Dance of the Catering Equipment

We love National Poetry Day, but it always causes us quite some stress as nothing rhymes particularly well with “kitchens” or “catering equipment”. Undeterred, we have launched ourselves into this year’s poem with all the grace and finesse of a ballet-dancing bratt pan. Enjoy!

Dance of the Catering Equipment

The fridges are gliding on castors of grey,
Inspired by National Poetry Day.
They charmingly twirl into position,
A delightful addition to any chef’s kitchen.

Then enter the combis, all shiny and gleaming
Preparing for baking and blanching and steaming.
Gently they bow and point to Stage Right;
In shimmies a mixer – a glorious sight!

A griddle prances in, its castors a-spinning
But with a bold pirouette, the mixer is winning!
Just when we think the dance couldn’t get nicer,
Putting on its best moves, in dances a slicer!

Keen to join in, an emboldened boiling pan
Launches onto the stage with some kind of can-can.
It doesn’t go well – it’s not much of a looker
But its bacon is saved by a jiving pasta cooker.

On waltzes a dishwasher, its crockery smashing,
A servery too, with gastronorms crashing.
Somewhat more graceful, in slides a freezer,
Soon joined in a rumba with a potato peeler.

Then enters the star, sweet Bain Marie
And her partner Jack Stack, who soon takes the lead!
With a final foxtrot upon pointed toes,
They bring the performance to a triumphant close.

And so ends the dance, to rapturous applause,
The kitchen calms down and closes its doors.
What’s just taken place is somewhat unclear,
But this poem is done, and that’s it for this year.

If this poem has inspired you to hire any of our fabulous catering equipment, visit the catering equipment section of our website for more details of all of our items!

Health and Safety Changes in the Event Industry

The PKL Event Hire Team:
Manager Krista with Sales Executives Ciaran and Dan

In this post, PKL’s Event Hire Team blog about changes in event health and safety legislation and highlight the importance of ensuring your event is compliant.

Recent changes to legislation will see an increased focus on health and safety standards at events throughout the UK. These changes are being supported by the Events Industry Forum, the Concert Promoters Association, the AEV Catering Working Group, Thames Water, WaterSafe and the HSE.

We know that there is sometimes a pressure to focus on minimising costs during the installation of catering equipment or temporary kitchens, but can you afford to run the risk of spot fines due to unsafe practices, having your venue closed during your event, or even assume legal responsibility for a non-compliant venue that goes wrong?

In this blog post, we’ll outline some of the key things you need to know when organising catering facilities for events.
                                                                                                          
What’s Going On?

The introduction of the new Construction Design Management (CDM) Regulations in October 2014 will mean a higher level of safety standards for the events industry, similar to those seen within the construction sector. Venue owners and event organisers will often see the legal liability for compliance falling to them as the main contractor, and unless managed carefully, will be liable for any wrongdoings by subcontractors working on an event.

How can PKL help? PKL has supplied temporary catering facilities to large construction companies for many years and, as a result, we are fully compliant with CDM regulations. In fact, we’ve already been supplying a CDM compliant product and service to the events sector for over five years!

Water Supply Regulations

It is the duty of event organisers or venue managers installing plumbing systems or water fittings to ensure that they are compliant with Water Supply Regulations. It’s important to comply with these regulations in order to ensure that equipment doesn’t contaminate the local water supply or use an unnecessary amount of water. Penalties for non-compliance are severe and can result in an event being closed down.

How can PKL help? We’ve recently undertaken a complete review of our fleet of catering equipment and temporary kitchens to ensure that they are Water Supply Regulations compliant.


Who Enforces the Legislation?

Health and Safety Executive – The HSE will have more power to issue spot fines and even stop the build-up and breakdown of an event until safe practices have been put in place.

Fire and Rescue Authorities – Individual authorities will have the power to enforce fire safety legislation.

Local Authorities – Local councils, often represented by Environmental Health Officers, will have the power to enforce health and safety measures.

Never Fear, PKL is Here!

Over the last few years, we have dedicated a large amount of time and resource into ensuring that our product and service complies with all relevant health and safety legislation. We have taken into account advice and guidance published in all the key events health and safety documents, including:

• The Purple Guide
• The Association of Event Organisers eGuide
• The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health National Guide for Outdoor and Mobile Catering
• NCASS Guidance for the Installation of LPG and LPG Fired Equipment in Catering Trailers, Converted Vehicles, Portable Kitchens, Carts, Trolleys and Bikes
• UKLPG information sheets

This means you can be confident that from our equipment to our installation service, we comply with all relevant regulations. As with any reputable company, we can, of course, also provide you with hard evidence (certification, forms, and all the official documentation) to prove that we are fully compliant – just ask when you book and we’ll be happy to provide you with copies. Asking your suppliers for this kind of evidence is very important, as all suppliers should be able to back up their health and safety claims with the correct documentation.

Need help? If you’re worried and need any advice on how to ensure your event complies with these health and safety standards, please just get in touch, as we are experts in this area. We also work with consultants who can provide you with a full health and safety audit for your event.

For more information on our event kitchen hire and catering equipment hire, please visit our website.

Tackling the Trends: Pop-Up Restaurants

In this blog post, Dan from our Events team chats about pop-up restaurants and how PKL can help make them a success.

The Trend
Pop-up restaurants have been a huge trend in the UK over the past couple of years, especially in the summer months. They are great for boosting business to existing restaurants or showcasing artistic cooking events. For businesses, they provide a high-profile way to trial new menus, raise money for charity, highlight a current promotion or experiment with new dining concepts. These exclusive short-term restaurant events are often used for business to create a buzz and generate positive PR. For customers, it provides an exciting, exclusive dining experience, the chance to try new things, and often the opportunity to try dining in a new and unusual location.

How Can PKL Help?
Catering Equipment: There are over 10,000 items of commercial catering equipment in our hire fleet, ready to turn your pop-up restaurant kitchen into a high quality, professional standard kitchen.

Mobile Canopies: Since many pop-up restaurants take place in buildings or structures which are not designed to be used as kitchens, our mobile canopies can easily be installed to help turn any space into a fully-functioning, compliant kitchen. Incorporating an automatic fire-suppression system, automatic gas shut off system and full length extraction canopy, our mobile canopies enable you to install professional foodservice equipment just about anywhere!

Temporary Kitchens: If the venue for your pop-up restaurant doesn’t have any space for a kitchen inside, we can supply one of our portable kitchen units, which is a self-contained commercial kitchen unit all set up with catering equipment of your choice.

PKL Expertise
Warehouses, disused tram sheds, marquees, shopping centre roofs, underground tunnels – you name it, we’ve set up a kitchen in it! When it comes to pop-up restaurants, we have a huge amount of experience. Just tell us what you’re hoping to achieve, and we can guide you through the process, from selecting appropriate catering equipment for your menu requirements, to ensuring you have the right extraction in place to meet health and safety requirements.

The Proof is in the Pudding
Here are a couple of my favourite pop-up restaurant projects that we’ve worked on:

The Decorators: This was primarily an art and architecture-based project, which saw a pop-up restaurant created on a scaffolding structure in a derelict area of Ridley Road Market in Dalston, London. Guest chefs created different daily menus using only market produce, and diners shared a communal table high above the market. The meals were prepared on the ground floor kitchen then raised by a mechanical table up to the guests on the first floor. We provided a six burner, double bowl sink with hand wash, two door fridge, and a water heater for the full three weeks of the project.

Frieze Art Fair: We worked with the artists and managers at Frieze London 2012 to help bring art and food preparation together at the world’s most influential contemporary art fair. Several leading London restaurants hosted different dining areas, with each kitchen having its own specific requirements. Equipment we supplied included solid top stoves, hot cupboards, upright fridges and freezers, servery equipment and preparation tables.

How PKL can help with your event

In this post, Dan from our Events team blogs about some of our events experience and why you should consider using PKL for temporary kitchens and catering equipment at your event.

Organising an event can be quite a daunting experience! To make your event a success, there are a huge number of things you’ll need to consider and suppliers you’ll need to deal with.

On top of this, you only get one chance to get it right, so organising any areas you’re unsure about can be risky. The organisation of temporary catering facilities can be one of those areas, and getting this part wrong could be disastrous and leave you in trouble with your caterers, guests and even the authorities if not done properly.

Don’t worry though – as a member of the Events team at PKL, I know the kind of challenges you’ll be up against and I have plenty of experience in offering advice and supplying temporary catering facilities and catering equipment to all sorts of different events.
So, that’s one less thing you need to worry about!

Don’t just take my word for it though. Here’s a list of a few ways in which we can help, showing exactly why you should consider using PKL for temporary kitchens at your event. 

Proven Experience
We have over 20 years’ experience in providing temporary kitchens and catering equipment for events throughout the UK and around the world. In fact, PKL has been doing this since before I was born!

I regularly work to supply catering equipment and facilities to festivals, sporting events, conferences, exhibitions, product launches and pop up restaurants amongst others, for both front and back of house facilities. Recent projects I’ve worked on have included temporary kitchens for a number of locations at Frieze Art Fair, catering equipment for back of house use at the Brit Awards and pop up kitchens for the 'Last Supper Club' event in London. Last summer, PKL also provided 150 separate temporary kitchens for venues, back of house, public and hospitality catering at London 2012.

Equipment and Flexibility
We have the widest range of commercial, bulk and specialist catering equipment available in Europe with over 9,000 items in our hire fleet. This enables us to provide flexible solutions to meet your requirements, so whether you’re planning a standard menu for a large number of people or a bespoke menu for a specialist pop up restaurant, I can help plan a temporary catering facility and provide commercial equipment that is right for you.

For large scale catering, our panless kitchen solution using Gastronorm compatible ovens, refrigeration equipment, hot cupboards and servery equipment is often an ideal solution. We also have specialist facilities which I can advise you on, which enable us to construct temporary kitchens within existing buildings or inside marquees safely and in a compliant way.

Innovative Kitchen Design
Clients often approach us with weird and wonderful ideas for new event kitchen concepts. These have resulted in some of my favourite hires, so whether your temporary kitchen needs to be on top of a busy shopping centre or in Victorian tunnels underground, our experienced in-house design team are up for the challenge! Our kitchen designers can work with you to provide a facility that fits your needs and menu, and the requirements of your chosen location.

Preparation, Delivery and Installation
All our equipment goes through rigorous testing and inspection before each hire, as the last thing you want is for your kitchen to become inoperable during your event! Each item of equipment is put through a commissioning process and quality assurance check, and our temporary kitchens undergo a 30 stage pre-delivery inspection.

Our in-house transport team and engineers are vastly experienced in delivering and installing kitchen solutions, not only in the UK, but around the world. Our engineers hold a wealth of health and safety accreditations to ensure your kitchen is installed in a safe and compliant manner.

Technical Support
We understand that often there’s only one chance to get it right at an event, and operations can’t stop for any reason. To make sure your event runs smoothly, all our equipment and kitchens come backed with 24 hour technical support, and we can also offer the services of a 'babysitting engineer' to stay on site at your event if required.

Help in Specifying Other Products
Sometimes, you might require more than just catering facilities, and although we don’t supply them directly, I can help you source water and waste, marquees, furniture, power generators and gas. Our 25 years supplying event kitchens means that PKL has a vast knowledge of the industry so I can also recommend suppliers for many different aspects of your event if you are struggling for ideas on where to go.

Events: The early bird catches the worm!

If there's one thing I've learnt during my time working on the hire of UK event kitchens, it's that there's no such thing as booking too early! For the summer months and festive season especially, it's important to book your kitchen facilities early, as leaving it too late can risk the facilities you need being unavailable. Booking early can also make sure we have enough time to design your kitchen to your exact requirements and offer you the very best options for your needs.

But what type of kitchen is best for you?

This will usually boil down to a choice between Portable Kitchen Units and Marquee Kitchens. Both have their own different advantages, and a big part of my job is advising customers on the best type of kitchen facility to suit their event. Here's a really brief overview of the two key options which would be used as a starting point for designing your ideal temporary event kitchen.

Portable Kitchen Units

• Hygienic, purpose-designed, food-safe unit
• Built-in extraction canopies and fire supression
• Sturdy, high-quality unit
• Can be joined to other units such as dishwash units, coldrooms, etc to form a larger kitchen complex
• Choice of catering equipment inside

Marquee Kitchens

• Over 10,000 items of commercial catering equipment available to hire, ideal for setting up kitchen facilities within marquees
• Specially designed mobile canopies (with full-length extraction canopy and fire supression system) can be used to install catering equipment inside marquees and existing buildings such as exhibition centres and warehouses 
• Very flexible option
• Clear flow through the kitchen due to being able to set up different areas for preparation, production, dishwash etc

For both of these options, I can advise you on the catering equipment you might require, and the best option for your specific event. This is another reason why it's so important to book in plenty of time - the longer we have until the event, the more time we have to plan the ideal kitchen to meet your requirements, and the more likely it is that the exact facilities and equipment you need will be available.

This makes now the ideal time to be thinking about booking catering facilities for your summer events, festivals, pop-up restaurants and even Christmas events! Feel free to get in touch with me for a chat about your upcoming events and I'll be happy to advise you on the perfect PKL facilities for your needs.

Report Highlights Summer Equipment Shortage

Independent specialist datahouse Caterlyst have undertaken research looking into the demand for catering equipment hire over the summer period, within the event industry and cost sector. We were invited to comment on the reports they produced, and some of the results were quite surprising. Caterlyst have kindly allowed us to upload the reports to our website, and you can view them here.

Event Operators Report Summary

The research found that a third of event operators have involvement in or around the Olympics, with 80% of events catering for over 50 people. Many events of this size require specialist catering equipment, and over a third are planning to hire equipment in. However, the report found that despite this particularly high demand related to the Olympics this summer, 66% of operators have not considered that there may be a shortage of kit, and 70% have not planned to book early to ensure availability. 

Cost Sector Report Summary

According to the report, 44% of operators will be working on projects involving kitchen and dining areas this summer, with 38% needing to hire temporary kitchens or equipment. 40% will be catering for over 100 people a day, with 38% catering for 400+ at peak times. Worryingly, the report showed that 90% of cost sector operators have not considered the impact the Olympics and other events this summer will have on availability, and are not anticipating an equipment shortage this summer. 

Advice to Customers

Based on the information in the report, we are strongly urging our customers to order portable kitchens and catering equipment early this year. There are only a few UK companies operating in this sector, and there is a finite pool of stock. PKL has made significant capital investment in anticipation of high demand this summer, however anyone not ordering well in advance risks not getting their first choice items.

Guangzhou Asian Games 2010

In 2010, China played host to the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou. PKL’s previous project experience from the Beijing 2008 Olympics was instrumental in supporting the large volume of meals produced by Master Caterer ARAMARK. Nearly 10,000 athletes from 45 countries attended the Games, making it the largest Asian Games ever.

The Main Dining facility of the Athletes Village was made of light steel structure with an area of 13045 square meters. The result of the efforts of PKL and ARAMARK was the production of 800,000 meals in 66 days. Every meal included 22 entrees, 12 vegetable dishes and 100 cold dishes served up in PKL custom made serveries.

Temporary Kitchens at the All African Games

The All African Games is the largest athletics sporting event on the continent. Over 2,000 athletes from 53 African countries attended the 2 week event in October 2003 and all wanted to take advantage of the world class event catering facilities.

We supplied nearly 500 items of event catering equipment from our stock of over 8,000, including hot and cold servery counters, beverage boilers, catering sinks, wash hand basins and sundry servery items.

With so many athletes to feed in such a short time period, the organising committee needed to be sure that the foodservice equipment was able to cope and met the most rigorous of food hygiene standards. PKL was first choice.

We project managed the entire delivery and installation procedure and had trained engineers on site at all times to service the equipment during the operating period.

PKL has long been associated with the world's major sporting events and have provided Portable Kitchens and first class event catering facilities to the World Student Games, Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games - but the All African Games was a first.