Inside Our AFSCA Brussels Kitchen: A Wednesday in Production
By Thomas · 2026-03-26 · Behind the Scenes
Most subscribers see Timesty as a box that arrives on Sunday afternoon with their week of meals in it. What sits behind that box is a Wednesday that starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends, on a good week, around 19:00. This is what production day looks like from inside our kitchen in Auderghem, one of the 19 Brussels communes, and why the cut-off for ordering is the Wednesday before, not the day itself.
5:30: the first arrivals
Jonathan arrives at the kitchen first, sets the ovens, and checks the cold storage temperatures from the night before. AFSCA certification means temperature logs at every step: walk-in coolers at 4 °C or below, freezers at -18 °C or below, with a manual reading at the start of every shift on top of the continuous monitoring. If anything is out of range we don't cook with it. It's happened twice in our first year; both times we replaced the affected ingredient before service.
7:00: fresh ingredients land from Mabru
Two trucks back into the loading bay between 7:00 and 7:45: vegetables from our wholesaler at Mabru, the Marché Matinal de Bruxelles up near the canal in Laeken, plus meat and fish from two suppliers we've used since launch. Every delivery gets weighed, checked against the order, and a temperature probe goes into one item per crate. If anything's wrong, the supplier collects it the same morning. We don't accept and complain later; we reject on the dock. Which dishes those crates feed was decided weeks earlier — we explain that in how we decide what's on the menu each week.
What AFSCA actually checks Belgium's federal food agency (AFSCA / FAVV) inspects without warning, usually annually for kitchens our size. They review supplier traceability, batch logs, allergen separation, staff hygiene training, and the cold chain end-to-end. The bar is not «clean kitchen»; the bar is «can prove the lifecycle of every plate served». The paperwork is the unsexy half of the job. We treat it as part of the cooking, not separate from it.
8:30: mise en place
Brice runs prep. Every dish on the week's menu has a written spec: portion sizes, cook times, plating notes. The morning is washing, peeling, weighing, and pre-cutting. Aggregate quantities have already been calculated from the closed orders Tuesday night, so we know exactly how many kilograms of carrots, how many fish portions, how many wraps to assemble. Over-prep is waste; under-prep is a stockout. We aim for less than 2% surplus.
11:00: the cooking actually starts
The morning's prep work makes the cooking phase look like an assembly line, which is exactly what we want. Two ovens running, three induction zones, the blast chiller cycling. Each dish moves through cook → blast chill → portion → label → cold storage in a one-way path through the kitchen. We never carry hot food back across a clean station. The flow is designed to keep cross-contamination physically impossible, not just discouraged.
14:30: labels and traceability
Every container that leaves the kitchen carries a batch code linking it back to: the supplier of every ingredient, the cook date and time, the chef who portioned it, the cold-storage history through to delivery. If a problem ever surfaces, we can trace one specific container back to one specific morning's egg crate. We've never needed it. We keep the system because the day we do need it is not the day to start building it. The label itself — the small FR/NL/EN sticker with allergens and reheat instructions — went through more design rounds than anything else in the box, and it's part of why our boxes look the way they do.
The kitchen is mostly logistics. Most of the actual cooking decisions happened weeks ago, when we wrote the menu. Wednesday is execution.
Brice, Timesty kitchen
18:00: close, clean, reset
All cooked dishes are in the chiller, every batch logged, every surface broken down and cleaned with the kitchen's HACCP protocol. The deep clean takes about 75 minutes. This Wednesday push is one beat in the weekly Thursday-to-Sunday cycle: Thursday is portion batches, Friday is final QA and load planning, and Sunday the vans fan out across the 19 communes between 14:00 and 18:00. The one Wednesday in the year this rhythm stops is the August shutdown — there's a separate story on why Timesty doesn't deliver in August. Subscribers see one Sunday box. Behind it, 14 hours of work that mostly nobody talks about. That's the trade we make in exchange for chef-prepared food that doesn't cost €25 a meal.
The Wednesday timeline at a glance
| Time | Step | Why it matters |
|---|
| 5:30 | Ovens on, cold-chain temperature check | Out-of-range stock is never cooked |
| 7:00–7:45 | Mabru veg + meat/fish delivered, probed, weighed | Rejected on the dock if anything is off |
| 8:30 | Mise en place: wash, peel, weigh, pre-cut | Quantities set Tuesday night; under 2% surplus |
| 11:00 | Cook → blast chill → portion → label | One-way flow blocks cross-contamination |
| 14:30 | Batch codes applied to every container | Full traceability back to one egg crate |
| 18:00 | Close, 75-minute HACCP deep clean, reset | Kitchen ready for Thursday's batches |
What does AFSCA certification actually mean?
AFSCA (FAVV in Dutch) is Belgium's federal food safety agency. Certification means a kitchen can document the full lifecycle of every plate: supplier traceability, batch logs, allergen separation, staff hygiene training, and an unbroken cold chain. Inspectors arrive unannounced, usually once a year for a kitchen our size.
Where is the Timesty kitchen in Brussels?
In Auderghem, one of the 19 communes of the Brussels-Capital Region. Fresh produce comes in from Mabru, the city's morning wholesale market in Laeken, with meat and fish from two suppliers we've worked with since launch. Everything is cooked, chilled and packed there before Sunday delivery.
Is the food cooked fresh or frozen?
Cooked fresh. Dishes are prepared on Wednesday and Thursday, blast-chilled (not frozen), kept in the cold room and delivered chilled on Sunday between 14:00 and 18:00. You reheat them at home — it's ready-to-eat, not a meal kit and not frozen food.
Why is the order deadline on Wednesday?
Orders close Wednesday at 23:59 because the kitchen needs the locked numbers to size everything: how many kilos to order from Mabru, how many portions to cook, how little to waste. We aggregate Tuesday-night orders and cook to that exact count, which is how we keep surplus under 2% and prices where they are.
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