Kitchens, Forklifts and Cranes: Some recent school installations

We popped down to London last week to check on the progress of two temporary school kitchen installations we were undertaking. 

Our first port of call was St Paul’s School, where our team were busy installing a large temporary kitchen complex. This facility comprises a number of our temporary units linked together, all joined to a tented dining room which the school had also hired for the duration of the project. We were also installing a range of servery equipment in the dining area, from which food will be served to pupils.



We’ve worked with the supplier of the tented dining room many times before, so the teams on site worked together to successfully complete the installation. The facility will be on site for over 12 months while the existing school kitchen undergoes major refurbishment works.

We then headed across town to Eaton House The Manor School, where a crane was being used to lift our temporary kitchen units over the buildings into the area set aside for the facility, as access was very limited. They were then moved into position using forklifts.



As with St Paul’s School, this kitchen facility will also be used while the school’s existing kitchen is refurbished. We managed to get some great photos taken from the top of the crane too, capturing the fantastic view across London!

Visit the temporary kitchens section of our website for more information on our temporary kitchen options for refurbishments.  

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.

Recent School Projects

We've installed several temporary and permanent catering facilities in schools in the last few weeks, with many schools preparing for September already. Here's a selection of photos from some school projects we've recently completed.

Cavendish Primary School in Manchester has had a temporary kitchen and dining facility installed for 18 months while their old facilities undergo a refurbishment. The large kitchen facility has areas for preparation, production, dry and cold storage, and dishwashing, as well as a dining hall, toilets and staff room.



We've also recently installed a Food Cube at Fairfield High School for Girls in Manchester. The school wanted to offer a catering facility with a more contemporary high street feel to particularly appeal to older pupils. The Cube has helped reduce queue times in the main dining hall and has taken pressure off the catering staff. It has also proven to be popular with users of the nearby sports hall, and the Cube is generating additional profits outside of normal school hours by catering for people using the sports facilities.



The same contract caterer also ordered another identical Food Cube for Tewkesbury School (above). They have been so pleased with the popularity and success of these first two Cubes, that they've just placed an order for a third!

PKL Training Day

We’ve had fun trying something new today! We set up one of our temporary kitchens outside the office and invited a couple of chefs from one of our equipment suppliers to come and run a training session for some of our sales guys this morning.

Dan, Ed, Bill and Ciaran were given a hands-on lesson on how to use a whole range of commercial catering equipment, including a combi oven and salamander grill, and experienced one of our temporary kitchens from a chef’s point of view.

The chefs showed them all the features of the different equipment and discussed the best ways to get the most out of it and use it for a range of cooking styles. They also demonstrated how the kitchen layout, designed by our expert kitchen design team, had been optimised to make the most of the space and create a practical, efficient workspace.





Since we were also hosting a client meeting in the office this morning, the boys were then tasked with making hot breakfast wraps for all our visitors, and were set to work putting their new equipment knowledge into practice. Following his stint in the kitchen, Ciaran is a definite combi oven convert!





This morning's experience should help the guys to have an even better, more practical understanding of our equipment, and to be even more knowledgeable when helping advise clients on the most suitable catering equipment for their projects.

The kitchen was then used by the chefs at lunchtime to cook beef curry with rice and naan, as well as a salmon and asparagus dish, followed  a very tasty jam sponge pudding and custard!

You might have spotted from the photos that the kitchen unit itself was one of our energy efficient eKitchens. These have been designed with a number of energy saving features including high-spec LED lighting, additional insulation in the roof and floor, a double-glazed serving hatch, thermostatically controlled space heater, plus energy efficient taps and electric water heater. Our eKitchens have an EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) rating of B42 compared to D97 for a standard unit, and can save users over £350 per year in energy consumption, so they're a great option particularly for longer term hires.

Visit our website for more information on our full range of temporary kitchens and catering equipment for hire.

Constructing a Large Scale Modular Kitchen

Here’s a sneak preview of a large scale, open plan, temporary kitchen facility which is going out on hire this week. This particular facility comprises 35 units and was constructed here at PKL HQ before being disassembled into individual units, covered ready for transport and loaded onto trucks, ready to be installed on the client’s site. The facility is currently being reassembled at the client’s location, ready for final commissioning and handover.

A facility of this size really illustrates the benefits of off-site construction. The main build of the facility took place here at PKL HQ, including all the mechanical and electrical fit-outs as well as the installation of extraction canopies and catering equipment. Due to the size of the facility, it’s taken several weeks to build, but because all this work has been undertaken at PKL, there has been no disruption to the client. The rebuilding of the facility at the client’s site is now quite straightforward, and should only take a few days craning the units into position, ready for the internal reassembly. 

With a footprint of over 500m² this is a substantial facility, and will be on hire for 6 months during a major kitchen refurbishment. Three plant rooms are located on the roof, above the Central Island Canopies. These rooms house the extraction fans and the boiler for the tempered air, and also ensure that there are no roof leaks where the extraction penetrates the ceiling.

This type of large scale facility is typically specified for use during major refurbishment works at busy sites such as prisons, hospitals and universities, which have large catering operations which need to be maintained.

PKL at National School Meals Week 2014

As part of National School Meals Week, we installed a PKL temporary kitchen outside the House of Commons last Tuesday to feed school lunches to MPs, peers and members of the public.

Some of the dishes served may have come as a surprise to anyone unaware of recent changes to school food – the menu included options such as organic beef Jamaican pie with mash, Valencia salmon paella, sweet potato curry with roti bread, and Arabian lamb and rice. These are all meals which are on the menu at local schools, so they represented a real example of modern school food.

The temporary kitchen was delivered at the crack of dawn and installed in Old Palace Yard. Local school chefs then used the kitchen to cook and serve lunch from 12-2pm. The kitchen drew quite a crowd, with lots of people coming to sample the food.

MPs who stopped by to taste the school lunches included David Laws, Sharon Hodgson, Stephen Mosley and Edward Davey among others. The event was also attended by Linda Creegan, CEO of the Children’s Food Trust, and Myles Bremner, Director of the School Food Plan.

By 4.30pm the kitchen was all packed up and loaded back onto our lorry ready to head back to PKL HQ. With over 25 years’ experience supplying temporary kitchens, permanent KitchenPods and Food Cubes to the education sector, we’ve seen first-hand how school food has changed in recent years and we’re proud to have been part of this exciting event which has helped showcase just how far school food has come.

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.

Introducing the PKL Halfway House for Golf Clubs

Calling all golf clubs! Here’s an exclusive first look at our newest modular solution!

What is the Halfway House?
Our new Halfway House product is a modular servery facility designed for golf clubs. The latest addition to our popular Food Cubes range, it can be used to generate extra revenue from food sales and additional golf equipment, as well as providing toilet facilities for players.

The modular unit is constructed offsite, is delivered complete with catering equipment and arrives ready to use. It is designed to be located on the golf course to provide a range of hot and cold drinks and snacks to players during their round. The facility can also be used to sell lighter items of golf equipment such as balls, tees, waterproofs, umbrellas and gloves.

Customised Design
We custom design each facility, including catering equipment of your club’s choice. This means it can be designed to meet your exact requirements in terms of look, size, layout and use. The Halfway House is available in a number of sizes and a wide range of colours and finishes, including wood cladding, brick slip, vinyl wrap and a painted exterior. By choosing from this wide variety of options, the Halfway House can be designed to include your own branding, or finished to blend in with existing surroundings.



Flexible Procurement Options
The Halfway House is available to hire or buy. This means that you do not need a large amount of up-front capital to procure a unit. For the hire option, all service and maintenance of the building and the equipment inside is included within the monthly fee, providing a fixed monthly cost.

Key Benefits

• Generate additional profit for your golf club
• Maximise potential to sell refreshments and equipment
• Additional facilities make your course more attractive to golfers

Clubhouse Refurbishment?
We also supply temporary kitchens and dining facilities. If you’re planning to refurbish your clubhouse, we can supply temporary clubhouse facilities to ensure you remain fully operational throughout any planned works – just contact our hire team for a quote.

Temporary Kitchens for Universities and Colleges

Having been responsible for PKL’s projects in a number of universities and colleges over the years, I’ve put together this brief overview to answer some of the most frequently asked questions from clients in this sector.


I need a temporary kitchen for an emergency / refurbishment / event – can you help?

Yes! Whatever type of project you have, if you need a temporary kitchen or catering equipment at your university or college, we can help. From large, comprehensive kitchens and dining rooms, to the hire of single coldroom units or items of catering equipment, we can supply a solution to match your requirements. Our in-house designers can design the perfect solution based on your specific requirements, and I can also offer advice on the best options if you’re not sure what you need.


We have listed buildings or access challenges on site – can you deliver to a site like this?

Of course! I’ve worked on a number of university projects which have involved contending with all sorts of factors. Our transport and planning teams are experts in planning deliveries to difficult sites, and produce detailed installation plans, risk assessments and method statements for every unit we install, taking all site factors into account.

Previous university projects I’ve worked on have involved manoeuvring kitchen units by hand or forklift through archways, craning units over walls, protecting listed trees and shrubs on site, and moving over or around listed buildings - our team can find a solution to pretty much any site challenge! Where access is required over lawns, listed cobbles or paving, we provide trackway to ensure that the surface remains protected underneath.

We specialise in non-invasive, non-attached weatherproof links to listed buildings, which when removed leave the building unmarked and in the same condition as before the hire started. We also offer a range of exterior solutions, such as painted finishes, vinyl wraps or screens, if the look of a temporary facility is an issue.

Will hiring a temporary kitchen involve lots of noise and disruption on site?

No, not really. I appreciate that you’ll want to keep noise and disruption to a minimum, and we work hard to ensure delivery and installation is as quick and painless as possible, by preparing thoroughly and creating detailed plans in advance so there are no delays or surprises once on site.

The kitchens themselves are not too noisy to run, however if noise is a particular concern (perhaps if the kitchen is near student or staff accommodation) we can also provide extra insulation to our plant and coldrooms to reduce the noise emitted from the temporary kitchen and ancillary facilities. Likewise, if you are concerned about extraction emissions from the kitchen, we can also supply our facilities with Odour Control Units which can minimise cooking smells released from the extraction systems.

What if something goes wrong with the kitchen or equipment once it’s on site?

We’ll fix or replace it! I know that our university and college kitchens are often used all day every day, so our 24 hour technical support line is always open. All our kitchens and equipment are tested thoroughly before delivery, but if something does go wrong we’ll sort it out as quickly as we can. For major problems or emergencies, we can dispatch an engineer immediately, otherwise our standard call-out time is within 24 hours.

Is it a difficult process to procure your facilities?

No! PKL is a Pro 5 registered organisation which is a consortium made up of ESPO, YPO, CBC and NEPO. This means that we have undergone a pre-tender process to supply temporary kitchens to the public sector. Universities can place orders directly with Pro 5, safe in the knowledge that PKL has been assessed for best value. PKL is also a Crown Commercial Service listed supplier.


I hope this post has helped to answer some of the questions you may have about hiring temporary kitchens, dining facilities and catering equipment for your university or college. If you've got an upcoming project that PKL might be able to help you with, please get in touch for a chat and a no-obligation quote. You can also find more information on the PKL website.

New Brochures!

Today is a momentous day here at PKL - after months of hard work, the last of our 5 new brochures has been delivered from the printers!

From Temporary Kitchens, Catering Equipment and Event Kitchens, to Permanent Kitchens and PKL Transworld, no matter what your requirement, we've got a shiny new brochure to give you all the info you need. We've also got a brilliant new folder to keep the brochures together, featuring a useful insert which gives a company overview and information on our service and accreditations. They all have that lovely new brochure smell too. What more could you want, eh?

To order a brochure, please visit our website here or give us a call.

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.

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

Temporary Prison Kitchen Features Explained

As PKL’s prison kitchen specialist, I appreciate the specific challenges involved in prison hires and have supplied a variety of temporary kitchen facilities to prisons, feeding from 300 to 1200 inmates per day. With a large number of prison kitchen hires undertaken during my time at PKL, I have helped to develop a number of kitchen features which are ideally suited to secure environments.

In this blog post I’ll outline a few of these key features available in our secure establishment kitchens, in order to tackle some of the questions I’m commonly asked about PKL’s prison facilities.

Safety and Security
Safety and security are important in any kitchen but even more so in a secure establishment.

The design of our kitchens can include both general and fire alarms, and cooking canopies are fitted with automatic fire suppression as standard.

The external doors to our facilities are prison specification and ready to receive prison category locks. Our kitchens can also have separate entrances for inmates and officers with hold and search areas if required.

Whenever possible, to maintain security during delivery, we use cranes either side of the prison wall to lift units over and then position them in place inside the grounds. This avoids a constant flow of vehicles through the gate lock and reduces security risks.

Visibility
Our open plan kitchen designs allow supervisory staff maximum visibility, and we use half height
walls where possible. Where this is not practical, we can fit polycarbonate vision panels instead.

To maintain line of sight, all our Central Island Canopies have through and through visibility, and the back-to-back design allows one officer to supervise multiple canopy runs.

Layout
The wide central corridor in our kitchens allows for the easy flow of staff and goods, and this benefit extends into the main production and preparation areas thanks to the open plan construction. This makes best use of available space and provides the feel and flexibility of a permanent building.

The prime cooking equipment is located under Central Island Canopies which give the maximum extraction length without using large amounts of wall space and improve the layout and visibility.

Goods inward areas feature a reinforced floor to cope with the cage movement, plus over-door heating and a porch to protect the kitchen from bad weather while goods are being delivered.

Welfare
Open plan kitchens using Central Island Canopies feature thermostatically controlled tempered air which maintains the kitchen temperature – this is an essential feature for any open plan kitchen that is going to be onsite over the winter months.

Roof mounted plant rooms are placed above our Central Island Canopies and house the extraction fans and the boiler for the tempered air. The use of plant rooms ensures that there are no roof leaks where the extraction penetrates the ceiling, and significantly reduces noise both inside the kitchen and externally. It also improves security by preventing outdoor access via the canopy ducting.

Where the kitchen is going to be located near a housing block, optional sound attenuators can be fitted to the coldrooms to minimise night time noise.


I hope you’ve found this post useful in answering some of the questions you may have had about our prison kitchen facilities. Our kitchens of course offer a number of other features as standard, making them fully compliant with safety and hygiene regulations.

We can provide a wide variety of temporary kitchen facilities depending on your requirements, such as production kitchens, preparation kitchens, coldrooms and dishwashing facilities, so please get in touch for a chat if you’d like to find out more about our prison kitchen options.

We also offer free, bespoke kitchen contingency plans to provide your prison with a tailored kitchen design which we could have on site within hours of a kitchen emergency.

Quality: The importance of meeting quality standards

For the uninitiated, building a commercial kitchen often brings many problems related to local regulations as well as practical operational features that don’t quite work. Getting the kitchen infrastructure right first time allows the area to function properly straight away and to last under the demanding working conditions that a busy commercial kitchen faces.

In this post, I'll outline just a few of the design and quality considerations you'll need to make when procuring a commercial kitchen.

Regulatory Compliance

Wherever in the world your kitchen is being built, it must comply with local regulations. Not to do so can bring substantial, unexpected cost and delays to programme. Whilst regulations will vary from the European Union, to the United States, to Russia and the Middle East, there are common areas that they all cover. If you are aware of these areas, then you can ensure that your supply chain is paying the right level of attention to this detail.

• Electrical Safety: Is the overall design of the kitchen, the individual components and the catering equipment certified to meet any international or local standards?
• Gas Safety: Has the correct supply quantity been worked out? Are the pipes correctly sized? Are the component parts of the supply properly certified and installed by a competent engineer?
• Food safety of construction materials: Are walls, floors and surfaces made of foodsafe materials?
• Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide testing: Around 20 people a year in the UK are killed by being in badly ventilated facilities, which can also cause illness. How will the kitchen be properly ventilated?
• Montreal Protocol: Is the refrigeration and cooling plant compliant with this international protocol?
• Lighting Levels: Is the space adequately lit to meet the local standards for a kitchen?
• HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points): Does the design of the kitchen allow HACCP management, or is it fundamentally flawed from the outset?
• CE Marked or GOST Certified: Is the catering equipment compliant with local standards?

Design and Build Quality

Regulations aside, kitchens are put under pressure by the use of water, the frequent use of cleaning chemicals, the heat of cooking processes and sometimes by unskilled or temporary users. Kitchens that are not designed and built to withstand these pressures simply do not last and will require replacement, or at least the cost and severe disruption of refurbishment, far sooner than the user might hope.

The build quality of the structure that the kitchen is housed in is also critical. Key features are adequate load-bearing for floors, correct wind or snow loads, heating and ventilation that are suited to local climatic conditions such as extremes of heat or cold, and dust. Like any specialist space, the internal design of a kitchen has many features that require close attention. These include fire safety, fire suppression, sufficient space between equipment, anti-slip floors, water resistant floor construction, services and sockets designed for easy cleaning and access, and infestation-proof construction of walls and doors to name but a few. Getting these things right makes a huge difference to the financial and operational success of a kitchen building project. 

PKL has 25 years of experience providing temporary and permanent infrastructure around the world. We sell and hire equipment, tented and modular kitchens that will meet local regulations and best practice in design and build quality. We get things right first time and aim to provide cost and programme certainty, giving peace of mind to clients who want to avoid unnecessary problems.

For more information on our international division, PKL Transworld, click here.
To find out more about UK kitchen hires, click here.

Christmas Opening Hours (and Christmas Jumpers)

A few staff members have taken part in PKL Christmas Jumper Day today, with Event Hire Executive Dan taking things to a whole new level with his elf outfit. A terrifiying sight, we're sure you'll agree!

We close today for the Christmas break, and reopen on Thursday 2nd January.

If you have an emergency over the Christmas period and require a temporary kitchen or items of catering equipment, our emergency response line is open 24 hours a day, and you can reach us on 0845 840 42 42.

For any non-emergency enquiries, please drop us an email and we'll get back to you when we reopen in the new year.

Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a successful New Year from all at PKL.

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!
 

PKL Contingency Week – Part 5

As we come to the end of PKL Contingency Week, you will have seen just how many businesses and institutions can benefit from kitchen emergency planning. Now is the ideal time to take advantage of our free contingency plan service, to make sure you have a kitchen contingency plan in place before the festive rush starts over the next couple of months.

If you have any upcoming refurbishment works and require temporary kitchen/dining facilities, don’t forget you can contact us about that too. Likewise, if you have any events planned over the next few months which require the hire of kitchen facilities or catering equipment, give my colleagues in our Events division a call and they'll be happy to help.

I’ll leave you with a couple more kitchen contingency case studies from the PKL archives…

Case Study: Care Home Kitchen Loss
When a care centre was faced with immediate kitchen closure, they called PKL to request a temporary facility to use until their kitchen was operable again. As a residential care home, the provision of meals was vital in order for the centre to look after its residents, so a replacement kitchen was needed on site straight away. PKL provided a temporary kitchen to enable the care centre to continue to provide food to its residents, without disrupting the running of the home.

Case Study: Golf Club Fire
PKL provided a temporary kitchen and dining facility to a golf club when a fire destroyed the existing building. With their dining facility normally serving 200 golfers a day, the golf club was keen to continue offering food and drink to their customers. Within just a few days of order, PKL had a temporary kitchen on site, with a dining room for 40 people per sitting, enabling the golf club to maintain its catering service for the 12 months while the clubhouse was rebuilt. Read more of this case study here.

That’s it for PKL Contingency Week – I hope you’ve enjoyed our blog posts! Click here and fill out the short form to receive a free bespoke kitchen contingency plan from us, so you’re prepared in case of a kitchen emergency. There is no obligation and no catch - it’s just one of the many services we offer, so please do feel free to take advantage of it!