Chicago, IL - The National Restaurant Association today announces the recipients of the 2018 Kitchen Innovations (KI) Awards, honoring forward-thinking equipment and technologies that increase efficiencies and productivity for back-of-the-house operations and benefit restaurant operators. Each recipient and their product will be showcased in the interactive Kitchen Innovations Pavilion at the 2018 National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show, held from May 19-22 in Chicago at McCormick Place.

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FreshBlender®

The innovative and connected beverage platform with a stylish and narrow footprint offers a large interactive and highly intuitive touchscreen for self-serve operations and a great user experience. What’s better than the boom in smoothies, shakes and frappes? A self-serve system that lets customers create their own in less than two minutes.

In just a 20” x 39” footprint, the FreshBlender integrates refrigeration, ice making, blending, dispensing, and digital controls for hundreds of self-served drinks per day. Realistic payback in well under a year.

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Fresh Blends®

The successful turnkey solution to enable the complete range of blended and dispensed beverage options - High quality product, on-point marketing and POS, reliable equipment and unmatched service. Fresh Blends offers a wide range of traditional, better-for-you, and functional formulations to create a beverage program with the consumer in mind. It has been developed by our culinary team of award winning chefs and combines all of the Top Trend beverage options and flavors in a turnkey solution that offers highest quality and optimum versatility and flexibility to the consumer.

 

About Fresh Blends North America, Inc.

 Fresh Blends is the successful turnkey frozen drinks solution for top trend flavors. The frozen, blended and dispensed beverage program has been developed by our culinary team of award winning chefs and beverage developers with the consumer in mind. It combines Top Trend beverage options in a turnkey solution that offers the highest quality and optimum versatility to the consumer while providing the operator with the maximum in efficiency and ease of operation. It enables a complete range of beverage applications from smoothies, frappes, macchiatos, lemonades, milk shakes, craft sodas, agua fresca’s to cold brew coffee drinks. Our beverages are freshly made with highest quality ingredients.

All-natural, GMO free, kosher certified, no preservatives, no artificial coloring or flavors, and no high fructose corn syrup. For more information, visit www.freshblends.com

 

About Welbilt, Inc.

Welbilt, Inc. provides the world’s top chefs, premier chain operators and growing independents with industry-leading equipment and solutions. Our innovative products and solutions are powered by our deep knowledge, operator insights, and culinary expertise. We offer fully-integrated kitchen systems and our products are backed by KitchenCare aftermarket parts and service. Headquartered in the Tampa Bay area, Florida, and operating 17 manufacturing facilities throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, the company sells through a global network of over 3,000 distributors and dealers in over 100 countries. The company has approximately 5,500 employees and generated sales of $1.46 billion in 2016. Its portfolio of award-winning brands includes Cleveland, Convotherm, Delfield, fitkitchenSM, Frymaster, Garland, Kolpak, Lincoln, Manitowoc, Merco, Merrychef and Multiplex. For more information, visit www.welbilt.com.

 

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