Patent Number: 12696910
Title: Frozen food dispensing system that limits internal clean-in-place operations
Company: Forte Supply LLC
Forte Supply LLC has secured a patent for a frozen food dispensing system designed to address the mechanical and hygienic challenges faced by traditional self-service equipment. The invention restructures how frozen food machines operate by utilizing an architecture configured for external ingredient delivery rather than relying on internally housed reservoirs. By coupling a specialized mixing chamber directly to external ingredient sources and employing single-use or limited-use disposable shells, the system effectively bypasses the need for extensive internal clean-in-place procedures. An integrated control system monitors temperature, motor resistance, and ingredient flow to provide dynamic viscosity management, yielding a consistent frozen product without requiring manual adjustments.
This invention is highly innovative because it directly resolves the critical downtime and sanitation issues that limit continuous operation in high-throughput or unattended commercial settings. Prior industry standards typically required manual disassembly for cleaning or utilized complex built-in sanitation cycles that were difficult to maintain. By contrast, this patent introduces a framework that physically isolates food-contact surfaces and introduces controlled external metering, making the system both more sanitary and operationally independent. The ability to dynamically blend multiple ingredients from an external manifold while extending serving capacity well beyond standard internal constraints marks a significant technical advancement in food service automation.
In recognition of these technical achievements, this invention was awarded the Patent of the Month for the state of Colorado for September 2026, granted by Swanson Reed. Swanson Reed selected this patent because Forte Supply LLC successfully engineered a scalable, safe, and highly efficient solution to a longstanding mechanical problem in commercial food equipment. The development promotes better public health compliance by minimizing cross-contamination risks and significantly enhances the commercial viability of unattended frozen food kiosks, demonstrating a clear economic and technological benefit to the local economy and the broader market.
The practical applications of this patent present strong opportunities for claiming the Research and Development (R&D) tax credit in the United States. To be eligible for the credit, a company must undertake activities that seek to resolve technological uncertainties through a process of experimentation. In developing this system, engineers at Forte Supply LLC likely faced substantial technical challenges in designing the vacuum-assisted draw, precisely metering multiple external ingredients into the blending chamber, and programming the automated viscosity control algorithms based on motor resistance and thermal feedback. The iterative testing of prototypes, software development for the control systems, and mechanical engineering of the disposable mixing shells represent qualified research activities. Companies developing similar integrated systems, where hardware and software are tested to overcome specific performance or sanitation hurdles, can leverage these design and evaluation phases to qualify for federal and state R&D tax incentives.
