In all businesses, there comes a time when the old equipment and tools wear out or just aren't working right and there has to be some capital investment. The salsa biz was long overdue for some new equipment.
After 15 years and thousands of pounds of produce, it was time to retire the 35 year old Dito-Dean continuous feed chopper. The dicer plate was sooo bad it didn't even dice the tomatoes, onions or green peppers. Just kind of mushed everything up. It's so old there are no replacement parts. The machine had a bent lockdown screw, missing rubber boot over the switch, the switch didn't stay on, I had to put a piece of tape over the switch to both keep it On and protect it from juices getting into it.
Say Hello to Robot-Coupe!!!!
Old-250 watts, 2 amps
New- 1440 watts,12 amps (Yeah Baby!!!)
Hubby and Son have been helping make salsa and even more stores are wanting to carry it so we'll be making it more often than last summer. Imagine running 25 pounds of raw onions through a meat grinder and the fumes that would come out of that. That's pretty much what the old dicer was doing, mincing up the produce instead of dicing it. It's so bad that both guys won't come out to help until the onions were done. They pretty much refused to help any more until I got a new chopper.
The BlendTec carafe was also on the skids. The blade assembly was binding up, I think because the rubber gasket was getting dry. I let it sit with a bit of mineral oil on the gasket, and that helped, but then the bottom got a crack. What a mess! Blending up sauces and it's all leaking out onto the base unit, plus the lid was a hard plastic thing that didn't seal tight and sauce would splash out the top if it was filled too full. So, for $100 on fleaBay...a brand new WildSide carafe with a rubber lid (that actually fits tight!) and has the removable center thing.
And one last upgrade- Bar Codes!
I finally broke down and got some bar codes. They were pretty much required to sell Pure Evil on Amazon, so some of the other products will get them also. First Up- the salsa. The Stores are happy~
After 15 years and thousands of pounds of produce, it was time to retire the 35 year old Dito-Dean continuous feed chopper. The dicer plate was sooo bad it didn't even dice the tomatoes, onions or green peppers. Just kind of mushed everything up. It's so old there are no replacement parts. The machine had a bent lockdown screw, missing rubber boot over the switch, the switch didn't stay on, I had to put a piece of tape over the switch to both keep it On and protect it from juices getting into it.
Say Hello to Robot-Coupe!!!!
Old-250 watts, 2 amps
New- 1440 watts,12 amps (Yeah Baby!!!)
Hubby and Son have been helping make salsa and even more stores are wanting to carry it so we'll be making it more often than last summer. Imagine running 25 pounds of raw onions through a meat grinder and the fumes that would come out of that. That's pretty much what the old dicer was doing, mincing up the produce instead of dicing it. It's so bad that both guys won't come out to help until the onions were done. They pretty much refused to help any more until I got a new chopper.
The BlendTec carafe was also on the skids. The blade assembly was binding up, I think because the rubber gasket was getting dry. I let it sit with a bit of mineral oil on the gasket, and that helped, but then the bottom got a crack. What a mess! Blending up sauces and it's all leaking out onto the base unit, plus the lid was a hard plastic thing that didn't seal tight and sauce would splash out the top if it was filled too full. So, for $100 on fleaBay...a brand new WildSide carafe with a rubber lid (that actually fits tight!) and has the removable center thing.
And one last upgrade- Bar Codes!
I finally broke down and got some bar codes. They were pretty much required to sell Pure Evil on Amazon, so some of the other products will get them also. First Up- the salsa. The Stores are happy~
...looks like I'll be hand labeling the bar codes on BBQ and GhostFire for quite a while. 
Luckily it was time for another run of salsa labels.
