Retigo s.r.o.

From the start, the company has emphasized quality ingredients, nutritionally balanced meals and an innovative approach to dietary nutrition. In addition to its rapid growth and high quality of service, it also boasts a prestigious partnership – it is the official sponsor of the Polish national football team. It is also interested in social responsibility, which is why it was the first ever to take on the ambitious task of strategically supporting Polish children's and youth football. The company sees healthy eating as a natural synergy between sport and education, and aims to promote good eating habits. You can see more about Kuchnia Viking's history and philosophy here.

Among other things, the company uses 28 Retigo combi ovens in its 3 production facilities, which help prepare more than 258,000 portions a day. "Approximately 55% of the work is done by Retigo combi ovens. I can't imagine working without them," said Vasyl Kimeichuk, deputy shift manager in the Hurtowa 2 kitchen.

You focus on healthy boxed meals. How many types of diets do you offer? And which are the most popular?

We produce a total of 14 diets. The most popular are the standard diet, the active diet and the soft diet.

Are you involved in the composition of the diets yourself?

I personally don't. There is a department in our company that is in charge of the test kitchen and creates the recipes for all the diets and selects the best ingredients for them. These are then prepared in the test kitchen and then processed in production.

How many chefs do you have under you?

There are about 150 chefs working in the Handlowa 5 production hall and about 60 chefs working in the Hurtowa 2 production hall. Together with others, this makes a total of about 270 cooks.

What kind of operation do you work in?

We work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in 3 shifts.

We also visited the logistics area, where we found out that you produce about 50,000 bags of food for the day. How many boxes is that?

We produce about 55,000 kits, and if we assume that there is an average of 4,7 boxes per kit, a whole day's worth of food, we are approaching almost 258,000 meals a day.

Do you have sophisticated automated production, as complemented by the Retigo combi ovens?

We bake different types of baked dishes, cakes, different types of lasagna in the combi ovens. We also prepare roasted vegetables, steam frozen foods, frozen vegetables and eggs in them. About 55% of the work is done by Retigo combi ovens. We also use them to prepare various types of meat, fish, fruit, vegetables and cakes.

So you could say that Retigo combi ovens are working around the clock.

Yes, we have one day a week that is a little quieter, when we do general cleaning, inspection and servicing. Other than that, we use them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

How satisfied are you with the combi ovens? What benefit do they bring to such a large production?

Without the Retigo combi ovens, we use in production, we simply wouldn't be able to supply all the diets that go out to our customers every day. I can't imagine working without these combi ovens.

What function or feature do you appreciate the most?

Based on our experience, we have set our own programs in the combi ovens, which suit us. We are free to adapt them to our needs. We mostly use different types of baking programs. We have our own programs for baking rolls, pancakes, cakes, eggs.

Would you recommend Retigo coffee machines to other similar establishments?

Yes, at Kuchnia Vikinga we have a total of 28 Retigo combi ovens located in 3 kitchens in Handlowe 5, Hurtowe 2 and Lech. We also have combi ovens from other manufacturers, but we still go the Retigo way, which accounts for 95% of this equipment. We are satisfied with them.

Why did you choose Retigo combi ovens?

Because they are the most intuitive to work with and the easiest to operate. A new chef comes in and immediately knows what to do from the pictures.

What are your plans for the future?

We want to integrate all the production into one production hall so that individual diets are not produced separately. All the equipment will be unified and placed in one hall. These are the immediate plans that we want to implement.

This is a very ambitious step, when will it happen?

We are building a new large hall separately and we hope to move there at the end of the year. Now we are waiting for production to be completed. There will be a large packaging plant in the existing halls.

Thank you for the interview.