Choosing Equipment for Central Kitchens and Food Factories

Choosing machines for central kitchens and food factories involves two more challenges than for small shops: many products that must share equipment, and premises and equipment that must comply with regulations. Below we cover configuration, shared machines, and regulations.

What Equipment Should a Central Kitchen Have?

Work back from your product list rather than picking down from equipment catalogs. Steps:

1. List products and daily output: how much of each product per day, at what weight, raw or cooked, chilled or frozen.
2. Break out shared process steps: mixing, portioning, encrusting, forming, heating, cooling, quick freezing, packaging, and which products share which section.
3. Find the bottleneck: Automate the section with the highest volume and the most labor first.
4. Match the downstream: Once the forming machine raises output, steamer, blast freezer, and freezer capacity must keep up, or you'll just move the pile-up from the front of the line to the back.

In central kitchens focused on filled dough products, common forming-section equipment includes steamed bun and mantou machines (such as the DY-201), as well as dough and filling portioning and cutting machines (such as the DY-528M).

How to Choose Shared Machines for Multiple Products

Principles for shared-machine trade-offs:

• Benchmark against the hardest product: If the product with the wettest filling, the thinnest wrapper, and the widest weight range can be made well, the others are usually easier. Testing with the simplest product often leads to buying the wrong machine.
• Count changeover time: Each product change means clearing material, changing dies or nozzles, and resetting weight; the more changes per day, the lower your real output.
• Watch for allergens and cross-contamination: When products containing nuts, crustaceans, eggs, or dairy share a machine with others, changeover cleaning must be thorough and recorded.
• Separate raw and cooked: Don't mix machines that handle raw fillings with the cooked-food packaging area.
• Cleanability: Whether food-contact parts are easy to remove, whether they can be washed with water, and whether there are dead spots directly determine how long end-of-shift cleaning takes each day.

Which Regulations Should You Consider?

The following only describes the provisions and general practice; whether your premises comply must be determined on-site by the competent authority or a professional consultant.

Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) Article 10, Paragraph 2: The buildings and equipment of food factories must comply with factory establishment standards.

Standards for Food Factory Construction and Equipment (食品工廠建築及設備設廠標準) (last amended September 27, 2018), key equipment-related points:

• Article 7: Machinery and equipment must be designed to prevent hazards to food hygiene, be easy to clean, disinfect, and inspect, and keep lubricating oil, metal fragments, and the like from getting into products; food-contact materials must be non-absorbent, corrosion-resistant, and not produce toxins or odors.
• Article 6: Floors in raw material handling areas, processing and preparation areas, and inner packaging rooms must use impermeable, acid- and alkali-resistant, wear-resistant materials with a drainage slope; lighting must be at least 100 lux on machinery and equipment surfaces and at least 200 lux on work or preparation surfaces.
• Article 3: Food factories must complete factory registration according to law.

Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Food (食品良好衛生規範準則, GHP) (last amended June 4, 2025): Article 4 requires premises, facilities, and equipment to be managed according to Annex 1, and Article 5 requires personnel, equipment, and utensils to be managed according to Annex 2. Annex 2 requires food-contact surfaces of equipment and utensils to be smooth, free of dents or cracks, and kept clean, checked for cleanliness before use and cleaned thoroughly after use.

For details on zoning, floors, and drainage, see Factory Space, Flooring, Drainage, and Workflow Planning; for contact surface materials, see SUS304 vs. SUS316.

Questions to Ask the Machine Maker When Choosing

• What material are the food-contact parts? Can they be removed as a set and washed with water?
• Which parts need to be changed when switching products, and roughly how long does it take?
• Can we use our hardest product in the trial run?
• Power specifications, required space, and maintenance methods.

FAQ

Q: Does a central kitchen have to apply for factory registration?
A: It depends on whether it meets the scale criteria for a factory and its type of business. Under the current criteria, the threshold for factories subject to establishment standards (which includes food factories) is 50 square meters of factory floor or a combined 2.25 kW of motor and electric heating power; please confirm the actual determination with the local industrial competent authority.

Q: Is there a problem with one machine making many products?
A: It can be done, but run trials with your hardest product, and factor in changeover cleaning time and allergen management.

Q: Are there regulations on machine materials?
A: Article 7 of the Standards for Food Factory Construction and Equipment requires food-contact materials to be non-absorbent, corrosion-resistant, and free of toxins or odors; migration requirements are in the Sanitation Standard for Food Utensils, Containers and Packages (食品器具容器包裝衛生標準).

Q: Are there lighting requirements for equipment?
A: Article 6 of the factory standards requires at least 100 lux on machinery and equipment surfaces and at least 200 lux on work or preparation surfaces.