The invention relates to catering and can be used in public catering establishments having a stand-up service for its customers.
Known in the art is a snack plate [Usov V.V. Managing restaurant servicing: Practical guide. M.: Vysshaya shkola.- 1940. - 208 pp.], which is used for consuming food at stand-up banquets. It comprises a round dish with a turned up edge and a flat bottom. At a stand-up banquet the guests eat and drink. With such a method of servicing, the consumer, in addition to a plate, is offered a drinking glass with a thin stem, a fork and a napkin. It is impractical to use the prior art plate at a stand-up banquet because it gives the consumer no possibility to hold all the mentioned objects in his hands at one time.
Known in the art is also a design of a tray with the possibility of combining therewith a drinking vessel. [Patent GB-A-1,224,125]. The tray has an edge with fixed thereto flatware for eating, which is made integral with the tray and is fixed thereto with a breakable web. The drinking vessel has the shape of a cone, which can be disjoined from the tray. A drawback of the analog is the impossibility to use it at stand-up banquets since the basic purpose of the tray is to reduce the time of selecting dishes and flatware during self-servicing. In addition, after the fragile web that joins the flatware and the drinking vessel with the tray has been broken, it is impossible to secure them repeatedly on the tray. But consumption of drinks at a stand-up banquet presupposes repeated securing of the vessel with the drink on the tray (stand-up plate).
1. The most close to the invention being considered is the design of a serving tray [Patent GB-A-1,126,304] intended for carrying food and drinking vessels with stems without spilling the contents. The tray is a component of the plate design having a central part in the form of a round depression. This part is intended for arranging food thereon. Two "wings" are provided on both opposite sides of the central part. One "wing" has a groove (hole) through which a person, who is carrying the tray in one hand, can slip his thumb from the bottom up. The other "wing" has a through groove shaped as a keyhole. This groove accommodates the drinking vessel stem, and due to the circular shape of the internal ring of this groove, there is provided a location for keeping the drinking vessel in a steady position when it is fitted into the inner ring under the force of gravity.
The drawback of the prototype is that its shape does not correspond to the classical shape of a plate used conventionally at stand-up banquets. The prototype device has no place for arranging forks and napkins offered to the consumer at a stand-up banquet. Besides, the suspended state of the drinking vessel makes it impossible to place the tray on the table, which limits the possibility of filling the plate with a new helping of food during a stand-up banquet.
The objective of the invention is to provide an improved design of a stand-up meal plate by imparting thereto a classical plate shape and fitting it with a support holder arranged in the lower part thereof and provided with a central orifice whose shape and dimensions correspond to that of the plate bottom. The dimensions of the support holder thereat exceed the dimensions of the plate, the lower edges of the bottom are connected to the orifice edge; and the latter is fitted with protruding elements serving as supports, and the plate groove is tapered.
The presence of a support holder and a tapering groove in the stand-up meal plate provide for simultaneous placing thereon of not only food and a thin-stemmed drinking vessel, but also of any other objects used by a customer at a stand-up banquet, viz. forks, a napkin, etc. The shape of the support holder resembles that of a flat dish, or its shape differs from that of the edge of the flat dish, or the shape of the support holder is made to surround only part of the flat dish edge. The support holder thereat has a circular shape, or an oval shape, or a square shape, or a polygon shape, or any other shape. The open tapering groove in the bent up part of the plate can have the shape of a comma, or a spiral, or a broken polygon, or any other shape. The groove tapering is required to ensure more stable positioning of the thin-stemmed drinking vessel, since the thickness of the drinking vessel stem can be different. The support holder can be made integral with the flat dish of the stand-up meal plate, or it can be made removable. The protruding elements, serving as supports, make it possible to pile up the plates prior to the opening of the stand-up banquet.
The embodiment of the stand-up meal plate is described with reference to the following illustrations (Figs. 1/6 to 6/6).
The stand-up meal plate is used as follows. At a stand-up banquet the consumers eat and drink standing up, holding thereat the support holder with one hand. Bread, appetizers, sandwiches etc. are arranged on the main plate (flat dish 1 with bent up edge 2). The thin-stemmed drinking vessel is set by locating its stem in the tapering groove 3. The flat part of the drinking vessel stem is thereat set onto the flat surface of the support holder 4, whereas the groove 3, tapering in the shape of a comma, or spiral, or a broken polygon, or any other shape, holds fast the drinking vessel stem on both sides. Hence the drinking vessel acquires a stable fixed position and requires no holding with the consumer's hand.
The napkin is rolled up into a tubular shape or folded up as an envelope and placed on the free part of the support holder 4, thereat fixing it between the support holder and the outer side of the bent-up edge 2 of the main plate. The consumer eats with a fork held by the second hand. If necessary, the consumer can place the fork on the free part of the support holder and use his free hand to pick the drinking vessel or the napkin off the surface of the support holder 4 as well as to place a new helping of food from the banquet table on the main plate.
Before usage, the stand-up meal plates are placed on the edge of the banquet table, the protruding elements on the opposite side of the support holder of one stand-up meal plate being located on flat dish 1 of the other stand-up meal plate, thus making it possible to pile up the plates.
Hence the stand-up meal plate offered has the following advantages as compared with the prototype: