Coffee shop in a church finds True fridges and freezers are very easy to live with
Penketh Methodist Church & Olive Tree Community Centre occupies a prominent site on the main road through Penketh village near Warrington. The Centre realised it was an ideal place for a cafe, both for the community and for passing traffic, so they set about creating one. Now the Olive Branch Coffee Shop is open four days a week and, according to catering supervisor Edna Owen, it’s busy all the time.
“We get lots of customers from the community but also plenty of passers-by,” she says. “Local businesses hire the rooms for meetings and conferences, so we often provide lunches for them too.”
The Community Centre looked at several companies and eventually selected Fiswal Catering Equipment of St Helens to install the kitchen. “Fiswal had experience with other church cafes and were very helpful,” says Edna Owen.
When it came to specifying the fridge and freezer, Fiswal picked True Refrigeration. “They are really reliable pieces of kit and we very rarely have any problems with them,” says Andrew Robinson of Fiswal.
“We’d never done anything like this before,” admits Edna, who is one of a team of volunteers who run the Coffee Shop. Given the lack of commercial experience, equipment that was easy to use and look after was vital. “The True fridges are very easy to clean,” she says. “We did have an issue with the freezer in the early days, but that was because we’d forgotten about cleaning the air filters. It works very well now!”
The two True units at The Olive Branch are a T19E fridge and a T19FZ freezer. These single door, compact uprights, 686mm wide by 623mm deep and 1995mm high, are ideal when space is at a premium. They have a storage capacity of 538 litres and are fitted with four shelves.
The Coffee Shop is open Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Wednesday is usually the busiest day, thanks to the special lunches and the fact that quite a few members of the mums and toddlers group, which meets in the Centre in the morning, stay on for a meal or a snack.
Because business is intermittent, the refrigeration has to be absolutely reliable. “We shop twice a week and fill up the fridge and freezer. The True cabinets have to be able to keep temperature when we’re busy, and be totally reliable when we’re shut!” she says. “And they are.
“In fact, they’re brilliant.”
The complete True Refrigeration range is available through dealers across the UK and Ireland. For more information visit www.truemfg.com/uk or call True UK on +44 (0) 1709 888888.