwide Franchise Convention

ATLANTA (September 20, 2016) – Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc. (ARG) and ARCOP, Inc., the national supply chain cooperative for Arby’s, honored twelve of its suppliers with Red Hat Supplier Achievement Awards during the 2016 Arby’s Worldwide Franchise Convention in Orlando held September 12-14.

The Red Hat Supplier Achievement Awards recognize suppliers and distributors for their outstanding performance and superior levels of service and support to the Arby’s system.

“Arby’s supplier community is an integral part of the Brand and plays a pivotal role in its success,” said David Cox, President, ARCOP, Inc. “These awards recognize those organizations that have most exceeded expectations in the quality, service, competitiveness and innovation they’ve brought to the Arby’s system.”

For high-quality products, responsiveness and exceptional service, Henny Penny also received the Red Hat Award Supplier Achievement Award. Henny Penny’s fryer product has helped reduce ARG’s oil usage by 35 percent, and drives up to $2,900 per restaurant in total savings.

 

About Arby’s:

Arby’s, founded in 1964, is the first nationally franchised sandwich restaurant brand, with more than 3,300 restaurants worldwide. The Arby’s brand purpose is “Inspiring Smiles Through Delicious Experiences®.” Arby’s® restaurants feature Fast Crafted® service, a unique blend of quick-serve speed and value combined with the quality and made-for-you care of fast casual. Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc. is the parent company of the franchisor of the Arby’s brand and is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga. Visit Arbys.com for more information.

Introducing Victory Blast Chillers for Retail

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Our Family is Getting Bigger!

Here at HP Sales, we’re always trying to think of new ways to bring you the best kitchen equipment. That is why we’ve partnered up with Victory Refrigeration to bring their top of the line blast chillers to our partners in the retail market. Competitive pricing is available, so contact us today!

For over 65 years Victory has been a leading manufacturer of commercial foodservice refrigeration products. We are focused on providing our customers with unsurpassed value, superior customer service and the highest quality products available in the industry today. A continuous product development process ensures a steady stream of innovative, technologically advanced designs; which provide the ultimate in energy efficiency, food safety, storage flexibility, reliability and durability. Each Victory model is designed with essential standard features, while also offering a wide variety of options, accessories and modifications.

History, Price, and Warranty That Can’t Be Beat!

Many of you already know the name Victory – they’ve been at the forefront of the blast chiller game for 75 years. But did you know that their warranty is one of the best in the business? Three years parts and labor warranty comes standard with every Victory Blast Chiller we sell.

Henny Penny Oil Shuttle Solutions

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Henny Penny Oil Shuttle Solutions

000359Did you know that the Henny Penny ODS 300 with 50 lb. oil capacity can be used with Evolution Elite as well as PFE 500 and PFE 600?

One of Henny Penny’s most popular Oil Shuttles, the ODS 300, can be used with 4 Head pressure frying models. This provides excellent flexibility for customers who have an Evolution Elite Fryer as well as a 4 Head pressure fryer.

To use the ODS 300 with a PFE 500 or PFE 600, a removable collar (pictured below) will need to be purchased. This is just another option that provides customers with maximum flexibility for their oil disposing needs.

Contact the sales department today for a price quote!