Linde and KION on a mission to deliver flavor

There are many factors that make a visit to a restaurant a special experience, including a great atmosphere, friendly service, and exceptional cooking. But the key to a successful meal remains the quality and freshness of the ingredients. The latter is heavily dependent on how well logistics and intralogistics processes perform. Find out what role Linde Material Handling and the KION Group play in this – over a cozy dinner for two away from home:

Our couple feel a sense of anticipation on the way to the restaurant. This is an opportunity to enjoy good company, delicious food, and a break from the everyday routine. Expectations are high. In order to meet them, restaurateurs need not only a passion for food but also a perfect network of efficient suppliers. This is where Linde Material Handling comes into play, as the numerous culinary specialties place different demands on effortless logistics. And Linde Material Handling and the KION subsidiary Dematic offer just the right solutions to achieve this.

The start of a memorable evening: what can I get you?

Back to our couple: A welcoming table awaits in the dining area. The waiter brings the menus and takes the drinks order. He also brings a crusty baguette with a delicious dip to nibble on.

To ensure that the bread is served as fresh as possible, several Linde Material Handling industrial trucks were used at Gusto AG in the Bavarian town of Hohenpolding. The specialist supplier of baking, pastry, and ice cream products uses trucks, order picking vehicles, and hand pallet trucks with advanced lithium-ion drives to load the raw materials for the bakeries in the early hours of the morning. This is how the flour reaches the baker in time and a fresh, crispy baguette arrives at the table.

Even before the first drinks and dishes are served, KION's brand company Dematic has already made its first contribution, too. Take the flowers on the table, for example. To ensure that the arrangement arrives on the table in perfect condition, the logistics need to be sophisticated - such as at the world's largest flower and plant auctioneer Royal FloraHolland in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands. Dematic, formerly Egemin Automation, installed an automated underfloor conveyor system in the modern warehouse of the florist wholesaler. Since then, the pallets of fresh flowers automatically pass the bidders and find their way to be shipped all over Europe in no time. Our couple might not give this a second thought, but it is the finer details that ensure that a visit to a restaurant is perfect. And the evening has only just begun.

The logistical challenges behind the riesling that the waiter has just served are quite different. When the grapes on the picturesque hills around Heilbronn are perfectly ripe, the winegrowers deliver hundreds of crates of grapes a day to the local cooperative winery for processing. To cover this peak demand, the winery leases trucks from Linde Material Handling as additional seasonal workers to ensure that the valuable grapes are processed as quickly as possible while retaining their quality. The result is a well-rounded wine that is perfect for toasting the evening.

The main course: complex cold chains deliver delicious food

As the evening is a celebration, she has opted for a fish dish – made with a freshly caught fillet from the cool waters of the English Channel between the French Calais and English Dover. There, Germany's largest deep-sea trawler Maartje Theadora goes on a fishing trip to take up to 6,000 tons of fresh fish on board. These are then received at the home port of Rostock, for example, by numerous forklift trucks from Linde Material Handling and taken straight to the cold store. Thanks to the smooth logistics, the fresh, high-quality fillet of fish served to our diner tastes delicious.

He has opted for a juicy T-bone steak. Its quality is guaranteed by the Bigler Royal Rind program, in which the animals are kept under the best conditions on the verdant slopes of the Swiss Alps. But the quality of the meat also depends on how it has been stored, which is why Bigler AG relies on Dematic Multishuttle, an automated warehousing and sorting system. With a range of different temperature zones, it provides perfectly tempered storage and fast fulfillment, thus ensuring that the meat arrives at the restaurant in peak condition.

The dishes are seasoned with salt from the Dutch province of Friesland. The fine crystals are extracted at a depth of two kilometers under the Wadden Sea. Producer Frisia Zout has a whole fleet of electric forklift trucks from Linde Material Handling that help to get the salt to restaurants across Europe.

The dessert: automated ripening processes for pure indulgence

Our couple decide on a cheese board as the perfect ending to the meal. Their favorite is the bright yellow Ländle Safrankäse. The cheese, made with saffron and milk from hay-fed cows, carries the EU TSG (traditional speciality guaranteed) seal. To ensure optimum conditions for ripening, manufacturer Vorarlberg Milch uses driverless transport systems from Dematic to manage the process. At exactly the right time, they transport the cheeses stored in the natural cellar at Vorarlberg Milch, automatically to a machine that turns them and rubs them with saffron water, and move them to another temperature zone for the next ripening phase. The result is a smooth yet strong cheese with all the characteristics of an artisanal product.

There is just enough room left for a sweet dessert, and our couple opt for apple strudel. The apples for her strudel come from the Netherlands. There, AC van Blijderveen Fruit packs and delivers around 1,000 kilos of pears and apples every day using pallet trucks from Linde Material Handling. The Elstar apples grown here are the perfect ingredient for the strudel. And why not have some vanilla ice cream to go with it? It is supplied by Gusto AG, the company that also makes the bread we mentioned earlier, and which uses trucks made by Linde Material Handling.

Gusto completes the circle for our couple as a lovely evening comes to an end. Linde Material Handling and the KION subsidiary Dematic, on the other hand, are still hard at work delivering fresh food and other goods, ensuring that diners enjoy exceptional culinary experiences at countless restaurants around the world.