Water is a critical component of today’s commercial kitchens — impacting everything from equipment performance to the taste of food and beverages. Here, we answer three questions that will help operators better understand how water filtration can positively impact their facility’s water quality, as well as its finances.
How can a water filtration system contribute to an operation’s bottom line?
Improved ingredient water for beverages means an increase in drink sales. Furthermore, water filtration protects equipment from costly maintenance and repairs (i.e. scale reduction). By prolonging the life of the equipment and reducing maintenance needs, it also reduces down time for beverage and foodservice equipment that can leave operators without ways to serve customers.
What steps should an operator take to determine if a system is right for their operation?
- Identify the equipment pieces that will use water. These could include drip coffee and tea brewers, ice machines, steamers and fountain beverage dispensers.
- Define their applications — whether steaming, cooking, beverages and/or producing ice —which will determine what potential water quality challenges will need to be addressed.
- Add up the maximum flow rate for each piece of equipment and size the treatment system accordingly.
- Take a water sample and send it to Antunes for testing. We can walk you through how to take an untreated water sample, run it through our lab to determine the chemical makeup and make recommendations on how to address any challenges.
How can an operator determine the impact of their water filtration system?
It’s difficult to calculate an exact ROI for the water filtration system — it’s almost a must-have for any foodservice operation due to the universal need for water. The impact will also depend on where the operation is located and the water quality in that geographic area. The type of operation and the equipment used is important as well (i.e. quick-serve restaurant, coffee shop, bakery, c-store).
There are key areas, however, that are improved by the right water filtration system.
Some operations have such a poor water quality source that they can promote that their beverages are filtered to help drive beverage traffic, but the biggest purpose for water filtration is equipment protection and mitigating downtime due to water-related issues, such as scale or particulate matter.
The best way to calculate ROI for an Antunes VZN system is to compare it with a traditional replacement cartridge style system. The reoccurring rate of replacement cartridges for alternative systems adds to the total cost of ownership of the system whereas the VZN system delivers high-quality ingredient water through a two-phase process that extends the lifespans of the ultrafilter and carbon cartridge to ensure the lowest cost of ownership for premium water filtration.
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