Football Club Chooses Premier Catering Equipment

Leicester City FC chooses premier catering equipment from Falcon And Williams Refrigeration.

Football stadia catering has come a long way since the cup of hot Bovril days - many of today's clubs offer a bigger, faster-paced and profitable operation dishing-up the variety and quality of food that you're likely to find in topnotch restaurants and hotels.

Nowhere is this seen more clearly than at Premier League Club Leicester City that has recently seen significant investment into its new, profit-making catering facilities.

Leicester City has re-designed its entire catering operation to provide essential revenue for the Premiership Club.

It turned to Stangard Foodservice Equipment who worked closely with Williams Refrigeration and Falcon Foodservice Equipment - both part of Aga Foodservice Equipment - to provide the latest refrigeration and prime cooking solutions.

The new facilities generate revenue by providing premium banqueting and catering for both small and large business and private functions, as well as providing support for the 16 match day kiosks which serve-up 20,000 portions of hot, hand-held foods to over 30,000 visiting football fans every game.

The main kitchen, covering an area of 326m2, is the nucleus of the whole catering operation and supports the four satellite kitchens servicing the Fosse Stand, the Lineker Stand, the Club Lounge, the VIP Area and the Executive Suites.

Joseph Smith of Stangard Foodservice Equipment, the catering system designer on the project, comments: "The challenge with the Leicester City design brief was to incorporate the new and existing catering equipment into a fresh, cohesive kitchen design for this thriving catering facility.

As specialists in stadia catering we had no hesitation in kitting-out the entire project with a range of UK-manufactured Williams and Falcon equipment.

It is well priced, robust and aptly stands-up to the rigours of the stadia catering environment.

The lead times on the products are also fantastic and the products are backed with excellent service support, which was greatly appreciated on this project due to the high level of supplier and contractor coordination required." The main kitchen is designed around an extensive cook-chill system allowing the chefs to manage economies of scale without reducing food quality.

Cook Chill allows large quantities of food to be safely pre-prepared during normal working hours to be served at a later stage without incurring any deterioration to the quality while meeting food safety standards.

Stuart Moss, Food Production Manager at Leicester City Football Club, says: "Our newly designed kitchens had to live-up to the daily demands of our large catering operation.

Alongside a variety of new fridges, ranges and steakhouse grills, we also now have excellent Cook Chill facilities incorporating two roll-in, modular Blast Chillers from Williams in the main kitchen area and six coldrooms to service the four banqueting areas." One quirk of stadia kiosk catering is that during match days it sees very intense periods of activity followed by a couple of weeks inactivity, and this means that the stainless steel structure of the equipment had to provide protection against a certain amount of atmospheric dampness - which was another consideration for Leicester City when specifying the Falcon and Williams equipment.

Ken Robertson, Manager, Williams Scotland, says: "The challenge on this project was to deliver a cost effective equipment package suited to the stadia environment and that would also integrate perfectly with older equipment.

We worked closely with Stangard to achieve this so that Leicester City FC can now offer the all-important revenue-boosting catering facilities necessary for a Premier League Club." More details on Williams' extensive range of products from commercial refrigeration to bakery equipment including a wide range of Gastronorm cabinets and Reach-in and Roll-in Blast Chillers and local distributors are available on free phone 0800 526 517.

Williams Refrigeration, the market-leading manufacturer of commercial refrigeration solutions, is part of Aga Foodservice Equipment the market leader in the commercial catering equipment industry.

Falcon Foodservice Equipment is the market leader in the commercial catering equipment industry.

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