A Snapshot of PKL's 2015: Part 2

In such a busy company, it's impossible to tell you everything we've been up to this year, so instead we've given one highlight to represent each month of 2015, to give you a quick snapshot of our year! Here's Part 2!

July - LACA Exhibition

We headed off to the annual LACA exhibition in July, and as well as having a stand inside, we took one of our Food Cubes with us which delegates were able to have a look around. Visitors to our stand were given a special treasure map to help them hunt down the Food Cube, which was located outside the exhibition, and also have the chance to enter a lucky dip to win a prize!

August - Wilderness Festival

We supplied four coldrooms and over 250 items of catering equipment for Wilderness Festival 2015, spread over nine different locations on site, offering a wide range of food and dining options.

Highlights included long table banquets, which involved luxury, large-scale communal dining, and featured a different guest chef each day. Guest chefs included Raymand Blanc, Angela Hartnett, and Niklas Ekstedt, and they catered for around 700 people each day.

September - Getting Schools Ready for the New Term

We had a busy time in August and September making sure that schools were ready to provide a meal service in time for the new term. This included lots of KitchenPods, which were installed at primary schools to make sure they were ready to provide hot school meals in September, and an impressive temporary kitchen installation at a school in London, where we had to crane lots of kitchen units over buildings to their location at the back of the school.

October - Back to the Future Day!

We celebrated back to the future day by digging through some of our photo archives to see if we could recreate them in the modern day.  While it was a lot of fun to do, we were also surprised at just how many members of staff were still around to recreate their original poses, particularly as many of the photos we used dated back to the late 80s and early 90s. You can see some more of our time travelling staff just here!

November - U-Select is Coming!

November was a hugely exciting time for us at PKL, as we prepared for the launch of a new division, U-Select. This involved the designing and launching of a new brand for the division, a new website, and preparations for the launch event, which was held at a venue called the Ice Tank in London. You can see some pictures of the launch day above, and also some of the U-Select team enjoying lunch at Burgers@N8, the first ever U-Select customer!

December - Festival Supplier Awards Nomination

In December we were hugely honoured to be shortlisted for the Best Festival Support Service category in the Festival Supplier Awards 2016. This was for the work that we undertook at the Wilderness Festival in 2015 and we'll let you know in January how we've got on!

We hope that you have enjoyed reading about our 2015 highlights, and if you've not seen Part 1 of this series yet, you can read it here. All that remains is to wish you a safe and happy Christmas, and we'll see you again in the new year!

LACA Exhibition 2015

Last week we headed off to exhibit at the LACA Main Event in Birmingham. As well as having a stand in the main exhibition, we also took one of our Food Cubes along. We stationed the Cube outside the venue, and lots of visitors followed our special treasure maps to hunt it down for a look around!

Our lucky dip treasure chest located in the Food Cube proved to be very popular, with prizes including bags of sweets, PKL goodie bags, travel mugs, Parker pens and Kindles. Three lucky people won Kindles this year – congratulations to Phillipa, Tracey and Rachel.



As always, we had a great time meeting new people and catching up with old friends, and had some great conversations about how our KitchenPods, Food Cubes and temporary kitchens can help different schools overcome a variety of catering issues.

Introducing the PKL ExtensionPods

If you’re a regular blog reader, you probably know all about our popular modular KitchenPods, and how they are a great option for clients who don’t have existing kitchen facilities but need a permanent solution.

What you might not have realised though, is that our Pods also make a great alternative to a traditional extension, and can be connected to existing buildings to increase the size of existing kitchen facilities.

If you already have a functioning kitchen but are struggling with capacity and require more space, our “ExtensionPods” provide a simple solution. As with a more traditional extension, these Pods can be joined to your existing building and provide additional production, preparation, storage, dishwashing or laundry space. They can be used to either create an open plan layout, or be kept as separate rooms and accessed via an internal door if you’d prefer.

We’ve recently created some options to show the different types of ExtensionPod available, which can provide solutions for different requirements. As always, each of these facilities can be fully customised to suit your requirements in terms of size, equipment and external finish – you could even mix and match between them to create your perfect solution!

PKL DishwashPod and StoragePod

KitchenPod
Use one of our hugely popular KitchenPods to expand your existing kitchen with additional production space, allowing you to produce even more meals. This is ideal for places such as schools or care homes, where demand for meals may be increasing over time and putting pressure on the existing kitchen.

DishwashPod
This dishwash facility can free up space in your current kitchen by creating a new dedicated area for dishwashing. The addition of a DishwashPod extension would enable you to reconfigure your existing kitchen to maximise your preparation and production space, helping increase your meal capacity.

StoragePod
Create extra storage space in your current kitchen by adding a StoragePod extension. It is ideal for either dry or cold storage, and helps keep preparation and production areas clutter-free. Having additional storage space may also enable you to benefit from buying supplies in bulk, reducing costs, risk and disruption from deliveries. 

PKL PrepPod and LaundryPod

PrepPod
If you need additional preparation space in your kitchen, a PrepPod extension is ideal. Giving you greater capacity to prepare food from scratch, this option can also enable you to increase the number and type of meals you produce.

LaundryPod
Our LaundryPod extensions are particularly well-suited to care homes, hospitals, prisons and universities, and are a great way to extend your laundry facilities or add a laundry room to existing communal areas.

Food Cubes
If you don't have room for an extension but need to take the pressure off your existing kitchen, don't forget about our permanent modular Food Cubes. They can be situated elsewhere on site as standalone facilities and can be used to produce light meals and snacks as well as providing an extra servery area.

Hopefully you’re now a little more familiar with the different options available and the huge range of possibilities they provide! If you’re considering a kitchen extension and would like a chat about our different ExtensionPod options and how they could help you, please do get in touch with myself or one of my colleagues.

A-Z of PKL's 2014: Part 3

Here's the third and final part of my A-Z review of the year. This section covers letters R-Z and includes cows, football, jumpers and a few kitchens. Enjoy!

R is for race week, and our psychic office bovine CowCow. As we are based just up the road from Cheltenham Racecourse, we can’t help but take an interest in the Cheltenham Festival each March. This year, CowCow used an elaborate spinner system to make his race predictions, which were shared on the blog and the PKL Twitter account. He successfully picked a number of winners this year, improving greatly on last year’s rather shaky performance.

S is for the School Food Plan and the Small Schools Taskforce. It’s been an incredibly busy year for schools, with huge changes to school food due to new standards set out in the School Food Plan. We’ve supplied a whole range of temporary and permanent kitchen solutions to schools this year to enable them to update their kitchens to cope with the changes. As a member of the Small Schools Taskforce, I’ve also spent time offering kitchen advice and recommendations to small and rural schools, who have been faced by a different set of challenges.

CowCow making his race predictions and AFC Trident in their PKL shirts

T is for AFC Trident, the local football team that we are sponsoring this season. They’re having a great season so far (undoubtedly due to their fantastic PKL shirts!), and you can read more and follow their progress on the PKL blog, and in our monthly newsletters. T is also for Tennants Auctioneers, where we installed a temporary kitchen to keep their popular on-site restaurant running during a three-week kitchen refurbishment. For more details of this project, you can read the Tennants Auctioneers case study.

U is for Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM). Introduced in September, this government initiative to provide free school meals to all pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 has impacted on primary schools across the country. We’ve supported a number of schools to prepare their kitchen facilities for this, through the sale and hire of permanent KitchenPods to replace or extend existing school kitchens or provide a new facility for schools with no kitchen. We have also hired temporary kitchens to schools whose kitchens weren’t going to be ready on time.

Temporary kitchen at Tennants Auctioneers and VIP kitchen at Blended Festival in Dubai

V is for VIP catering. We’ve supplied kitchens and catering equipment for VIP catering at various events throughout the year, including music festivals, concerts and awards shows. V is also for vehicles. Our vehicles have completed a number of tricky deliveries this year including negotiating narrow gates using forklifts at St Pauls School, and craning a temporary kitchen unit over an entire building at Burton College.

W is for our new strategic partnership with Well Dressed Tables, which was set up in August. It gives our customers access to Well Dressed Tables’ stock of crockery, cutlery and glassware to hire, providing a simple, one-stop solution. W is also for work experience. In April, local school pupil Beatrice joined the PKL marketing team for a week of work experience. From designing email newsletters to clearing out the marketing cupboard, she got stuck in to all the tasks we threw at her! You can read Beatrice’s work experience diary here.

X is for Xmas! Although our offices will be closed over the Christmas period, members of staff will be on call to help any businesses or organisations who need emergency kitchen facilities, and we already have a number of temporary units set up and ready to deploy at short notice. X is also for Xmas jumpers. We took part in National Christmas Jumper Day last Friday and raised money for homeless charity Crisis – embarrassing photo below.

Craning over a building at Burton College and National Christmas Jumper Day

Y is for the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation (YPO). As approved suppliers on the framework, we exhibited at The Big YPO Cleaning, Catering and FM Show in Nottingham in July. The exhibition featured 65 YPO suppliers and was attended by purchasing representatives from various public sector organisations. Y is also for Y Pant School in Wales. We installed a Food Cube at the school in the summer holidays, which is the third Cube we’ve supplied to that particular local authority.

Z is for zzz... Our Technical Support line will continue to be open 24 hours a day over the Christmas period to support existing kitchens we have out on hire, so even if a client has a kitchen problem at 2am on Christmas Day, a human will be there to answer the phone and help or dispatch an engineer – the rest of the country might be asleep, but if you have a kitchen emergency, you can always get hold of us.

That's the end of my review of 2014. There have of course been a number of other exciting projects and highlights throughout 2014, but I hope this brief review has given you an insight into the varying range of events and projects we've been involved in throughout the year.

Here's to 2015!

A-Z of PKL's 2014: Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my A-Z of this year's highlights at PKL. Part 2 covers letters J-Q, and this section of the alphabet includes a number of exciting events that we've taken part in this year. In this section, it's also clear that it's been a hugely eventful year for the education sector in particular, with new legislation and school initiatives having had a significant impact on that side of our business! If you missed it last week, make sure you catch up on Part 1: A-I here.

J is for Jamie’s Kitchen Garden Project. In May, we installed a Food Technology Kitchen at St Paul’s Primary School in London as part of this Jamie Oliver initiative to get children growing their own food and cooking in schools. It was positioned by the school’s vegetable garden and was designed to include cooking equipment as well as tables and chairs for the children to eat at once they had cooked their meals.

K is for KitchenPods, our permanent modular kitchens. In November, local MP Ed Miliband officially opened the brand new KitchenPod at Kirkby Avenue Primary School in Doncaster. This was a spacious new kitchen with brick slip finish to blend in with existing buildings on site.

Food Technology Kitchen installation at St Paul's Primary and KitchenPod at Kirkby Avenue Primary

L is for the LACA Exhibition which we attended in July. This year, we took along a portable kitchen and positioned it outside the main entrance of the venue for delegates to see in the flesh. Many people hadn’t seen inside a temporary kitchen before, and were surprised at the quality and spaciousness of the cooking environment. We always enjoy the LACA shows, and it was great to see so many familiar faces and meet new people too.

M is for PKL's Macmillan coffee morning. In September, we took part in the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. A huge cake sale in our staff canteen raised £175 for the cause. M is also for the Modular and Portable Building Association (MPBA), which PKL joined as a member in September. I also now sit on the committee as a member of the main MPBA Council.

Temporary kitchen at the LACA Exhibition and Macmillan coffee morning

N is for National School Meals Week. As part of National School Meals Week, we installed a pop-up school kitchen outside the House of Commons on Tuesday 4th November. The kitchen was used to serve sample school lunches to MPs, peers and the public to promote school food and show what modern school meals are really like!

O is for The One Show. Back in March, our KitchenPods were featured on The One Show as a potential solution for schools needing kitchen facilities to offer UIFSM from September. We also installed a Food Cube at the BBC studios, to be featured as an example of a solution for schools suffering lunchtime congestion. The Food Cube was then used by Mary Berry to cook pancakes live on the show!

Pop-up school kitchen outside parliament for NSMW and Food Cube on The One Show

P is for Passmores Academy, where we installed a large, walk-through Food Cube. The school, which is the setting for hit TV show Educating Essex, needed to expand its dining facilities to cope with increasing pupil intake. The Food Cube was positioned by an existing outdoor covered seating area, turning it into an additional space where pupils could purchase and eat food. P is also for poetry. When it comes to poetry, we’ve found that no topic is more inspiring than catering equipment. Read our National Poetry Day rhyme, “Dance of the Catering Equipment”.

Q is for queueing. With increasing numbers of 16-18 year olds staying in education and the School Food Plan leading to increased school meal take-up, many school canteens have been experiencing growing congestion this year. Our Food Cubes have continued to be a popular solution for schools across the country, drastically reducing lunch queue times by easing the pressure on the main canteen and offering a quick “grab and go” service.

That's it for Part 2. Stop by the blog again next week for the final installment of the A-Z of PKL's 2014.

A-Z of PKL's 2014: Part 1

It's been a great year at PKL, with lots of exciting new projects, partnerships and events. As 2014 draws to a close, I've put together an A-Z review of the year to pick out my highlights. I'll publish a blog post each week from now until the Christmas break to take you through my summary of PKL's 2014. Here's Part 1: A-I.

A is for Ashridge Business Centre. This business centre located in a stunning Grade I listed country house was the site of a 12-week temporary kitchen hire during the summer. The PKL temporary kitchen facility was capable of producing 500 meals per sitting for the centre's staff, visitors and functions while the centre underwent a refurbishment. For more details on this project, read our Ashridge case study.

B is for a fantastic KitchenPod installed at Bentley High Street Primary School in time for the introduction of UIFSM in September. B is also for our brilliant new brochures! These brochures were the result of months of hard work, so when the first copies were printed in May, it was a real cause for celebration. We now have separate brochures for Temporary Kitchens, Catering Equipment, Events, Permanent Solutions and Transworld.

C is for the Children's Food Trust, who we continue to support. With the introduction of UIFSM in September, it's been a busy year for school projects. For example, the Children's Food Trust and LACA put West Berkshire Council in touch with us when three schools needed urgent kitchen solutions - read the West Berkshire schools case study for more details. C is also for customer feedback. We use a Net Promoter Score to measure customer feedback. In the analysis of NPS, a score of above zero is good and above 50 is excellent. I'm delighted to say that our NPS score so far this year is 70, which demonstrates a very high level of customer satisfaction.

Temporary kitchens at Ashridge Business Centre and Dubai Food Carnival

D is for our new partnership with Lowe Refrigeration in Dubai. The partnership has seen our units used at a number of exciting events in Dubai, with case studies including kitchens at Dubai Food Carnival, Blended Music Festival and the Dubai Rugby Sevens.

E is for event health and safety. It might not sound too exciting but there are some very important new health and safety changes being introduced in the event industry next year which will affect all our event clients. The new CDM regulations will mean tougher event safety standards, similar to those seen in the construction sector. Luckily we’ve already been supplying CDM compliant products and services to the event sector for over five years! You can read more in our event health and safety blog post.

Food Cube with attached dining room and walk-in Food Cube

F is for festivals! Our UK Events team supplied kitchens to a number of festivals again this year, for a mix of VIP, staff and public dining. We've also installed lots of Food Cubes at secondary schools across the country, including new bespoke designs such as a Food Cube with attached dining room, and a walk-in Food Cube with additional catering equipment. F is also for the Foodservice Consultants Society International (FCSI), of which I am now a member!

G is for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, where we supplied the kitchens and servery areas for the main athletes' dining facility, as well as additional casual dining facilities. We supply kitchen and dining facilities to a number of major international sporting events, but it's always extra special when it's one based in the UK. G is also for Gabon, where we supplied a kitchen facility to an oil exploration camp, via our Transworld international division.

Clyde enjoying a drink at Glasgow 2014 and the new Halfway House design

H is for our new Halfway House facility for golf clubs which was launched in August. This is a new member of our Food Cube family of products, and offers a modular food and drink servery with shop and toilets, to be located out on the golf course for players to use during their round. You can read more about it in our Halfway House blog post. H is also for the Hospital Caterers Association (HCA). As well as attending HCA meetings throughout the year, we hosted a meeting for the south west branch back in January.

I is for internal refurbishments! This year, we've undertaken various refurbishment works to our offices including a brand new reception area and board room, a major revamp in the canteen and fantastic new office chairs! Reception has had new paint and flooring, a new reception desk, the addition of a display case for all our awards(!) and a new wall-mounted screen. Elsewhere, the board room has had new paint, carpet, chairs, blinds and pictures, while the canteen has been repainted and had new flooring put down. All very smart.

That's it for Part 1. Keep an eye out for the A-Z Part 2 next week!

Not ready for UIFSM in September? Don’t panic!

There are various reasons why some schools might not be ready to hit the ground running with Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) in September.

It could be that you’re struggling with budgets, logistics, the timeframe or are just unsure where to start. I know that hold-ups in some schools are also being caused by factors such as building work timescales, uncertainty over the best solution, or the desire to see exactly how school meal take-up is affected in September before making a final decision.

If you’re struggling with the introduction of UIFSM and implementing the School Food Plan, there are a number of sources of help, advice and guidance out there which you might find useful. Here are my top picks:

Department of Education – This document from the Department of Education offers official advice and information on the introduction of Universal Infant Free School Meals.

The School Food Plan – If you haven’t read it yet, this is where you can download and read the School Food Plan it its entirety. This explains all the new school food guidelines, ideas on implementing them, and the reasoning behind the changes. Or, if you just want a quick overview, there’s also a great 5-minute summary too!

UIFSM Toolkit – This is a great step-by-step guide to implementing UIFSM, and helps guide you through the process with practical advice and suggestions.

What Works Well – Here you can watch videos, read real-life case studies and get tips on tried and tested ideas to implement a successful school food scheme.

Children’s Food Trust – The Children’s Food Trust is running a free advice service to help schools with any questions or problems that might arise when sorting out their school meals service. They have a helpline that you can call and they’ll help answer your questions and point you towards further support.

Small Schools Taskforce – The School Food Plan has put this taskforce together specifically to help small or rural schools who might face additional challenges when implementing UIFSM and the School Food Plan. Incidentally, my colleague Ed Lyons and I are both members of this taskforce, as PKL can offer expertise in this area!

UIFSM FAQs – The Children’s Food Trust has put together a really useful set of FAQs which might help answer some of your questions about UIFSM.

Whatever the reason, if your school isn’t going to be ready to provide UIFSM in September, help is also on hand in the form of our temporary kitchens and catering equipment hire, which can provide an excellent solution until your permanent facilities are in place.

Hiring a temporary kitchen is a quick and easy way to provide a school meals service instantly, and we’ve had clients who’ve had temporary kitchens at their schools from a few days up to several years! Our temporary kitchens can be designed specifically to suit your menu and the number of meals you’ll be serving, so they represent a fast, sensible solution which won’t require you to compromise on your menu, food quality or the kitchen environment itself.

For smaller requirements, you can also hire items of catering equipment to enable you to set up a temporary kitchen facility in an existing building, utilising items such as oven ranges, combination ovens and servery units.

Alternatively, if you already have a school kitchen but are struggling with old or unsuitable catering equipment, our KitchenFM for Schools option enables schools to contract hire their entire catering equipment estate from us for a fixed monthly fee, meaning the equipment is our responsibility to maintain, and you can swap items in or out as your menu changes.

And of course, if you’re still looking for a permanent kitchen option, our permanent modular KitchenPods are a hugely popular option for schools as they can be ready in a matter of weeks and offer flexible procurement options for where budgets are tricky.

I do hope this blog post has helped give you some ideas if you were worried about getting your school ready in time for September – please do get in touch with us to see if our school kitchen solutions can help make your transition to UIFSM easier.

Catering Infrastructure Solutions for Universal Infant Free School Meals

At the moment, I’m receiving lots of enquiries from schools needing help with getting their kitchen facilities ready to meet the requirements of the School Food Plan and Universal Infant Free School Meals in September. 

The two main obstacles they’re up against tend to be time and funding, which are the areas in which our solutions can really help some schools. We offer a number of flexible procurement options on all our school facilities, including capital purchase, contract rental and lease. This enables schools with limited funding to help spread the cost and avoid the need for up-front capital expenditure. Our school solutions can also be installed and ready to use within a matter of weeks, keeping the whole process straightforward and stress-free.

Here’s a brief outline of our key options for schools wanting to prepare for September:

KitchenPods

PKL KitchenPods are ideal for schools with no existing kitchen,
or for schools who need to extend their current kitchen building.

Many of my clients found the cost of kitchen building works prohibitive, and approached us looking for a solution better suited to their funding availability. Our KitchenPods are permanent modular kitchen buildings, but offer the ability to be moved and relocated if the school’s needs change over time. This capability offers another advantage in that unlike a traditional building, KitchenPods are also able to be offered on a rental or lease basis. For schools unable to fund an up-front capital purchase, these monthly payment options can be much easier for schools to manage, and can help make it easier for the caterers or other stakeholders to contribute to the payments (an increasingly popular way of funding new facilities!).

PKL KitchenPods are modular kitchens which are built and kitted out off-site in as little as 6 weeks from order, then installed in a matter of days. These are a very flexible solution with a number of sizes available, ranging from single units to large open-plan spaces. KitchenPods also offer a huge range of exterior finishes, enabling them to complement existing buildings on site. Schools often opt to have our KitchenPods installed on a weekend or during school holidays, to completely avoid any disruption on site.

KitchenFM for Schools

Our KitchenFM for Schools option is brilliant for schools
requiring new catering equipment on a tight budget.

For schools who have a kitchen but have outdated or inadequate catering equipment, KitchenFM for Schools, which we developed with support from the Children’s Food Trust, is an ideal solution. For a fixed monthly fee, PKL will supply all the catering equipment and maintain it, with engineers only a phone call away. This is therefore a completely hassle-free option, and we can even buy back your existing equipment to include in the plan, and swap different equipment in and out if your menu or school meal take-up changes.

I know that many schools will not have the capital in place to purchase all new catering equipment, so KitchenFM for Schools is an excellent solution – contract rental of the catering estate means there is no up-front capital needed, and the responsibility for maintaining and looking after the equipment remains with PKL, so there will never be any nasty financial surprises!

Temporary Kitchens

PKL temporary kitchens can offer high quality
interim kitchen facilities to schools who need more time!

I know that some schools would prefer to see exactly how their school meal take-up is affected by the changes in September, before deciding on the best course of action for their kitchen facilities. Other schools have opted for extensive building works which won’t be ready in time for September or will disrupt existing kitchen facilities while they’re taking place. For schools in these types of situation who require interim catering facilities, PKL temporary kitchens are an ideal solution.

As the UK’s leading supplier of temporary kitchens, we are able to hire a whole range of kitchen facilities to meet your exact requirements and buy you time to get your permanent kitchen in place. With hires able to last from a few weeks to several years, temporary kitchens provide an easy and flexible option.

Further Information

If you’d like more information on any of these options, or if you’d like to discuss your school’s requirements with us, please visit www.schoolkitchens.com or give us a ring and ask to speak to a member of the Permanent Kitchens Team (myself, Ian or Ed).

Happiness at PKL

Today is the second annual International Day of Happiness! You might remember that last year, we listed some reasons why PKL is happy. Well, we're back again this year, explaining why we are still happy! We asked a few PKL staff members what's making them happy in their departments at the moment:

"The summer is fast aproaching, which will be busy but really exciting for us, with our equipment heading off to events all over the country!" Krista, Event Hire Team

"We're very proud and happy that our colleague Lee successfully survived his parachute jump in aid of Brain Tumour Research!" Andrea, Finance

"Our reception area has just had a complete facelift, with new paint and flooring as well as a new trophy cabinet, TV screen and reception desk!" Pat, Business Support

Reception before (top) and after (bottom)

"We've had some fantastic feedback and happy customers in Dubai following our new partnership with Lowe Refrigeration." Peter, PKL Transworld

"I'm happy because we've just added a new member to the CAD team to help with all the exciting new projects we're working on at the moment!" Karsten, Kitchen Design Team

"After months of hard work, our brand new range of hire guide brochures is in the process of being printed!" Sam, Marketing

Our new hire guide brochures being printed

"I'm happy that I had the opportunity to go and watch the filming of The One Show when our KitchenPods and Food Cubes were featured on it!" Ian, Permanent Kitchens Team

"We're happy because we've received a 92% customer satisfaction rating for quality and technical support this year!" John, Kit Heaven and Manisha, Technical Support

PKL on The One Show

Eagle-eyed viewers might have spotted my fleeting appearance on The One Show on Monday, talking about PKL KitchenPods as a potential solution for schools requiring new kitchen facilities to help with implementing the School Food Plan and Universal Infant Free School Meals.

The feature looked at the issues some schools will be facing in getting ready for the changes, and touched on several potential solutions. John Vincent from The School Food Plan helped a headteacher explore a number of options to ensure her school could meet the Plan's recommendations. The PKL KitchenPod at Bush Hill Park Primary School in Enfield was featured (thanks to headteacher Sue Crisp) as an example of modular kitchen buildings which provide flexible procurement options - including purchase, rental or lease - which can help schools without funding for an upfront purchase.

The feature also discussed options such as the local authority or private caterers borrowing money to invest in school kitchens, with the knowledge that a good facility will generate a profit, enabling the money to be paid back over time. Bringing the catering in-house was another suggestion put forward in the feature. This option can provide a great solution to schools whose current catering company may no longer represent the highest quality and most cost-effective solution when faced by the increased numbers of children who will be entitled to free school meals from September.


One of our PKL Food Cubes was installed at the BBC studios for the day, for a live piece about how modular servery buildings can provide a solution to queues and congestion in school dining rooms. Mary Berry seemed to enjoy cooking pancakes in the Cube, describing it as "splendid" when interviewed by presenters Matt and Alex. Sadly we're not able to include a free Mary Berry with every Food Cube, but we do supply a variety of features and equipment,which we hope makes up for it!

I had a fantastic afternoon down at The One Show studios, watching rehearsals and pre-recordings. The studio is much smaller than I'd expected, but is run with such efficiency that a larger space really isn't necessary! I was also surprised to find that the outside filming area where our Food Cube was located is very open to the public, with people passing on the street able to watch from only a few metres away.

During a break in rehearsals, I had a chat with presenter Matt Baker, who was particularly interested in the issue as his own children don't currently have a hot meal option at school.

It was also nice to catch up with John Vincent from the School Food Plan and hear about the filming he'd done for the feature. I'm a member of the School Food Plan's Small Schools Taskforce, so we had plenty to talk about!

The show will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer until 10th March 2014, so watch it here asap if you missed it. The school meals feature starts 16 minutes in and lasts for about 10 minutes.

For more information on PKL school solutions, visit our dedicated schools website at www.schoolkitchens.com.

National School Meals Week – PKL Reminisces

This week is National School Meals Week, which got us thinking about our favourite school meals from our own school days. Having taken a very scientific survey of the office, we discovered some rather interesting trends. We fear that some of these answers show our age, but here are some of our responses to the question:

“What was your favourite school meal?”

Spam fritters followed by jam sponge pudding and custard. I also have fond memories of the Christmas pudding which had a real sixpence hidden inside.
Peter Schad, Commercial Director

Fish fingers, chips and peas.
Natalie, IT Support

Veggie lasagne.
Andy, Graphic Designer

Jacket potato with cheese. The flapjack was brilliant too and only cost 12p!
Ed, Business Development

Christmas dinner!
Alastair, CAD Designer

Lasagne!
Will, Financial Controller

Steak pie. At least, I think it was steak…
Ed, IT Manager

Chicken fricassee followed by jam roly poly.
Lynda, Finance

Fish and chips on a Friday, and the Christmas dinners.
Sam, Marketing Manager

I don’t know, but I was a plate monitor so I got to sit at the head of the table!
Sue, Office Manager

Chocolate crunch with pink custard.
Linda, Finance

Chocolate crunch with pink custard on a Friday.
Ian, KitchenPod Sales Manager

At this point, the whole office started enthusiastically reminiscing about chocolate crunch with pink custard. It appears that this was something of a phenomenon in schools across the country. There was quite some debate about how and why the custard was pink, though everyone agreed wholeheartedly that this was the best pudding they’ve ever eaten. Discussion became so animated that we decided to give up and abandon the survey. As we did though, our colleague Mike who looks after our Mid West Catering Equipment division called up. As a parting question, we asked him about his favourite school meal:

Savoury mince with fried bread… and chocolate crunch with pink custard!
Mike, Mid West Catering Equipment Sales

We despair.

As you can probably tell, most of us grew up in a time before nutrition was a top priority in schools, and when discussion turned to our least favourite school meal memories (many involving limp, grey cabbage and thick custard skin), we’re very glad that times have changed!

If you’re busy working to implement the new School Food Plan in your school, you might find it useful to read our 8 Point Plan for Schools which we wrote a few months ago in response to the Plan's announcement. We also outline a number of catering solutions for schools, as well as funding information, on our recently relaunched SchoolKitchens.com website.

We hope you’re all enjoying National School Meals Week, and hope it’s successful in promoting your school meals service. Please do give us a ring if you’d like any advice on solutions to help boost your ability to offer great school meals; we have a range of options including KitchenPods, Food Cubes and our new KitchenFM for Schools product which enables you to contract hire all your catering equipment.

Now, we’re off to look up chocolate crunch and pink custard recipes…
 

Celebrating 25 Years of PKL

This month, we are celebrating PKL’s 25 year anniversary. Over the last 25 years, we’ve undertaken 10,000 temporary kitchen hires across multiple sectors throughout the UK and around the world, and have grown to become the UK’s leading provider of outsourced catering infrastructure solutions.

Over time, the business has expanded to employ 85 people, and we now have a management and senior operations team with a collective experience of well over 100 years of working for the company, many of whom have been with us since the early days. Operating from our purpose-built head office and warehouse facility, we own 900 portable kitchen units and over 10,000 items of catering equipment which are hired to a variety of customers during kitchen refurbishments, events or during kitchen emergencies.

Some of our notable installations over the last 25 years have included large scale kitchen and dining facilities for numerous major sporting events around the world, facilities for the military in the middle east, and installations at prestigious UK sites including Buckingham Palace, Glastonbury Festival and a number of Oxford and Cambridge colleges.

The PKL Quay over time. The first image was taken 10+ years ago, the second was taken today.

In the last few years, we’ve used our experience from providing temporary commercial kitchens to move into the supply of permanent modular kitchen buildings, via our KitchenPod and Food Cube products. This has resulted in local installations at Beaufort Co-operative Academy in Gloucester and Cleeve School in Cheltenham, as well as a number of projects around the country, including supplying 100 KitchenPods to schools in Northamptonshire. In addition to these products, our recently developed modular camp kitchen and dining solutions have been supplied to a number of mining and exploration sites in Africa.

Two of our favourite photos from the PKL archives.

One of our latest developments has been the launch of KitchenFM for Schools, which is a new product designed specifically for the education sector. Following the announcement of the School Food Plan, we developed KitchenFM for Schools with support from the Children’s Food Trust. This new contract hire solution is aimed at schools looking to expand or refurbish their existing kitchens so that they can introduce or increase their school meal provision.

Over the past 25 years we have helped a large number of establishments to implement changes to their catering and dining infrastructure. We have developed a number of innovative catering solutions which have played a significant role in shaping the future of the UK’s education, health and leisure sectors, as well as ensuring that we remain the UK’s leading supplier of temporary catering infrastructure.

Our latest staff picture and a recent office photo.

We are very proud of our achievements to date and will continue to build on our expertise and knowledge. As we look to the future, we look forward to maintaining PKL’s position as a major kitchen infrastructure solutions provider on an international scale. We will also continue to build on our strong reputation for innovation, through our work on developing new and exciting solutions for the fast moving sectors in which we operate. Here’s to the next 25 years!