The Garden Centre Association, representing over 200 UK garden centres, voted Perrywood ‘Best Destination Garden Centre’ for the North Thames region at its regional awards in July 2017. Earlier that year, the trade body for the UK garden industry, The Horticultural Trades Association, awarded Perrywood a Gold Award for ‘The Greatest Pot Wash Team’ and a Bronze Award for ‘The Greatest Garden Centre Baking Team’. In 2015, it was also awarded ‘Best Catering Facilities’ in the Garden Retail Awards as well as ‘ Greatest Afternoon Tea Experience’.
Working with Airedale Group, Perrywood installed a new dishwash area in March, converting a former staff room to accommodate a MEIKO K160 dish-washer and an FV 130.2-AC pot washing machine.
Perrywood can serve 1800 covers in a day, utilising up to 16 staff. The dishwash operates with up to three staff. This includes a dedicated kitchen porter but unusually, the additional labour required is rotated through the front of house team, so everyone gets to share the workload.
There is also a checklist of daily tasks such as maintaining the salt levels in the two water softeners, which ensures all tasks are covered daily, no matter who is off.
Explains Perrywood Projects Manager, Tristan Bourne, “The aim of installing a new dishwash area was to take the operation up a level by improving the wash quality, saving labour and making it a good place for staff to work.
“We shortlisted three catering companies capable of delivering a turnkey building works and equipment installation solution. Of these, we selected Airedale as our preferred contractor and we followed their advice on choosing MEIKO based on specification and the working relationship they had with meiko.
“We chose a dedicated pot washing machine to save labour on scrubbing pots and pans and to increase the throughput of the dishwash area. It also keeps grease from the pots out of the main dishwasher, thereby helping it to achieve the best wash quality. True enough, the wash results from the K160 are excellent.
“There were technical issues to be overcome but I have been impressed by MEIKO Technical Services, who respond very quickly, within hours, and clearly know their own machines inside and out.”
