Beverage

Whether you’re in Florida or Los Angeles, you can get a little taste of Brooklyn under the blue-striped awning of Uncle Louie G Italian Ices & Ice Cream. Just look at the ice flavors: N.Y.P.D. Blue. F.D.N.Y Cherry. Coney Island Cotton Candy. Holi Canoli. Soprano Spumoni. 

Uncle Louie G began 20 years ago as “a hole in the wall” in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, says Dino Russo, owner and director of research and development. Russo took over when his brother, the company founder, retired. In just seven years, he grew Uncle Louie G from eight locations to more than 50. Hamilton Beach Commercial spoke with Russo to find out how he’s winning over customers from the East Coast to the West.

When you’re buying a high-performance blender or other restaurant equipment, you care about how much it costs. You care about how easy it is to operate and how long the warranty lasts. You probably don’t care about all the mysterious agency certifications it has: NSF, ETL, UL… Should you?

Yes. For one, health inspectors look at these marks. They want proof that your kitchen equipment is certified to be sanitary and safe. Also, certified foodservice equipment is better for your bottom line: more durable, safer for employees to use, and easier to clean so your risk of foodborne illness is decreased. But restaurant equipment certifications can be cryptic and confusing. There’s a lot of overlap between them, yet standards recognized in the United States may not count elsewhere in the world.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know.

What does a craft cocktail sound like?

The rattle of ice in a shaker. The squish of a lemon in the juicer. Maybe the whisper of a basil leaf, muddled gently in the glass. And — the whir of a blender?

Frozen craft cocktails are coming into their own. As Punch puts it, “blended cocktails are no different than any other classic cocktail with a rich history: They’ve enjoyed a heyday, seen a resurgence, suffered a dark period and are poised on the brink of another comeback.” They’re novel, they’re popular, and they’re profitable. Here’s how, and why, frozen drinks are being revived.

At Hamilton Beach Commercial, we build our blenders to last. And now, we may have a new record for the hardest-working HBC blender. At Doolies Coffee and Juice Bar in Sydney, a six-year-old HBH850 Summit recently clocked 138,000 cycles. That’s 63 drinks per day, on average, for six years. And it’s still going strong.

Here’s a look at how Doolies has been blending success for 20 years — plus a few surefire smoothie recipes from Down Under.

Italian water ice is having a moment. Once found mainly in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, this sublime summer treat is becoming popular all over the country. Never had one? Try mango water ice swirled with vanilla custard. First, you taste the rich and velvety frozen custard; then, just when you think you can’t eat any more, your spoon breaks through to an icy oasis of fine-textured, flavored ice.

When Rob and Paulette Lamb, both Philadelphia natives, visited Richmond one blazing August, they noticed one big thing missing from this Southern city. “If we’re going to move here, there’s got to be water ice!” they joked. Then they realized they had found the perfect business opportunity. In 2005, they opened Ray’s Italian Water Ice, and now have two thriving Richmond locations. Here’s how they succeeded.

Plain chocolate or vanilla? So passé. We’d like a milkshake garnished with cookie crumbs, hot fudge, rainbow sprinkles, an entire brownie and one perfectly toasted marshmallow, please. If you think that sounds decadent, you should see what else restaurants are cramming into their shakes. Are you ready to invent a crazy milkshake of your own?

Planning a school breakfast program isn’t as simple as it once was. Schools have to come up with meals that meet new nutrition standards, can be served in classrooms or the cafeteria, can be prepared in a hurry, are easy to eat on the run and won’t make a mess. Oh, and they have to please kids’ picky palates. The solution? Smoothies. Here’s why, plus tips on how to successfully launch a school smoothie program.

There's something special about the 91-year-old Lexington Candy Shop, a humble luncheonette on the Upper East Side at the corner of 83rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Maybe it's the vintage decor: neon signs, a chrome-accented counter and signed celebrity photos. Maybe it's the 1940 Hamilton Beach milkshake mixer, admired by generations of customers. Or it could be the fact that Lexington Candy Shop still belongs to the family that opened it in 1925. 

The popularity of craft cocktails is only expected to grow in 2016, and will account for 10 percent of all spirits sales by 2020.  Bar customers want a show. “Theatre remains very, very strong with cocktails ordered," Katy Carter, Cellar Trends’ research and brand manager, tells The Spirits Business. "Great looking drinks sell best  — although speed is important in high-volume accounts.”

Customers want creative drinks, made with flair — but they want them fast. How can beverage directors keep up with cocktail trends while balancing speed and finesse? Here are some strategies to try.

We take great pride in our partnerships with leading foodservice equipment and supply dealers. To that end, we recently collaborated with Supply & Equipment Foodservice Alliance, LLC -- more familiarly known as SEFA -- to create this entry for their blog KitchenBiz, which was published on 22 February, 2016. Read on to learn more about the differences between commercially rated blenders and their residential counterparts.