Taste As You Go

As well as nutritional excellence here at apetito we are very much preoccupied with taste, sourcing only the finest ingredients and coming up with dishes that tickle the taste buds.

Claire Tollit and her Quality Team cook and taste over 200 dinners and desserts each dayin the TAYGO – taste as you go - kitchen to make sure each apetito meal isperfect every time.

But it doesn’t start there - each day more than sixty lorries arrive at headquartersin Trowbridge, but before anything is permittedto be unloaded Claire and her team get to worktaking samples of the ingredients such as meat andvegetables to cook them and check the quality of the ingredients before anything istaken into the factory.

The quality team also check all dried ingredients are in perfect condition in pristine wrappings, eveninspecting the lorries to make sure they are clean and hygienic. Once the ingredients have passed muster, Claire and her team - Michelle Dennison, Carrie Coveney and Sue Powell – inspect the meals as they are being prepared and frozen.

Then comes the final test in the TAYGOkitchenas each batch of meals is cooked- just as our customerswould at home - and tasted. The team cook one meal from each batch, cooking each in a microwave and conventional oven, following the exact instructions thatthe customer receives.

Claire explains: “We are continually tasting meals from six in the morning until ten at night, within two hours of them being made. It cannot go to the customer until we have approved it.

“We put the food through all the equipment our customers use to check that the cooking instructions work and that the times are accurate. Then we check it has the right ingredients and is the correct weight. We check texture and appearance, and sample every component in the meal.

“We taste up to 200 main courses and desserts every day, plus around 70 pie products. Obviously we don’t eat every one or we’d all be the size of a bus! We have a fantastic team and we live to eat. We love food and we hope our customers enjoy it as much as we do.”