New Hydro dishwasher washes plates and pans in Pizza Restaurant at Butlins, Minehead
The pizzeria at Butlins in Minehead is their fifth busiest restaurant in the country. Open from noon to 11pm, it serves both in-house diners and takeaway customers. Its daily turnover of between £3,000 – £10,000 generates huge quantities of pizza pans and tableware to wash up.
Minehead Butlins has recently been through a £1.4million refurbishment during which the dishwasher and glasswasher in the pizza restaurant were replaced. As in any commercial venture cost played a crucial part in the purchasing decision for both items.
“We got quotes and looked carefully at the specs of the machines,” explains Dan Berrow, Restaurant General Manager. “The cheaper one, which was Classeq’s Hydro 857 could do everything that the more expensive ones could so we went for that. We haven’t been disappointed.”
The Hydro 857 is a pass-through 500mm square basket model, with a one and a half or three minute wash cycle. It has an auto hood start, full width wash tank filters and continuous hood clean.
“The new machine is brilliant,” says Dan. “It is in operation from 9am till midnight. We put everything through it – plates, pizza pans, dessert dishes and other cooking pots and pans. It cleans them all really well. We just adjust the wash time to be a bit longer for those stubborn baked on bits.”
The staff at the pizza restaurant find the Hydro 857 really easy to use. This is especially important as Butlins tends to employ a lot of seasonal staff and they need to be able to quickly pick up how to operate the warewash equipment.
“It’s dead simple to run,” says Dan. “You just have two buttons to punch in the settings and off you go. It really is that easy. We’ve had no problems at all. It’s also easy to clean and easy to drain down.”
The sessions at the pizza restaurant are extremely busy and no one wants to hang around longer than necessary at the end of a shift mopping up and cleaning. The Hydro has an automatic self drain and clean down programme so there’s no dirty water left in the wash or rinse tank at the end of the day.
Butlins also replaced the old glasswasher in the bar area of The pizza restaurant with a new Classeq Eco 1 undercounter model. The Eco 1 has a two minute wash cycle, integral chemical dispensers and double skinned door for sound and heat insulation. With a rack size of 350mm square it can wash 360 pint glasses per hour,
“Once again this is proving to be a very reliable machine,” says Dan. “It was easy to install, with no disruption – in fact I did it myself! And it gets the glasses really clean.”
With the new machines in operation everything is set for the holiday-makers to enjoy a trouble-free stay.