Cheltenham Festival - Day 1

As we are based in Cheltenham, less than 2 miles down the road from the racecourse, we thought we'd share our predictions for the races this week. As the now infamous Paul the Octopus demonstrated at the last World Cup, animals are great at this kind of thing. We therefore asked CowCow, our resident office animal, to do the honours. 

For each of the day's races, we printed out the names of the horses, and CowCow launched himself enthusiastically at the names. The one his moustache landed nearest to each time is listed below.
 

Visit the blog each day for his latest predictions. You can also follow the action over on Twitter, where CowCow will be proudly posing with the name of his chosen horse, a little while before each race.

CowCow's Cheltenham Festival Predictions - 12th March 2013

Race 1 - Pique Sous

Race 2 - Arvika Ligeonniere

Race 3 - Summery Justice

Race 4 - Grandouet

Race 5 - Stone Light

Race 6 - Fourjacks

International School Meals Day

PKL KitchenPod Consultant Ian Selwood guest blogs today on the topic of International School Meals Day, and addresses the challenges faced by many schools requiring new kitchen facilities.

With International School Meals Day taking place today, we are turning our thoughts to those schools in the UK which do not have adequate facilities to be able to provide fresh, hot school meals. It’s fantastic to see such a huge buzz around International School Meals Day, and really exciting to see how many schools are taking part, but I know that there are many more schools who would perhaps like to take part but are being held back by their catering facilities (or lack thereof).

I have worked with hundreds of UK schools over the past few years, and understand the various constraints and challenges which many schools have to overcome in order to be able to produce school meals on site. Since today’s focus is on school meals, I thought it may be helpful to share some info on our KitchenPods, which have enabled over 100 schools throughout the country to produce school meals for their pupils. Here are some of the top things I think you need to know about our KitchenPods, based on the topics previous clients have asked me about:

• Traditional brick construction is not the only option for new kitchen buildings. PKL KitchenPods are purpose-built permanent modular kitchen buildings which offer schools an innovative alternative to traditional construction. In fact, Galliford Try’s publication “The Optimum Primary School” recommended modular buildings as being preferable for school buildings!
  
  
• KitchenPods cost far less than traditional builds, and we offer flexible procurement options including contract rental, lease hire or capital purchase. There are also various funding streams available for procuring KitchenPods, and my colleagues and I are experienced in helping schools identify funding options and assisting with filling in application forms.
  
  
• Our KitchenPods are sturdy, high-quality facilities. They are purpose-built kitchen buildings and comply with food hygiene and health and safety standards as well as building regulations. Due to their size, I’ve found that they are also likely to be fast tracked through planning regulations as a permitted development.
  
  
• PKL KitchenPods can be supplied as single units or larger open-plan facilities, depending on the individual requirements of each school. For schools with limited space, a single unit KitchenPod is ideal, whereas I’ve also worked with several schools to supply larger, open-plan KitchenPods. KitchenPods can be connected to existing school buildings, or can be stand-alone facilities if preferred.
  
  
• KitchenPods are built off-site and delivered on one of our lorries all ready to put into position and connect to services. This means they can be up and running within just a few hours of delivery. Many clients have expressed concerns about disruption on site. We can arrange delivery to schools during the holidays or at weekends – problem solved!
  
  
• Our KitchenPods are the ultimate, flexible kitchen option. Not all schools are the same, so choices include the size of the KitchenPod and the catering equipment installed inside. We also offer a huge range of external finishes. For schools wanting their KitchenPods to blend in with existing buildings, we offer various brick-slip finishes as well as painted exterior options with any colour from the RAL spectrum. For schools who would like their KitchenPod to be a real feature, we can also offer stunning wood cladding options or custom-designed vinyl wraps.
  
  
• Although KitchenPods are permanent buildings, their modular construction enables them be relocated if the school’s needs change over time, providing a much greater degree of flexibility over traditional builds.

I hope the info is useful and helps answer some of the questions you may have about modular kitchen buildings. Please feel free to get in touch if you’d like a chat about how a PKL KitchenPod could help your school.

Finally, I wish you a fantastic day if your school is taking part in this year’s International School Meals Day - I’m sure it will be a huge success, and I know that a lot of hard work has gone on behind the scenes to make it all happen. With any luck, facilities like our KitchenPods will be able to help even more schools be able to take part next year, and help grow school meal uptake in the UK even more.

Food in the National Curriculum

PKL Sales and Marketing Director Lee Vines guest blogs today on the addition of food teaching to the National Curriculum.

I was delighted to see the recent news that food and cookery are being added into the National Curriculum as a requirement for all pupils up to the age of 14. At PKL, good nutrition and health education for young people is something we are passionate about, and we actively support the work of the Children’s Food Trust, as well as having worked with a large number of schools over the past few years to provide catering facility solutions.

Nutrition, diet and cooking skills are vital in order for young people to grow up with healthy eating habits and the knowledge to make the right food choices. Hopefully this change in the National Curriculum will support and reinforce all the great work that’s been taking place on school meals over the past few years, and help bring about a positive change in young people’s attitudes towards food. This two-pronged approach of both eating well at school and learning how to cook healthily should be a really positive step forward.

One of the key things we need to tackle now is the state of kitchen facilities in schools, including both catering kitchens for providing school meals, and teaching kitchens for use by pupils in lessons. From our extensive experience of working with schools, I know that many schools are still struggling with old, inadequate facilities and equipment, and that these issues can often seem insurmountable in the face of tight budgets, limited space and lack of information and guidance.

I think it’s important for schools and local authorities to know that there are companies out there who can help them. For example, our permanent modular kitchen and servery buildings – KitchenPods and Food Cubes – have been the ideal solution for over 100 schools across the country, providing a quick, high-quality alternative to traditional construction at a fraction of the cost. We are also able to advise on the various funding streams available for procuring these facilities, and can even help out with funding applications.

In light of the changes to the National Curriculum, our VegPods may be the ideal solution for many schools too, providing a unique teaching kitchen where pupils can grow and cook their own vegetables. These modular teaching kitchens can be built to each school’s exact requirements in terms of size, equipment and external appearance, and include an enclosed courtyard with a raised bed for growing vegetables or herbs. They can also be used to build links with the local community, as well as create a valuable extra revenue stream, by being let out to local community groups.

I know that for many people and organisations, this recent news comes as a result of years of hard work and tireless campaigning, so let’s help and support schools as they rise to the challenge and embrace the valuable link between education and healthy eating.

PKL at London 2012: Part 2

Following on from his previous guest post, today Commercial Director Peter Schad blogs about the various facilities that PKL supplied to the different London 2012 Olympic venues.

I thought you might enjoy a brief overview of each of the different kitchen and dining facilities we provided for the Olympic games last summer. Our major event facilities included temporary kitchens, dining halls and commercial catering equipment. As you will see, our facilities were hugely varied and served a number of sites at the Olympic Park and further afield.

The Athletes Village kitchen and dining facility -
it's the huge rectangular building at the bottom!

Athletes Village

Our largest facility at London 2012 was the Athletes Village temporary kitchen and dining facility at the Olympic Park in Stratford. This
was a 5,000 seat temporary venue used to feed the athletes, officials and workers at the Games, which was capable of supplying up to 60,000 meals per day. The facility itself was over 19,200m² while the size of the production kitchen facility housed inside it was the size
of a football pitch.

The venue consisted of a main production kitchen area, along with a wide number of
servery areas, each serving themed menus representing continents around the globe. Each of these servery areas also had a small production kitchen facility behind it, to ensure that food was in plentiful supply for 16,000 athletes during the Games.

Main Media Centre

We provided the temporary catering facilities for the Main Media Centre at the Olympic Park. This included all kitchen designs, installation and project management before and during the event. The Main Media Centre was a 24-hour operational centre which catered for the needs of all the press during the Olympics, serving over 10,000 journalists. The media centre itself was 10,000m² covering three floors.

Public catering at Olympic Park North

Public and Volunteer Catering at Olympic Park North

PKL supplied over 90 food outlets used for public and staff catering around the Olympic Park, servicing an area measuring 200,000m². Our kitchens were used to provide a wide variety of themed food from around the world, and over 50,000 people were served per day.

IOC Corporate Hospitality

As well as facilities for the athletes, staff and officials, we also provided numerous facilities for the corporate hospitality in and around the Olympic Park. This included temporary catering facilities within the IOC Olympic Hospitality Centre, which comprised catering facilities used to supply first class cuisine to 22 chalets that were playing host to VIPs including film stars and royalty.

In addition to the IOC OHC, we located a number of catering facilities on top of and inside Westfield shopping centre. These included catering infrastructure for a number of corporate clients who had set up temporary hospitality areas on the roof of Westfield, and a large production kitchen facility, situated within the shopping centre itself, which was used to provide the majority of hot food for all of the hospitality areas at Westfield.

Other Olympic Sites

PKL provided a large amount of temporary overlay to other Olympic venues including the rowing centre at Eton Dorney and the sailing venue at Weymouth. At Weymouth, we supplied two mini athletes village type facilities, used to feed the athletes, officials and workers on site.

We also supplied four large-scale kitchen and dining facilities which were used to support operations undertaken by the Met Police during the Olympics, each of which consisted of a kitchen and 500-man dining facility. In addition, PKL supplied eight separate facilities to American TV station NBC, to support their workforce during the Games.

PKL at London 2012: Part 1

In today's guest post, PKL's Commercial Director Peter Schad blogs about a particularly exciting project he worked on last summer...

The restrictions have been lifted, and I am delighted to finally be allowed to share last summer's big news with you!

PKL supplied temporary overlay facilities to 150 separate kitchen locations at the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London 2012. This included a wide variety of locations around the Olympic Park, and other Olympic sites within the UK. In total, our temporary kitchens were used to provide over 250,000 meals per day.

The total facilities we supplied to the Olympics amounted to over 7,500 pieces of commercial catering equipment from PKL’s hire fleet, which were transported to London in over 140 lorry loads and installed by our team of engineers.

The overall contract represented four years of hard work from PKL, in competing for and winning the various temporary catering equipment contracts at London 2012, and working with LOCOG and the onsite contract caterers from an early stage to ensure that the venues were designed and supplied to exact requirements.
 
Turnkey Solution

We provided a complete turnkey solution including all design, transportation, installation, project management and maintenance services during the Games.

The installation process itself was undertaken over a five month period between February and June and involved the relocation of a number of PKL staff to London during this period to oversee the process. In addition, we employed a dedicated team for the delivery and installation process which helped to create an extra 25 jobs over a 12-18 month period. We assigned project managers to oversee each temporary kitchen installation, and had engineers based on site throughout the Games. This ensured that not only did the installation process run as smoothly as possible, but that crucially the kitchens remained operational during the Games period causing no disruption to the athletes. 

Awards and Recognition

As a result of my work on the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, I was honoured in Catering Insight’s Hot 100, and PKL was shortlisted for an International Sports Event Management Award, in the Event Overlay and Facilities category.

Final Thoughts

The most satisfying aspect of the London Games has been the scale of our achievement. Each year, the catering and dining facilities required for the Olympic Games gets bigger and bigger, and London 2012 was no exception. It has far surpassed any other Olympics in which we have been involved.

It was not just the size of the undertaking, it was the deadline. All facilities had to be completed within a short four-week window before the Games. Thanks to our extensive experience of supplying previous major games, delivering the entire project on time and on budget was a challenge which PKL rose to and fulfilled successfully. PKL had to rely on all its expertise to mobilise 30 engineers, 7,500 items of equipment, and nearly 200 40 foot truck movements.

Look out for Part 2 coming soon, where I'll give an overview of the different facilities we supplied to the various Olympic venues...

Events: The early bird catches the worm!

If there's one thing I've learnt during my time working on the hire of UK event kitchens, it's that there's no such thing as booking too early! For the summer months and festive season especially, it's important to book your kitchen facilities early, as leaving it too late can risk the facilities you need being unavailable. Booking early can also make sure we have enough time to design your kitchen to your exact requirements and offer you the very best options for your needs.

But what type of kitchen is best for you?

This will usually boil down to a choice between Portable Kitchen Units and Marquee Kitchens. Both have their own different advantages, and a big part of my job is advising customers on the best type of kitchen facility to suit their event. Here's a really brief overview of the two key options which would be used as a starting point for designing your ideal temporary event kitchen.

Portable Kitchen Units

• Hygienic, purpose-designed, food-safe unit
• Built-in extraction canopies and fire supression
• Sturdy, high-quality unit
• Can be joined to other units such as dishwash units, coldrooms, etc to form a larger kitchen complex
• Choice of catering equipment inside

Marquee Kitchens

• Over 10,000 items of commercial catering equipment available to hire, ideal for setting up kitchen facilities within marquees
• Specially designed mobile canopies (with full-length extraction canopy and fire supression system) can be used to install catering equipment inside marquees and existing buildings such as exhibition centres and warehouses 
• Very flexible option
• Clear flow through the kitchen due to being able to set up different areas for preparation, production, dishwash etc

For both of these options, I can advise you on the catering equipment you might require, and the best option for your specific event. This is another reason why it's so important to book in plenty of time - the longer we have until the event, the more time we have to plan the ideal kitchen to meet your requirements, and the more likely it is that the exact facilities and equipment you need will be available.

This makes now the ideal time to be thinking about booking catering facilities for your summer events, festivals, pop-up restaurants and even Christmas events! Feel free to get in touch with me for a chat about your upcoming events and I'll be happy to advise you on the perfect PKL facilities for your needs.

10 benefits of adding extra servery space in schools

I specialise in providing permanent kitchen and servery solutions for schools to help tackle a number of issues surrounding their food provision. Here's a list of my top 10 benefits of adding extra servery space in schools, based on my experience of providing PKL Food Cubes to schools across the country. I've backed it up with some info and quotes from the three most recent Food Cube projects I've worked on - enjoy!

1. Reduce queue times
Adding an additional servery area can significantly reduce queueing times. By making it quicker and easier for pupils to buy food, more are encouraged to do so.

When I was involved in our Food Cube project at Oasis Academy near Bristol, their primary reason for wanting a Cube was to reduce queues. "We manage facilities in over 30 schools now. Our experience was that some were struggling to manage the queues and pupils don't like waiting when they are hungry. We wanted to find a way to speed up the serving process and give pupils what they wanted with minimum fuss." Neil Porter of BAM FM told us.

At Cucina's Food Cube at Bexley Business Academy, my client Tony Ridgewell, the food and beverage manager, told me, "It’s playing a strong role in helping to reduce queues at key times". 

2. Ease pressure on the main dining hall
By locating an extra servery space elsewhere in the school grounds, it eases congestion in the main dining hall and makes it easier for pupils to buy food quickly and efficiently without creating a bottleneck.

"I think it's great that it has completely taken away the congestion in the main dining hall. The students seem to purchase more than before, as they are passing by the location of the Cube and not having to come back inside to purchase their goods." Lucy Horsman, the Kitchen Manager at Oasis Academy told us.

3. Improve stay on site
Many of my clients have come to me with concerns over pupils leaving site during breaks and making use of local takeaways. By adding an additional serving area within school grounds and making it quicker and more convenient to grab food at school, pupils are less likely to want to leave site. 

Following the Food Cube installation for Cucina at Bexley Business Academy, client Tony Ridgewell told me, "It is encouraging pupils to stay on site rather than leave the school at lunchtime".

4. Increase choice of food
Increasing servery space not only enables schools to sell more food, but also to offer a wider variety of foods. In my experience, being able to offer a wider choice of foods is a key factor in making school meals appeal to a larger number of pupils, and therefore increase sales.

Many schools I've worked with have used our Food Cubes to serve fresh sandwiches, wraps, paninis, hot pasta, bakery products, fruit and drinks, complementing the other meal offerings available in the main dining hall.

5. Increase catering revenue
Our Food Cubes have been proven to significantly increase catering revenue in all schools where they have been installed. With smaller queues, an additional location to buy from, and more choice, school food becomes a much more appealing option for pupils, resulting in more pupils buying food, and more food being purchased by those who do.

At Marden High School, our Food Cube resulted in a 48% rise in food sales, while at Cucina's Food Cube at Bexley Business Academy, the Cube has generated over £500 extra revenue per week.

Barbara Patterson, Catering Services Manager at North Tyneside Council, said of our Food Cube at Marden High School, "It has really helped to improve service, increase income and reduce queuing time for students."

6. Encourage more pupils to have school meals
By making school meals a quicker and easier option, the installation of additional servery space encourages more pupils to buy food at school.

At Oasis Academy near Bristol, 30% of pupils now prefer to use the Food Cube, and school meal uptake has drastically increased. Pupil feedback was positive, with one saying "It's very convenient for us to buy our sandwiches especially when we are outside in the summer playing football."

7. Raise the profile of the school catering service
Installing an additional servery unit elsewhere in the school grounds makes the catering service visible to pupils who may normally avoid the dining hall. Locating an extra servery out in the playground or yard has been particularly successful at raising the profile and visibility of the catering service in projects I've overseen. The resulting increased usage of catering facilities in turn gets pupils talking about the food and drink offering and creates a real buzz within the school.

At Oasis Academy, Neil Porter told us that having a bright-coloured servery unit out in the playground is encouraging more pupils to use the catering service. He said, "It's a little bit novel. Children seem to like that."

8. Improve pupils' health and concentration
One of the issues I've come across time and again is the struggle to get pupils eating more healthily. By supporting stay on site policies, additional servery areas can enable schools to offer a wider choice of nutritious food and help get pupils eating better at school. This can have a direct influence on behaviour and concentration levels in the classroom.

9. Improved working environment for catering staff
Extra servery space means fewer queues, calmer, happier customers, and therefore a nicer, less stressful working environment for catering staff.

10. Benefits for teaching and support staff
We've had great feedback from teaching and support staff as well as pupils and catering staff. They've found that additional servery space benefits them too, including a teacher at Oasis Academy who told us, "It's great that I can buy my lunch whilst keeping an eye on the students when on lunchtime duty."