Beverage

People never seem to lose their thirst for smoothies. The global smoothie market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.8% until 2023, according to Mordor Intelligence, driven by the demand for healthy, quick meal replacements. 

On the surface, a smoothie seems like the easiest possible addition to a café menu. Fruit, ice, blend, pour. Right? Not quite. There’s an art to making smoothies that will win over customers and keep them coming back for more.

Psst. Want to see a magic trick?

In just 20 seconds, this ordinary blender will turn regular skim milk into silky, frothy cold foam. Amazing!

For our next trick, we’ll combine some raspberries and heavy cream. Voilá: indulgent, flavored whipped cream — and yet the delicate berries haven’t been smashed to pieces. How did we do it?

It’s the magic of the AirWhip frothing jar. This innovative jar harnesses the power of a Hamilton Beach Commercial high-performance blender to rapidly foam, whip and emulsify while treating delicate ingredients with care. What can it do in your kitchen?

Go ahead: Order 1 million smoothies. Heck, order 2 million.

“No problem,” says the Quantum^®950. “Coming right up.” 

On June 8, 2018, we flipped the switch on a Quantum^®950 High-Performance Blender in the lobby of the Hamilton Beach Commercial^® headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Since then, it has been running nonstop for more than 6,000 hours. You can see it for yourself in our livestream.

So, why did we build a high-performance commercial blender capable of making a million drinks? And will it ever quit?

Juice and smoothie flavor trends come and go, but the immense popularity of both juice and smoothies continues — and the power players won’t be juice bars, but restaurants that have all-day foot traffic, predicts John Craven, founder and CEO of BevNet.  

Maybe this will be the year your business adds a juice or smoothie program. But in the battle of juicing vs. blending, who wins? Is one healthier than the other, and is one a smarter choice for operators?  

If you’ve ever had a high-performance blender conk out after many years of hard use, the culprit was probably the brushes.

“Brushes?” you might ask. “I didn’t know my blender had brushes.” Most people don’t, because busy restaurant operators never think about the innards of their blenders. But we do. For eight years, we’ve been thinking about how to design a better blender motor that doesn’t die when the brush wears out — and now we have it. It’s called Endura™ Motor Technology.

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?

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.              

The Tempest is finally receiving the attention it deserves. No, not Shakespeare’s incomparable play, which has been justly heralded for centuries, but the hard-working Hamilton Beach Commercial® blender by the same name. The Tempest® Blender is modestly priced for a commercial blender—so much so that it was a top pick on Consumer Reports’ 2013 list of best blenders. 

But its modest price may camouflage its true value as a commercial blender. As blogger Stana Peele points out, the Tempest “cannot be compared to other blenders due to its specially designed features.” Here are just a few of those drool-worthy attributes: a 2-speed jump cycle that provides precise and thorough blending every time, a timer with automatic shutoff that lets the user step away and tend to other tasks, patented quad-angle stainless steel cutting and mixing blades, and a temperature gauge that alerts the operator if the blender is starting to overheat.

Grown-up gourmet milkshakes, some spiked and some not, are all the rage. For many adults, a milkshake is an instant trip to childhood, a comfort that can be innocent and inexpensive, like the $3.49 Birthday Cake Milk Shake from Steak’n Shake, or indulgent and decadent, like the The Powder Room’s $500 Velvet Goldmine.

Industry insiders have called the milkshake “the new cupcake,” and many creative chefs and amateurs alike are putting cupcakes into—and on top of—milkshakes. The new “cupcake milkshake,” which lets the indulger drink a milkshake (into which cake as been blended) through a straw impaled in the crowning cupcake, is really a culmination of many years of creative exploration and accompanying improvements in mixers that have made it easy to add cakes, pies, cookies, candy—just about anything—to the classic milkshake.

When outfitting a new location or upgrading old equipment, a restaurant owner has to choose between saving on the cheap option or investing in tools that will last longer. But which is better for the bottom line?