Food temperature maintenance apparatus

Abstract

A food temperature maintenance cart transports meals of hot and cold food items prepared at a meal assembly area to a meal serving area where the meals are to be served, while keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold for extended periods of time. The cart includes a cabinet having tray storage compartments for storing meal serving trays containing refrigerated and heated food items. Thermal barriers subdivide each of the tray storage compartments into a refrigerated compartment for maintaining refrigerated foods in a refrigerated state and a heated compartment for maintaining heated foods in a heated state. A refrigerated air delivery compartment separates adjacent refrigerated compartments and produces laminar flows of refrigerated air across refrigerated food items contained on the trays. A refrigeration blower pulls return air from the lower portion of the refrigerated compartments, up through a refrigeration return plenum containing a refrigeration coil which re-cools the air, and then forces the refrigerated air downwardly through refrigerated air supply plenums and out into the refrigerated compartments in laminar flow across the trays. Each of the heated compartments are heated by a vertically oriented, elongate resistance heating element positioned within a heated air supply plenum. A heater blower pulls return air from the upper portion of the heated compartment and forces the return air downwardly across the elongate heating element which re-heats the air. The heated air is then forced out of the heated air supply plenum into the heated compartment in laminar flow across the trays.