A private label powerhouse, Cafe Spice produces its own branded RTE meals as well as co-manufactured and foodservice products for customers including Whole Foods, Kroger and Amazon.

The company late last year began manufacturing from a 70,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility in Beacon, New York, near their original, 50,000-square-foot site in New Windsor. The Beacon site, which now accounts for nearly 90% of the company’s output, is in its first phase of operation, with additional production lines coming in 2025.

They have been named R&FF's 2024 Processor of the Year. Read the November cover story.

“We are honored to receive this award. This recognition is a testament to the hard work, dedication and innovation our entire team has put into making Cafe Spice a leader in the food industry,” said CEO Sameer Malhotra. “With the new Beacon facility, we're able to really expand to other cuisines. “Cafe Spice as a brand does not currently participate in the freezer. We're not (retailing) our brand in the freezer, but we are ready, able and happy to use our culinary know how to help other brands in that position. I'm not only married to my own brand.”

About six miles apart, many of Beacon’s employees came from the New Windsor facility. Cafe Spice started the process to move into the former metal fabrication plant in 2019 and weathered COVID while renovating. Shutting down their existing site was not an option; pandemic delays pushed their manufacturing start by two years at the new site.

Cafe Spice, 2024 Processor of the Year

A private label powerhouse, Cafe Spice produces its own branded RTE meals as well as co-manufactured and foodservice products for customers including Whole Foods, Kroger and Amazon.  

Listen to more From the Cold Corner podcasts.

“The biggest difference between the two facilities is that the newest facility in Beacon, New York is much more automated,” said Virgilio Felix, chief operating officer. “It does really give us the capability to really enhance the batch sizes, which does have an impact on various things such as the product quality and also the cost. Also, the New Windsor facility is more small batch which does get the advantage for certain types of products, especially those that consist of multiple components where each component doesn't drive a lot of volume so it does give us flexibility to make these type of products, such as grain bowls or maybe a retail meals with multiple components that go inside of it.”

Chicken is cooked onsite in equipment including Revent ovens to recreate the tandoori cooking effect and steam kettles to sauté’ proteins in 3,200-pound batches. Dishes like chicken tikka masala and butter paneer are combined in CPET or polypropylene trays with saffron or basmati rice for retail meals or bagged for foodservice before heading into a massive spiral freezer.

The company is in the process of installing Chef Robotics equipment, including robotic arms that use vision software to properly portion meal components, a process currently done by hand. Adding the robotics-as-a-service will allow up to 60 units per minute to portioned and placed, while employees will monitor the line, “feeding” the robots with the tray’s components

The company dates back to Malhotra’s father, Sushil, who started a spice company, supplying South Asian ingredients to New York restaurants, before opening his own Indian fine dining restaurant.

“The roots are in fine dining and my mother was involved in a lot of the recipes early on at our restaurants. I joke that if she had it her way, we would be squeezing lemons for the lemon juice,” Malhotra said.

After transitioning out of the restaurant business, Cafe Spice started with a small manufacturing site in 2000 before moving to their New Windsor facility about 17 years ago.

“Fast forward to 24 years later, we don't have any more restaurants and now we're a producer that creates safe, quality foods for large retailers across the country,” Malhotra said.

Today, Cafe Spice is proud of its diversified portfolio, manufacturing Thai, Asian and other cuisines and is preparing to help launch a Latin CPG line.

“Indeed, Indian is obviously a core, but we have capability to do other things like we are getting into some projects like mac and cheese and more comfort foods,” Malhotra said. “We're ready for what I keep telling everybody the hyper-growth stage. The machinery we put in, the robotics that are on their way, or being installed, really will have us through that hyper-growth stage through the next three to five years.”

Whether from a hot bar or a customer’s microwave, Cafe Spice wants to create food that replicates fine dining, using fresh ingredients and no concentrates. Cafe Spice offers over 200 SKUs across various product classes, including poultry, meat, vegetarian entrees, appetizers, handhelds, sauces, rice and grains, in both fresh and frozen formats. 

For more from CEO Sameer Malhotra and the Cafe Spice leadership team, listen to the podcast in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.