Tumbled meats really do make a difference, and consumers acceptance of these products overall has been good. You can help your bottom line immensly. What size tumbler you need will be dependant on what and how much you want to do with it. I have a 25lb capacity tumbler that I use for chicken breasts and other small runs of marinated products. I also have a 500lb tumber that I use for bacon, hams and other larger runs. I would think for most retailers wanting to start a program a 25 lb vacuum tumber should do fine.
As far as a brand there are several on the market, and they all do about the same thing.
The whole theory behind tumbling is to massage your liquid and flavors into the meat without doing damage to the cell structure of the meat. Variable speed and variable vacuum are nice features to help achieve this end. Just remember that anytime you add water and salt to meat and then move it around ie tumble it you will extract protien. You want to do this to an extent, but not an overly amount. If you extract too much protien in the tumbling process your customers will cook the product at home and that protien will cook and somewhat form a "shell" on the outer edges of your product, not desireable.
Where ever you buy your tumbler make sure that they are a reputable dealer and knowledgeable about what it is you want to do.
Daniels Food Equipment in Minnesota makes a smaller tumbler, as I am sure Biro may well have one, Holly, possibly Hobart and several others.

I like tumblers, been pushing them for 15 years- the tumbler has a motor with an air tube attachment that fits on the cover of a drum, the motor creates a vacuum, sucks out the sir, and in doing so, opens the pores of the meat like a sponge so all the marinade will sink down in deep,

you lay the drum on its side, then it rolls around(tumbles) for 20 minutes to a half hour to spread the marinades evenly, ideally, all the marinade is absorbed into the meat,


2 years ago, a vendor started pushing a reveo small tumbler for 150.00 it would do 8 lbs,,,,,85 stores bought these because it was cheap, and they could test the waters to see if marinades would sell- well, over half the stores, ended up buying a larger one, because the marinades were selling that well.
hobart has some nice models, look around,

they are easy to clean, the old ones had a rubber gasket around the top of the drum, these cracked easily, and had to be replaced, the newer ones have no rubber gasket

if you are buying brand new -get a warranty, but also ask for an extra drum- equipment places have huge mark-ups-doesnt hurt to ask.

this way, while one batch of marinades are tumbling, you can get another batch ready



vac sealers are great too a recent model, a store bought for around 4000
get one with dual sealing bars, which means you can vac seal 4 or more pkgs
if only one sealing bar- only one or two pkgs can be sealed,
hobart has decent ones
check out the vac seal bags (pouches too)
get quotes on cost from a few places- they like to sell them in 1000 unit boxes
if you can buy them 4-7 cents each you are doing well, (3 mil. thick) if cost over 15 cents each-check around

8x10 10x12 12x16 are popular sizes


if you can only buy one piece of equipment, id buy the vac seal machine

if you vac seal say teriyali beef tips, you can put 3 weeks on the shelf life

the picture below is of a seasoned prime rib roast before christmas, in the vac seal, its good for 2 weeks, we made this one full week before christmas and got a jump on competition!!
also I tried some chicken stirfry right with the veggies and vac sealed with a carribean sauce/marinade-it all sold

We have 12 different marinades on the meat counter that the customer can Choose from. They pick out their meat,we cryovac it then ready for them To take it home no tumbling works out real well.

Dalt, I think you can find a decent one for around 4k

you need to convince your boss of the cost/benefit

you can merchandise sale items, and marinade them, the vac sealer will pay for itself in less than a year

http://www.marinadeexpress.com./  check out the Demo video to the right when you come on with the pretty young lady.