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 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!

Temporary Kitchens for Hotels

It’s been a busy time for hotel hires recently, so I thought it would be useful to write a blog post with some info about our temporary kitchen hire for hotels.

What and Why?
We hire out temporary kitchen facilities and commercial catering equipment for use during hotel kitchen refurbishments, kitchen emergencies, events and busy periods. Our units are available in a range of sizes and include production and preparation kitchens, walk-in coldrooms, dishwashing units, dry storage units, and dining facilities. You can select the exact items of catering equipment you need from our fleet of 9,000 items, and they come ready-installed in the kitchen units. Alternatively, we can hire individual items of catering equipment for use in your hotel’s own kitchen or in marquees during events.

Quality
Our kitchen units are purpose-built high quality commercial facilities, able to cope with heavy use at hotels. They fully comply with all current health and safety regulations and offer a number of features including a ventilation canopy, auto gas shut off, automatic fire suppression system, easy clean extraction system, infestation-proof construction, 500 lux lighting level, food-safe wipe-clean walls and plastisol steel wall lining, non-slip safety flooring, and insulated fire regulated wall panels, ceilings and floors. We supply top brand commercial catering equipment which is thoroughly cleaned and tested before going out on hire.



Delivery
Our kitchens arrive on the back of a lorry and are craned into position on your site. We’ve fitted our kitchens into all sorts of tricky locations at different hotels – our delivery team are experts! Delivery can be at any time to suit you, so we can work to avoid any particularly busy times or days of the week. Our installation team are quick and professional, so disruption on site is kept to a minimum while we’re linking units together and connecting them up to services.

Disruption to Guests
As well as delivering at a time to ensure minimum disruption to your hotel guests, we can also provide additional sound insulation and odour control units on any of our kitchens that will be located close to guest accommodation. This will minimise any kitchen noise or cooking smells released from the extraction systems.



Support
We know that hotel kitchens are often used all day every day. While on hire, all our kitchens and catering equipment are covered by our 24-hour technical support service. If you have any problems such as equipment breakdowns, at any time or on any day, all you need to do is call our technical support number and we’ll arrange for an engineer to come and help you asap. In emergencies, the engineer will be dispatched immediately, otherwise our standard response is within 24 hours (usually on the same day).

More Information
If you’d like more information or a quote for hiring temporary kitchen facilities for your hotel, please get in touch with myself or one of my colleagues and we’ll be happy to help.

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.