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!
 

An Ode to School Kitchens

Today is National Poetry Day so, never ones to shy away from a good limerick (or eleven...), here is a poem we have written about school kitchens. Enjoy!

An Ode to School Kitchens

With the School Food Plan launched recently,
We hope schools will embrace it and see
The importance of food
And how it lifts a child’s mood.
Our advice we can offer for free.

If your current school kitchen is bad
And your poor cook is feeling quite sad,
Cheer up, come along
Click SchoolKitchens.com -
Our ideas are totally rad!

With school meals hitting the news
As they’ll be offered free up to Year 2s,
Prepare your facilities
And your school meal abilities
With our school options – click here to choose!

A modular-built KitchenPod,
Installed in a jiffy by our squad,
Is a proper kitchen building
Which your cook can show their skills in -
You could expand your school menu with… cod?

If your equipment is haunted by ghouls,
You need KitchenFM for Schools!
Hire equipment hassle-free
For a fixed monthly fee
And your cook will have all the right tools.

A Food Cube is ideal to use
If your lunchtimes are spoiled by queues.
Install one outside,
Watch your revenues rise -
You really have nothing to lose!

With Food Tech from 2014
Compulsory up to Key Stage 3,
Learning institutions
May need new solutions
And ours are the best that we’ve seen!

If you need more Food Tech teaching space
Our modular options are ace.
With a number of features,
They’re sure to please teachers,
As a flexible food learning place.

If you need some funding advice,
We’ve listed some sources (coz we’re nice!).
You can apply for the money
Without cost causing worry
So you will not need to think twice.

For a refurb or emergency hire,
Our temporary kitchens will inspire.
They’ll keep your meals running
(Our facilities are stunning!)
During building works, after flooding or fire.

And so ends our school kitchens verse -
We don’t think it could be any worse!
Though poetry’s not our thing,
Kitchens are, so give us a ring -
We’d very much like to converse! About kitchens. Really, call us. We'd love to chat.

The End.

PKL's Macmillan Coffee Morning

Like many people across the country, we held a Macmillan coffee morning here at PKL today
as part of the charity's "World's Biggest Coffee Morning" fundraising event.
 

The canteen has been filled with bunting, balloons and more cake than you could shake a stick at, and PKL staff have been ducking in throughout the day to top up their sugar levels and part with their hard-earned cash!

PKL staff are always willing to rise to the occcasion for these types of events, especially if bunting is involved, so we now have enough cake to last us until Christmas... at least!

Treats on offer have included Pat's lemon drizzle cake, Sue's chocolate brownies, Linda's blueberry and lemon cake, Manisha's homemade sausage rolls (always a popular choice in the office!) plus many more fantastic offerings.

Certain members of staff have also quite literally stepped up to the plate and have selflessly taken it upon themselves to ensure they try every type of cake on offer, so as not to offend anyone's feelings - what heroes!
 

This is a really great cause, so if you haven't managed to go to a coffee morning today, you can still donate to Macmillan online here.

EDIT: After the final count, we raised a total of £170!

Introducing SchoolKitchens.com

Today, we have launched SchoolKitchens.com, our new-look school kitchens website. With the announcement of the School Food Plan over the summer, we decided to pull all our information for schools into one central resource, to make it as easy as possible for schools and local authorities to access details of all the different school catering products we offer.

SchoolKitchens.com is designed to complement our 8 Point Plan for Schools which we created in response to the School Food Plan, and outlines our options for school kitchen facilities, food kiosks and teaching kitchens.

The website includes details of our KitchenPods, FoodCubes, KitchenFM for Schools, Food Technology Kitchens and Temporary Kitchen & Dining Facilities. It also features a new interactive funding map, which details various sources of funding available to help schools procure our products.

As well as product information and funding options, the new website gives you the opportunity to read PKL case studies from the education sector, showing how our products have made a difference to schools across the country.

SchoolKitchens.com also ties in with the launch of our new KitchenFM for Schools product, whereby schools can contract hire all their catering equipment from us, giving them a low, fixed monthly cost with no large capital outlay. With all service and maintenance included in the package, plus the opportunity to change the equipment if the school menu changes, it provides a low risk option with no capital expenditure. What’s more, the Children’s Food Trust are on board with KitchenFM for Schools, and for every contract undertaken, we will make a donation to support their valuable work.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the new website – take a look and let me know what you think!

Food Cube Installation

One of our Food Cubes was installed at an academy school near Birmingham last week, ready for the new school year. We took a few photos of the installation, as clients often ask us what to expect!

The academy is expanding to take on more pupils this September, so contacted us needing additional servery space at breaks and lunchtimes. A PKL Food Cube is an ideal solution to enable the school to cope with the increased pupil numbers and continue to allow easy access to school food for all pupils and staff.

The bespoke exterior was chosen by the academy and was our first all-building wrap. Our Food Cubes are incredibly versatile in terms of the range of exterior options available, and we worked with the academy to help make their ideas a reality.

The Food Cube was built and fitted out here at PKL, so the finished unit was loaded up onto our truck ready to go. Driver Stuart and Project Manager Tim then took the Cube on a trip up the motorway to the academy.
 

The Food Cube is loaded onto the truck, ready to leave PKL

The Food Cube arrives on site at the academy

The truck's Hiab crane is used to lift the Food Cube into position

Once in position, the Food Cube is detatched from the crane

The Food Cube in its final position

Now the Food Cube has been installed, the next step is to connect it up to services to get it running. This only takes a few hours, so there is very little work to be done on site. The academy also has exciting plans to carry out some more work on the land surrounding the Cube, adding decking and other features to turn it into an outdoor café style outlet.

As the Cube has been installed during the holidays, this means that it will be ready for the start of the new school year next month, and the school’s catering operation will be able to hit the ground running!

If you'd like more information on our Food Cubes or would like to see how a Food Cube may be able to help your school or business, visit our website or feel free to contact me for a chat.

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!

PKL Contingency Week – Part 4

No matter how hard you try, there will always be some emergencies that you can’t fully prepare for. In these circumstances, often the best way to be prepared is to have details of the suppliers you might need, and make sure you are aware of the kind of help they are able to provide.

For example, it can be useful to familiarise yourself with PKL and know that we are able to provide a variety of different catering facilities of different sizes, including prep kitchens, production kitchens, warewashing facilities, dry storage, cold rooms and dining facilities. In the following PKL case studies, we were able to help the clients during their emergencies because they knew to contact us and that we would be able to help.

Case Study: Terrorist Attack
When the 7/7 bombings took place in London in 2005, huge numbers of emergency service personnel were drafted in to help control the situation and manage the aftermath. Due to the large number of officers working day and night following the attack, the police hired a temporary kitchen facility from us to cater for the increased number of staff who were drafted in, working around the clock to deal with the crisis.

Case Study: Disease Outbreak
When the mass bird flu outbreak hit the UK, the provision and distribution of vaccines was vital to controlling the spread of the virus. Due to the large quantities of vaccine being produced, stored and distributed, there was a demand for more cold storage. PKL supplied coldrooms to PCTs, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies to enable them to safely store the additional vaccines.

Case Study: Severe Flooding
During the major UK flooding in 2007, PKL received a phone call at 2.00am one night telling us that the army was being flown in by helicopter to help protect Gloucestershire’s main power substation from the flooding, as the whole county was at risk of evacuation if the substation was compromised. They requested an emergency kitchen facility to cater for the huge number of troops and fire service personnel working there, and we had a portable kitchen on site within just a few hours of receiving the call. When our drivers arrived to deliver the facility, the army also asked if they could utilise our truck to help with the efforts, as it had a Hiab crane. We were of course happy to offer our assistance – just another average day at PKL!

In this set of case studies, the clients did not require temporary replacements for existing kitchens, but developed a need for these facilities due to the emergency situations they found themselves dealing with. If you already have a kitchen and would like to be prepared for a situation where you lose the ability to use it, you can fill out a short online form to request one of our free, bespoke kitchen contingency plans. This way, you’ll be able to contact us in an emergency and we’ll already know exactly what facilities to supply to get you back up and running again as quickly as possible.

We can also provide temporary kitchen facilities to keep catering operations running during planned kitchen closures such as refurbishments – just get in touch and we’ll be able to discuss the best options to suit your requirements and provide you with a quote.