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.