Investments, investments and yet more investments. Covid-19 took everyone by surprise, but some companies have now found it easier to get going again than others.

And that is surely down to the wisdom of strategies based on research and automation they have put in place in recent years. “I foresee an increased focus on automation, now that Covid-19 has obliged firms to reshape their operations, with less labour and more social distancing measures integrated into their layouts,” says Brad Pierce, president of Restaurant Equipment World and former president of FEDA (the Foodservice Equipment Distributors Association). He emphasises, however, that the New Normal will also offer many opportunities for those able to seize them. “Some major equipment companies,” Pierce goes on, “have innovated by shifting part of their production to the “manufacturing of protective barriers” as well as introducing things like “employee temperature checks and logging for compliance purposes.”

The trend has taken hold in Italy now, too. Tecnodom converted a cold store into a place to carry out swab testing for Covid-19. The facility, called SalvaItalia (“Saving Italy”), is the size of a phone box and can fully isolate individuals from the outside world, so that there is no contact at all between the doctor and those inside, who might test positive for the virus.

For other brands, though, the end of lockdown has meant putting the spotlight on green innovation, even more so than in the past. This is the case with two quite different companies, Flo Spa and Gruppo Ali, which are now both focusing on the need to reduce waste through technology. Flo Spa recently launched Hybrid 40, a new 100% recyclable drinking beaker, made from a completely new material, created by replacing part of the polystyrene that cups in vending machines are normally made of with a mixture of mineral salts of natural origin. In this way, Hybrid 40 is suitable for inclusion in the “Rivending” cycle, which recovers and fully recycles items at the end of their lives.

Gruppo Ali, meanwhile, has been concentrating its efforts entirely on energy saving, through its Polaris brand, which has now brought out the Keep range of blast chillers. Offering three main functions in a single machine (positive chilling, negative chilling and thawing), thanks to cycle inversion technology they can also reach 65°C, for controlled thawing with a reduced energy impact. In addition, IoT. 4.0 bi-directional connectivity makes it possible to interact with the machine remotely and, if necessary, change the parameters, run diagnostic tests and check on the state of the process.