Patent Application
20120248088
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to food trays, and particularly to a thermal serving tray that can be used to keep food or other items at a desired temperature, either cool or warm.
2. Description of the Related Art
Food is often the centerpiece at social gatherings, such as picnics, BBQs, parties, or other outdoor events. Some foods should be served cold or chilled, while others should be kept warm. In order to have more time for socializing, the hosts will often try to buy or prepare the food well in advance, and then try to keep the food either chilled or warm, as appropriate, by keeping the food in the freezer or on a hot plate until ready for serving. Nevertheless, with conventional plates and dishes the food will often sit in the open for extended periods, either becoming too warm or too cool. Moreover, conventional plates or dishes are often not suitable for the freezer, with the result that some time is involved in transferring the food from a storage container to a serving dish. Thus, a thermal serving tray solving the aforementioned problems is desired.
The thermal serving tray is a serving tray that can maintain either hot or cool temperatures relative to ambient temperature. The tray may have any desired shape or configuration, which may be rectangular, circular or any other shape, with no sidewalls, with walls that are substantially orthogonal or sloping, with or without handles, and with or without a lid or cover. Preferably, the bottom wall is hollow, in whole or in part, and encloses a thermal gel for keeping the tray and its contents warm or cool, as desired. A transparent window is formed in at least a portion of at least one wall of the tray so that a color change indicator is visible to indicate whether the temperature is either warm enough or cool enough to maintain the food at the desired temperature. The color change indicator may be layered above or intermixed with the thermal gel.
These and other features of the present invention will become readily apparent upon further review of the following specification and drawings.
Similar reference characters denote corresponding features consistently throughout the attached drawings.
A first embodiment of a thermal serving tray, designated generally as 10 in the drawings, is shown in
As shown in
The bottom wall 14 is shown having a transparent window 18 formed therein for viewing the color change indicator layer 30. The color change indicator is shown extending atop the entire extent of the layer of thermal gel 26. However, the color change indicator 30 need only overlay the thermal gel 26 in the area directly below the transparent window 18. Alternatively, the entire upper surface of the bottom wall 14 may be made from transparent material. The layer of color change indicator 30 may be disposed directly atop the layer of thermal gel 26, or may be separated therefrom by a membrane, thin film, or other partition, either flexible or rigid. Alternatively, the color change indicator 30 may be admixed with the thermal gel 26.
An example of such a color change or temperature-indicating gel suitable for use in the thermal serving tray 10 is a gel containing a block copolymer of polystyrene and poly (2-vinylpyridine). The shifts in color in the gel differ by as much as 575%, may occur in fractions of a second, and encompass the entire range of the light spectrum that the human eye can see, thus, making it highly suitable for use in the tray 10. Thermal gels for keeping the tray 10 warm or cold are well known in the art, and need not be described further. In some embodiments, a thermal liquid may be used instead of a thermal gel.
It is to be understood that the present invention is not limited to the embodiments described above, but encompasses any and all embodiments within the scope of the following claims.
