Pepe’s Inc. installed a Lyco Chill-Flow continuous pouch cooler system that cools 5-lb pouches to below 40˚F in 60-90 minutes. Source: Lyco Manufacturing.

Pepe’s Inc. can prepare, cook, chill and freeze 3,000 to 4,000 lbs of Mexican food products every hour to keep up with its customers’ demands. With 60 full-service and quick-serve franchised Pepe’s Mexican Restaurants and national distributors supplying universities, hospitals, schools, corporate dining facilities and the United States military, as well as private label food manufacturing capabilities, Pepe’s needs the large capacity.

In its 65,000 sq.-ft. plant, Pepe’s cooks products in large 100- to 500-gallon stainless steel kettles at temperatures ranging from 190˚F to 220˚F.  After cooking, products go to a filling station where they are packed into 5-lb plastic pouches. The pouches then are mechanically sealed and proceed via conveyor to a continuous chiller.

“We had conducted and outsourced a significant body of research regarding pouch heating and cooling parameters in an effort to optimize our procedures,” says Nalini Kamireddy, Pepe’s quality assurance manager. “In one of these tests where we supplied 5-lb pouches of our food products, the product was heated and a temperature probe was placed in each pouch. They were then put in a wind tunnel test chamber, which brought the temperature down to -20˚F, while being exposed to 100 mph winds. After two hours, the outside one-half inch of the pouches were frozen solid, but the inside of the pouches remained at over 100˚F for more than 12 hours. The outside one-half inch of ice that encapsulated the hot product acted as an insulator, and kept the heat in.”

Pepe’s concluded that if the pouch is not manipulated in the cooling, the inside of the product will remain hot. The company needed a process that would take its 5-lb pouches of hot product (32,000 lbs per day) and cool them from 200˚F to below 40˚F in a time frame compliant with USDA and FDA standards. 

“Some systems utilized mechanized buckets—the pouches were placed into them and moved through a series of cold water showers which chilled them,” Kamireddy explains. “We tested these, but because there was no agitation of the pouches, they were cold on the surface but the inside remained warm. We also tested chill systems utilizing -20˚F propylene glycol. But again, without an agitation function it was not cooling the inside of these very dense pouches.”

Pepe’s selected the Chill-Flow pouch cooler, developed by Lyco Manufacturing. It continually and gently agitates each pouch through the cooling process, producing a consistent mix of the pouch contents.

The machine uses a completely enclosed rotary drum design, 6 ft. in diameter and 28 ft. long, functioning like an auger. The drum has a perforated skin sheet wrapped around it that is fixed to the auger flights, eliminating pinch points. These flights gently move the pouches through the system. The pouches are carefully turned over and massaged, while totally submersed in 33˚F water, as they advance in the cylinder. Once through the machine—in a first-in/first-out sequence—the pouches then are deposited on a belt conveyor for packaging, then put into a blast freezer at 0˚F where the product is frozen.

Product damage is zero percent, and the pouch cooler brings the temperature of its 5-lb pouches to below 40˚F in 60 to 90 minutes. The machine provides consistent process parameters for temperatures and recipes, gentle product handling and automatic control of the pouch cooling.

For more information:
Jeff Zittel, 920-623-4152, jeff.zittel@lycomfg.com