A private label powerhouse, Cafe Spice produces its own branded RTE meals as well as co-manufactured and foodservice products for customers including Whole Foods, Kroger and Amazon.

The company late last year began manufacturing from a 70,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility in Beacon, New York, near their original, 50,000-square-foot site in New Windsor. The Beacon site, which now accounts for nearly 90% of the company’s output, is in its first phase of operation, with additional production lines coming in 2025.

They have been named R&FF's 2024 Processor of the Year. 

“We are honored to receive this award. This recognition is a testament to the hard work, dedication and innovation our entire team has put into making Cafe Spice a leader in the food industry,” said CEO Sameer Malhotra. “With the new Beacon facility, we're able to really expand to other cuisines. “Cafe Spice as a brand does not currently participate in the freezer. We're not (retailing) our brand in the freezer, but we are ready, able and happy to use our culinary know how to help other brands in that position. I'm not only married to my own brand.”

About six miles apart, many of Beacon’s employees came from the New Windsor facility. Cafe Spice started the process to move into the former metal fabrication plant in 2019 and weathered COVID while renovating. Shutting down their existing site was not an option; pandemic delays pushed their manufacturing start by two years at the new site.

“The biggest difference between the two facilities is that the newest facility in Beacon, New York is much more automated,” said Virgilio Felix, chief operating officer. “It does really give us the capability to really enhance the batch sizes, which does have an impact on various things such as the product quality and also the cost. Also, the New Windsor facility is more small batch which does get the advantage for certain types of products, especially those that consist of multiple components where each component doesn't drive a lot of volume so it does give us flexibility to make these type of products, such as grain bowls or maybe a retail meals with multiple components that go inside of it.”

Post-pandemic, the team sees the plants’ proximity as a part of contingency plans. Both facilities are located near Interstates 84 and 87.

“In the event, if there's a natural disaster, or there's an issue with any given plant, it gives us the ability to pivot faster, being so close to each other,” Felix said. “We had to do a lot of work in this facility. It practically had no drainage. So a lot went underground. This facility was not built to hold certain weights of equipment, so we had to redo concrete floors. We had to reinforce things and we had to build more structurally because we were putting some equipment on the roof.”

Chicken is cooked onsite in equipment including Revent ovens to recreate the tandoori cooking effect and steam kettles to sauté’ proteins in 3,200-pound batches. Dishes like chicken tikka masala and butter paneer are combined in CPET or polypropylene trays with saffron or basmati rice for retail meals or bagged for foodservice before heading into a massive spiral freezer.

The company is in the process of installing Chef Robotics equipment, including robotic arms that use vision software to properly portion meal components, a process currently done by hand. Adding the robotics-as-a-service will allow up to 60 units per minute to portioned and placed, while employees will monitor the line, “feeding” the robots with the tray’s components

The layout flows from one side of the building to the other, from prep to production and packaging to distribution. Between the two facilities, the logistics team handles about 50 truckloads a week of inbound supplies and outbound product, Felix said.

“Aside from the structure of the building itself, what impresses me the most is our team that runs this facility,” Felix said. “Making this significant change was a great milestone for the company, but we do acknowledge that it is a major change. Our team members have really gone into this with a positive mindset. Everyone has really put their best foot forward.”

Authentic Flavors & A Focus on Food Safety

The company dates back to Malhotra’s father, Sushil, who started a spice company, supplying South Asian ingredients to New York restaurants, before opening his own Indian fine dining restaurant.

“The roots are in fine dining and my mother was involved in a lot of the recipes early on at our restaurants. I joke that if she had it her way, we would be squeezing lemons for the lemon juice,” Malhotra said.

After transitioning out of the restaurant business, Cafe Spice started with a small manufacturing site in 2000 before moving to their New Windsor facility about 17 years ago.

“Fast forward to 24 years later, we don't have any more restaurants and now we're a producer that creates safe, quality foods for large retailers across the country,” Malhotra said.

Today, Cafe Spice is proud of its diversified portfolio, manufacturing Thai, Asian and other cuisines and is preparing to help launch a Latin CPG line.

“Indeed, Indian is obviously a core, but we have capability to do other things like we are getting into some projects like mac and cheese and more comfort foods,” Malhotra said. “We're ready for what I keep telling everybody the hyper-growth stage. The machinery we put in, the robotics that are on their way, or being installed, really will have us through that hyper-growth stage through the next three to five years.”

Whether from a hot bar or a customer’s microwave, Cafe Spice wants to create food that replicates fine dining, using fresh ingredients and no concentrates.

Cafe Spice, 2024 Processor of the Year

A private label powerhouse, Cafe Spice produces its own branded RTE meals as well as co-manufactured and foodservice products for customers including Whole Foods, Kroger and Amazon.

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Cafe Spice hosts private label and contract manufacturing clients in a test kitchen on the second floor of their New Windsor location. It typically takes between three to six months for new product R&D, said Ryan Bakst, research and development manager.

“It can be the most like collaborative and rewarding. We can get the best results. But it's also just a lot quicker,” Bakst said. “Be it for our own brand or a private label co-manufacturing product, that actual person who's placing the purchase order and doing the sampling, when they love it and they're confident and they're psyched on committing to the product. That's gratification right there. That's positive reinforcement. Then, ideally, it grows from there with reviews and online feedback.”

The team also leans on Chef Hari Nayak, its culinary director.

Both facilities are SQF-certified and USDA inspected.

The company started planning for FSMA implications in 2014 and holds up to four mock recalls annually to “battle test” the team, said Giovanni Gomez, vice president of quality.

“Our team continually monitors and audits our processes to ensure compliance with global standards, including temperature control, sanitation and allergen management. To support our internal FSQA team, we formalized an external team of food safety experts from Rutgers University, Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin. We have access to some of the brightest minds in the industry to stay ahead of the curve regarding food safety,” Gomez said. “Food, safety, and quality is just embedded in our culture here. Like the authenticity, the quality is something that we do not compromise. And how we control that is really, it's technique, it's know how, but it's also using technology using robotics. And then also proper coding and tracking systems, so a big part of that has been our ERP system, where we code every single unit that's produced.”

Bakst said he expects the so-called premiumization of RTE and frozen foods to continue

“We expect that to only grow, and that's how we will continue to position ourselves,” he said. “Cafe Spice is not the cheapest ring that you could grab-and-go but we think it offers an extreme value, and it is positioned to that to that experimental eater who wants just a slightly more elevated experience in a in a ready grab-and-go format.”