The speciality vending machine Jay-Jay from the restaurant the Wilderin

If the origin of the food that ends up on your plate is a matter close to your heart, you've known "die Wilderin" for a long time, you know Claudia Kogler and her team. #knowyourfood #knowyourfarmers #buythefucklokal - is the motto here. The poacher's latest twist in these Corona-influenced times is the specialty Jay-Jay vending machine. At any time of the day or night, it spits out culinary delights.

From tomatoes to chicken knuckles, from rice to char, from salt to ketchup - the Wilderin team knows where the food comes from that is processed in the kitchen.
Managing director Claudia Kogler and her brother Michael know each producer personally. The suppliers are handpicked and the menu is based on the regional and seasonal offerings. Kogler buys cow, pig or sheep whole, and the whole is also processed. This ensures specialities on the plate such as Beuschl, roasted liver or kidneys and seasonal focuses.

Like other restaurants, the Corona pandemic hit the small business hard. But even during the first lockdown in spring 2020, no one had to do without good things from the Wilderin kitchen. The changing menus could be picked up in Seilergasse by advance order - everything according to regulations, the fine goods were served in a deposit jar(Thesi) and a little chat at a distance was always included. Already in October Claudia and Michael had the idea to offer another service than pick-up. With the second lockdown it became concrete, in the third now implemented. Since the beginning of 2021, a large specialty vending machine, affectionately called Jay-Jay, has been located in a room to the left of the restaurant entrance.

Here, early risers and night owls, the hungry and those buying in advance can purchase delicacies from the Wilderin kitchen. Depending on the assortment in the pantry, there are, for example, fine soups and cheese dumplings with cabbage, Irish stew and plucked meat from the alpine ox, chocolate mousse and tiramisú. Of course, everything comes in a deposit jar.
The delicacies can be warmed up at home in a bain-marie, heated up in a pot, pan or oven, but also frozen if you're not that hungry after all.

"The dishes are pasteurised and keep for at least seven days," says Michael Kogler, stressing that best-before means "at least best before" and not "inedible from". There are also selected products from suppliers: "ÖsterReis", for example, grown and processed in the Weinviertel, goat cheese from the Außerfern and ribbon noodles from the Tyrolean Oberland.

Michael Kogler not only designed the labels, but also worked his way through the tricky vending machine software. The restaurant was transformed without further ado. The various rolls of labels are piled up on the tables and manually stuck onto the jars filled by chef Alex. In the meantime, the process runs like clockwork.
"The beginning is always tough. But once you've got things down, the flowcomes," says Claudia. React flexibly to the situation, make the best of it and just keep on pedalling, even if the pandemic is sometimes quite tedious and they miss the restaurant business very much, as they both emphasise.

It is very important to them to pass on information about the company's philosophy to the customers, which guests learn quite incidentally in the restaurant. And so the origin of the individual ingredients is not only on the label. If you press the info button on the Jay-Jay display, you get interesting information about the selected product.

There you can read, for example, that only sun-ripened tomatoes from Styria are used in the ketchup of the Junge Wilden Gemüsebauern and that the Beluga lentil soup contains lentils from the Schalkmühle Ilz. Onions, garlic and chilli are supplied by Biohof Lumperer in Fritzens. The poacher gets rapeseed oil and Bad Ischl salt from the Tollinger company, the herbs from Gewürze Benattia in the market hall.
So the speciality vending machine Jay-Jay also only spits out first-class food, around the clock and beyond the lockdown. Then, if you can't get a seat at the restaurant (reservations are highly recommended!), you can at least take home some goodies from the vending machine as consolation.

die Wilderin
Seilergasse 5
6020 Innsbruck
Tel. +43 512 562728
Mail info@diewilderin.at
www.diewilderin.at

The Innsbruck Tourismus website offers an overview of restaurants in Innsbruck and the surrounding area, and my fellow blogger Lea Hajner has compiled a list of establishments that offer delivery service in the first Lockdown.

Photos unless otherwise noted: © Susanne Gurschler