Cleveland NovoPan T5™ Skillet
Every piece of healthcare foodservice equipment has to justify its footprint twice. Once in the capital budget, and again every day on the line. When patient trays, retail service, and catering all run through a kitchen with fewer hands than it had five years ago, the real question is not what a unit can do. It is how much work it takes off your team.
The labor math has not changed
Sixty one percent of operators in FoodService Director’s 2024 State of Healthcare survey reported a staffing shortage. That is down from 84 percent in 2022, but it remains the defining pressure in healthcare kitchens. The coping strategies tell the story: 86 percent of operators now cross-train employees, and one in five has cut services outright.
The budget side is just as tight. Hospital labor costs now approach half of total expenses, which is why the winning move is rarely more hires. It is getting more from the crew you have. Senior living faces the same squeeze from demographics. The American Hospital Association projects the ratio of available workers per senior will fall from four to 2.9 over the next five years.
During the pandemic, one Ohio medical center lost up to half its foodservice staff at once. The menu came down to a single entree so one cook would not be overwhelmed. One cook. One entree. That is what consistency under constraint looks like.
In healthcare, consistency is clinical
A restaurant that misses on a batch loses a review. A healthcare kitchen carries higher stakes. Dysphagia affects an estimated 30 to 60 percent of older adults in hospitals and aged care settings, and roughly 91 percent of nursing home residents with dysphagia are prescribed texture-modified diets. A large share of daily production is food where texture and temperature are part of the care plan.
When those meals are prepared inconsistently, the risks include aspiration, pneumonia, and malnutrition. Research points to a root cause every director will recognize: not enough staff training time. When training hours are the resource you do not have, the standard has to live in the equipment, not in one person’s memory.
Where the Cleveland NovoPan T5 fits
The NovoPan T5™ Gas Tilt Skillet from our premier brand Cleveland Range answers that thesis in three healthcare specific ways.
| 1° FPROBE ACCURACY | 450° FIN 5 MINUTES | 15%BETTER FUEL EFFICIENCY |
1. The standard lives in the machine. A lid mounted product probe holds cooking temperature within one degree Fahrenheit. Press and Go recipes with cookbook storage and multi step cooking with on screen stage messaging walk any operator through each stage. The pureed entree comes out the same whether the veteran or the week two hire is running the pan, and event logging supports the temperature record keeping healthcare kitchens depend on.
2. Transfer without the lift. A standard two inch tangent draw off valve empties the pan without extra tools, and a retractable swing faucet with hot and cold mixing handles fill and washdown at the unit. Soups, sauces, and purees move without hauling stock pots of hot product across the kitchen. Less lifting, fewer burn risks, and a spring assisted vented cover and precision pan tilt make controlled pour off simple.
3. It drops into the cookline you have. Many hospital kitchens run on infrastructure that predates today’s high amp electric equipment. The T5 runs on gas with a modest electrical requirement, so it can replace an aging skillet without an electrical project. A redesigned burner and combustion system delivers up to 15 percent better fuel efficiency than the previous PowerPan generation, and the pan reaches 450 degrees in five minutes with strong recovery at full load, so tray production never stalls between batches. A dual console design keeps water lines and electronics in separate housings, with controls mirrored on both sides of the unit.
Support that stays after the install
Equipment only solves the labor problem if your team can run it well. The Zink RAM Team works directly with healthcare and senior living operators on training, demos, menu changes, and equipment audits that feed your capital plan. Our foodservice experts can also run the T5 side by side with your current skillet at a Zink Culinary Center, cooking your actual therapeutic menu items before you commit a dollar.
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SEE IT IN ACTION Test the NovoPan T5™ in one of our Culinary Centers. Zink foodservice experts can run it on your own therapeutic menu before you commit a dollar.
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