Portable thermal treatment and storage units for containing readily accessible food or beverage items and methods for thermally treating food or beverage items

Abstract

A portable thermal treatment and storage unit includes a housing with a thermal treatment chamber, and a support member secured to the housing and including a plurality of openings to receive and support food or beverage items such that a substantial portion of each of the food or beverage items is disposed within the housing chamber. Ports are disposed on at least one of the housing and support member. The ports provide a flow path between the chamber and an environment surrounding the unit to facilitate a flow of air into the housing, through the chamber, and out of the housing. The unit is insulated and configured to selectively open and close at least one port to limit or prevent the flow of air into the housing and through the chamber such that, when the at least one port is opened, the unit facilitates heat transfer between the flowing air and the food or beverage items supported by the support member so as to change the temperature of the food or beverage items. When the at least one port is closed, the unit insulates the food or beverage items to maintain the food or beverage items within a selected temperature range for a selected time period.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims priority from the following U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. Nos.: 60 / 697,984, entitled “Refrigeration Unit for Food Service Portion Cups and Process Thereof”, and filed Jul. 12, 2005; 60 / 697,985, entitled “Refrigeration Unit for Making Slush Beverages Without a Slush Machine, and Process Thereof”, and filed Jul. 12, 2005; 60 / 697,986, entitled “Portable Refrigeration Unit With Ready Access”, and filed Jul. 12, 2005; and 60 / 702,298, entitled “Portable Insulation Unit for Partially Frozen Beverages With Ready Access”, and filed Jul. 26, 2005. The disclosures of these provisional patent applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] The present invention pertains to a portable unit for thermally treating and / or maintaining food or beverage items at desired temperatures for select periods of time. The present invention ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0018] In accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a portable thermal treatment and storage unit comprises a housing including a thermal treatment chamber, and a support member secured to the housing and including a plurality of openings to receive and support food or beverage items such that a substantial portion of each of the food or beverage items is disposed within the housing chamber. Ports are disposed on at least one of the housing and support member. The ports provide a flow path between the chamber and an environment surrounding the unit to facilitate a flow of air into the housing, through the chamber, and out of the housing. The unit is insulated and configured to selectively open and close at least one port to limit or prevent the flow of air into the housing and through the chamber such that, when the at least one port is opened, the unit facilitates heat transfer between the flowing air and the food or beverage items supported by the support member so as to change the temperature of the food or beverage items. When the at least one port is closed, the unit insulates the food or beverage items to maintain the food or beverage items within a selected temperature range for a selected time period.

[0019] In accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the invention, a method of thermally treating food or beverage items comprises loading frozen food or beverage items in a unit such that a substantial portion of each food or beverage item is disposed within a chamber of the unit, and thermally treating the frozen food or beverage items by facilitating a flow of air from an e

Problems solved by technology

There are numerous drawbacks to the currently available refrigeration devices that are used for maintaining the food or beverage items in the desired state and at the desired temperatures for point-of-sale use.

In particular, refrigeration for display to consumers is typically expensive, and requires a lot of counter space or floor space as well as routine maintenance.

In addition, such machines are expensive, require periodic maintenance, require the replacement of parts that wear with use, and require periodic disassembly and reassembly for cleaning.

In addition, many foodservice operations offering food items such as slush beverages must serve relatively high numbers of customers in relatively short periods of time.

However, many of the models of slush machines in current use are limited in capacity to the amount of beverage product initially poured into the product reservoirs of the machine plus the small additional amount that can practicably be added to the machine and frozen to the desired consistency during the serving period.

As a result, such high-volume foodservice operations are unable to prepare and dispense from a single machine a sufficient amount of slush beverage in the allotted serving time.

Thus, multiple machines would be required to achieve the desired volume of slush beverage, which leads to increased equipment and maintenance costs for a particular foodservice operation.

Some foodservice operations attempt to overcome this problem by dispensing cups of slush beverage from the machine prior to the first period of service to customers, thereby creating capacity within the reservoirs of the machine for additional liquid beverage to be added with the result that it may freeze into the desired state in time for the first period of service to customers.

However, this approach is not very effectiv

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