Gabby's Work Experience - Cleeve School Case Study

After an exciting and informative week of work experience, working within the marketing team, Friday has arrived and I am able to share the Food Cube case study I’ve produced with some help!!

Having a Food Cube at Cleeve School's sixth form where I attend, it seemed a perfect opportunity to see Graphic Designer Andy in action with the camera and to see how Marketing Executive Caz works her magic with the masses of information collected and crafts it into small condensed paragraphs for the case study.

Experiencing the Food Cube myself for a hot drink on a regular basis, I was aware of the benefits it has to offer our sixth form, although this wasn’t enough information to produce a case study with. So Andy and I went on a visit to Cleeve School, where I was classed as a visitor, to interview both my peers, a member of the catering team and my teacher.

Once we arrived and Andy had snapped away, the interview with the Acting Assistant Head of Sixth Form began, during which the Food Cube was seen in action with two students purchasing a hot drink. After I had carried out all three interviews, and made over a page of notes on the benefits and uses of the Cube, it was back to the office to use this information. 

Constructing the text for the case study was a task I had underestimated - trying to include all the points made by those I had interviewed whilst keeping it short and punchy wasn’t as easy as it appeared. However with assistance from the expert herself, Cleeve School’s Food Cube Case Study was successfully completed!

Here's the finished article...

Cleeve School's Food Cube Case Study

Cleeve School, a large secondary school with busy sixth form, wanted a solution to encourage sixth form students to remain on site during their free periods. They decided to install a PKL Food Cube directly outside the sixth form centre, and created an outdoor dining area with the addition of a canopy and tables.

The Cube has proven to be hugely popular within the sixth form, especially as it is an exclusive outlet not available to the rest of the school community. It offers menu items not available in the main canteen, such as hot drinks, and is open throughout the day rather than just at lunch and break times.

An added bonus of the Cube, manned by Julie from the catering team, is that the sixth formers have been able to build a great relationship with her. This has not only increased the Cube’s popularity, but has also made students more confident in putting forward their own menu suggestions and ideas.

 “The students really enjoy having the Food Cube and being able to come and use it on a regular basis throughout the day. The sixth form students really like the privilege of having it to use for themselves, and we have seen an improvement in students staying on site. I would definitely recommend it.” – Emma Smith, Acting Assistant Head of Sixth Form

For more information on PKL Food Cubes, click here.

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!

Who does what at PKL?

My name is Joe and I have come to PKL for work experience where I was tasked to find out more about those behind the scenes working hard in the company. I went in search of some ‘willing’ participants for the blog and this is what I found out…


Name: Andrea
Job: Revenue Accountant
How long have you worked at PKL? 8 years
What do you do at PKL? The job involves managing the cash flow and the finances of the business. Following up on payments is another area of the job.



Name: Karsten
Job: Design Manager
How long have you worked at PKL? 10 years
What do you do at PKL? Karsten’s job involves managing the production of technical drawings for all PKL projects, so this would be for example the KitchenPod design drawings for clients.




Name: John
Job: Project Consultant
How long have you worked at PKL? “Since May 23rd 2007!” 7 years
What do you do at PKL? John focuses on the long term projects and specialises in areas such as the military, universities, prisons and the projects PKL are involved in with them.  He also takes calls for enquiries into new projects.



Name: Marcos
Job: Kit Heaven Chargehand
How long have you worked at PKL? 14 years
What do you do at PKL? His job in Kit Heaven involves the quality assurance side of the actual PKL products. This will mean checking all equipment is safe and to the expected standards. It also involves kit tracking, so keeping account of all the equipment going on and off hire and where it is. He also makes sure that any kit coming back to PKL is not damaged on return.


Name: Claire
Job: Fleet Manager
How long have you worked at PKL? 12 years
What do you do at PKL? Claire’s job involves managing the availability of assets such as the catering equipment and kitchen units. She is joined by Debbie (left) who also helps to manage the unit and equipment availability.


Name: Scott
Job: Quay Supervisor
How long have you worked at PKL? 15 years
What do you do at PKL? This job involves supervising all of the preparation of the kitchen units before they go off site. This means checking they are in good condition before they go on hire.




Name: Chris
Job: Catering Engineer
How long have you worked at PKL? 5 years
What do you do at PKL? Chris’s job is to install the catering equipment into the various kitchen units. He also goes out on site and carries out maintenance of equipment on hire.




Name: Tim
Job: Projects and Technical Manager
How long have you worked at PKL? 24 years
What do you do at PKL? This job involves running the department and working with site supervisors and engineers. His job is very much to do with project managing larger hires like large events. It also means working alongside the sales department.



Name: Nick
Job: Transport Manager
How long have you worked at PKL? 4 years
What do you do at PKL? Nick is in charge of ‘Transport and Logistics’ and is in charge of actually getting the kitchens from and to their destination, in and out of the business.



Name: Caz
Job: Marketing Executive
How long have you worked at PKL? 3 years
What do you do at PKL? The job includes many different aspects of marketing, including the main copywriting for PKL, updating the PKL social media sites, and writing marketing literature such as brochures and case studies.

Name: Andy
Job: Graphic Designer
How long have you worked at PKL? 4 years
What do you do at PKL? His job is largely design, so this involves designing the PKL brochures and doing the photography that will feature on those brochures. He also does the design and layout of literature and general advertisements for the business.

Beatrice's Work Experience Diary

The Marketing Team: Sam, Andy and Caz

Work experience student Beatrice joined PKL's Marketing Team this week - here is her diary of what she got up to!

At first, entering the world of work seemed quite scary, I was worried I would be given big complicated tasks and would sit wondering what had gone wrong. However, I feel like I would rather stay at work then go back to school!! Marketing is what I want to do when I am older; I knew that before I came to PKL, now, I am sure there is a place in that area of work for me.

MONDAY:

I met my ‘boss’ Sam who introduced me to a spread sheet with a forecast of everything the Marketing team need to achieve at PKL. It was then I realised that there is a lot more to marketing than I initially thought. It is all soo organised here at PKL and this spread sheet proved it. There are many parts of marketing I learnt about that I never new existed. Later on, after a guided tour of PKL, I helped Sam organise brochure requests on Goldmine, which was interesting because I had never seen a system like that before. After my lunch break, I then helped Andy set up an email newsletter, that I was very proud of; it was sent to 6,272 people!!!

Left - Designing the email newsletter, Right   - The poster about The One Show

TUESDAY:

I worked with Andy on a poster to put in the canteen of one of PKL’s proudest achievements which is going on The One Show! After lunch, Andy took me to the printers where we took the next brochure designs and made sure they were printing properly. It was so interesting to see the process of design to manufacturer, we were even allowed inside the printing factory! After lunch, I helped Andy set up a picture of PKL on The One Show to go into reception. Finally, I helped Sam and sent some emails to people who wanted a brochure.

Our visit to the printing company and a proof of the new brochure

WEDNESDAY:

This particular day helped me see the variety of work at PKL, as I helped Andy sort out a very messy Marketing cupboard. It was a lot of work, however the end result was really good and it helped make room for the next brochures which will be delivered on Friday. Andy, the Graphic Designer, has the job I would have if I worked here as I love design and working on websites. I really envy him!!

The clean new cupboard

THURSDAY:

I had a meeting with the MD Chris who set me a task of helping him research which potential countries PKL Transworld could work with. This took me most of the day, however I was happy to be helpful to PKL as they had already done A LOT for me. Finally, I worked with Caz, who was great fun and showed me how to control the back end of the Mid West Catering Equipment website and sort out the stock on sale at the moment.

Left - Designing a new picture for Reception, Right - The final result on the wall

FRIDAY:

I am now about to set up my blog that I am REALLY excited about doing! This week has been AMAZING and I now feel much happier in myself knowing for definite what I want to do when I am older - MARKETING!!