HCE sets Paultons Park on the route to fast food efficiency

Paultons Park, home of Peppa Pig World, is a family-run theme park, situated in Hampshire. Having first opened their gates in 1983, the park has seen numerous upgrades – the most recent involving a brand-new three-and-a-half-acre area called Tornado Springs. In addition to new rollercoasters, a driving school and a Cyclonator, the team at Paultons saw the development as an opportunity to expand the park’s food offering as Stephen Lorton, Commercial Director explains:

“Tornado Springs was built to complement the attractions in the rest of the park. We also recognised it was an opportunity to increase our food and beverage offering – to offer greater variety, and greater capacity. This led to the construction of the Route 83 diner.”

Head of Food and Beverage at Paultons Park, Andrew Edwards, agreed, emphasising the need to be able to handle large numbers of guests quickly:

“Everyone comes for lunch in a two-hour period, so it was really important that the design of the venue allowed us to offer the speed of service to cater for large volumes.”

The team at Paultons had a theme in mind for Route 83 – but in terms of plans for the kitchen, it was a blank canvas. After having successfully completed design and installation for a number of other venues within the park, Stephen had no hesitation to call on the skills of HCE for this latest project:

“We approached HCE with a view to designing a kitchen which fitted in with the concept of the diner. Due to the impact of the lunch time rush, the assembly stations for the burger and hotdog lines were critical to the smooth operation of Route 83. As such, HCE spent a lot of time completing 3D drawings for us to ensure that we got the final result we required.”

Andrew highlighted that a key consideration of the design was to also focus on ease of flow, and the quality of equipment. For the team at Paultons, it was critical that the kitchen was optimised to create the most efficient workflow – from deliveries and storage at the back of the diner, the cooking lines and hot holding in the middle, to ensuring there was enough space for the front of house staff to build orders and serve customers. The result could not have been better…

“As a lot of the equipment is state of the art and very simple to use, HCE invited us to the Welbilt demo kitchen in Guildford, where we got to fully understand how the equipment would fulfil our brief.” Some of the advanced equipment that HCE incorporated into the final design includes: Merrychef E2S high speed ovens, Merco hotholding cabinet, Frymaster fryers and Garland Clam Grills - which can cook burgers within two minutes, compared to 18 minutes on the park’s old griddles. With the concentration on speed and flow, the incorporation of touchscreen ordering systems was an obvious choice, tying the design together neatly.

Andrew and Stephen summarised their experience collaborating with HCE on the design of Route 83, with Andrew commenting:

“The final kitchen that HCE has delivered on this project is absolutely superb. What we have achieved through the summer period would not have been possible without that kitchen, which is all because of HCE. The equipment and the flow of the kitchen is second to none”

Stephen agreed and highlighted how important the HCE partnership is:

“The key benefit of working with HCE was definitely the flexibility and their understanding of exactly what we were after and what we required. I would absolutely recommend HCE. Their ability to deliver on time and per the quotation, with no surprises, made the whole process significantly easier.”