Sweetheart Plastics, Inc.

Robert A Phillips

Anthony C Mack

George K Shumrak

An energy saving food serving system for rethermalization of the food and for delivery prepared meals to locations remote from the place of preparation, such as to patients to hospitals and nursing homes. The system includes a mobile cart having its own rechargeable power pack that is utilized to propel the cart. The cart has separate bays, each having a tier of racks for carrying individual food serving trays. Each tray has one or more thermally isolated heat transfer devices which are selectably energized when the tray is in place on a rack in the cart. Preferably, each tray has a pair of heaters referred to herein as plate and bowl heaters and adapted to be operated by control means in either a continuous mode of operation or a rethermalization mode of operation. In the rethermalization mode of operation to manually selected heaters associated with trays in all bays are operated for a predetermined period of time of, for example, 25 minutes, to rethermalize the food from a frozen or at least cold state to a temperature on the order of 170.degree. F.-180.degree. F. Thereafter, the heaters in predetermined bays are operated cyclically to hold the food at the desired temperature range. During the initial predetermined period of the rethermalization mode the heaters may be operated on a continuous 'on' basis or may be operated cyclically but preferably at a higher duty cycle and in the maintaining state which follows the predetermined period.

Growing community of inventors

Wayland, MA, United States of America

Robert A Phillips