Every day, Alma serves around 6000 meals in the K.U.Leuven university restaurants. Of course, not all of them are cooked on the premises; much of the work is done at the central kitchen, a special facility built in 1992, located in a green setting on Celestijnenlaan in Heverlee.

The central kitchen has over 1400 cubic metres of warehouse space for storing food and kitchen supplies. Some one hundred suppliers make weekly deliveries. Every delivery is inspected by type, number and temperature before being slotted in the warehouse. The central warehouse delivers basic ingredients to the central kitchen, as well as to the vending machines and departments around the university.

The food preparation process starts with the unpackaging. A physically distinct production space ensures a hygienic separation between basic ingredients and packaging material. Only unpacked ingredients are taken to the weighing room.

In the weighing room, the ingredients are weighed very precisely and the correct portions are set aside for the cooks. Using advanced vacuum technology, the basic ingredients are first vacuum packed and then cooked at a temperature of 90-95°C. This means the food is better preserved and requires less salt and oil when cooking.

Here is one of our cooks rolling a trolley with 300 kg of white rice into the cooker. With one push of the knob, the cooking process starts automatically. Then on to the next cooker.

Soups and sauces are prepared in large 300 litre pots. Once cooked, they are pumped to the packaging line where they are vacuum packed.

All the cooking and cooling stages are managed by the central computer which stores all the recipes and stages of food-preparation. The cooks oversee the preparation process and check the taste and thickness of the sauces and soups.

After cooking, the warm dishes are cooled to 2°C in the delivery fridge and sent to each of the Alma restaurants where they are re-heated as required.

Meat, fish and spaghetti are always cooked fresh at each location. Sandwiches and desserts are also prepared fresh each day.