Equipment Archives

Burger Joints Of The World, Jake’s Wayback Burgers

15 August 2023

Formally known as Jake’s Wayback Burgers, the chain was launched in 1991 in Delaware. Additional locations were opened, until the beginning of franchising started in 2000. By 2013 the chain began an international expansion into 28 other countries.

By 2016 the chain counted 95 locations in the US, with international outlets bringing the total upto 133 stores.

The chain stands out amongst other similar offerings with some of its weird and even controversial offerings.

Bug Powder Milk Shakes

In 2015 the chain offered ‘protein milkshakes’ made using powder derived from crickets. Not as strange an idea as it sounds at first glance, many nutritional experts claim that insects are not only high in protein, but could provide the answer to feeding the world’s population in the future. Their Oreo Mud Pie milkshake contained 24 grams of protein from the blended cricket.

The Royal Silencer

Everyone has an opinion about Prince Harry, you know the one, James Hewitts boy. I haven’t read his biography, but the excerpts I have seen, he seems rather bitter and sad.

Wayback burgers brought a special out to commemorate the release of his book, you know, Heir and the Spare. They sold their usual two patty burger, with an additional ‘spare’ burger added, and remarked that the Royal Family could do worse than sit down with a burger and bury the hatchett.

Thee Mustang Burger

This one is a doozy. I have wrote before about the time a company had to stop selling its 1/3 pound burger, because people thought it was smaller than a 1/4 pounder because obviously 3 is a smaller number than 4.

This time they held a competition for their customers to get the naming rights to a burger special. This time the gentleman who won drove a Mustang car, so he called the burger a Mustang burger.

All good right? Well not exactly. Seems that any burger called Mustang, had to be made from wild mustang horses. Right, it is so obvious. It led to calls for boycotts of the Wayback stores till they mended their evil horse selling ways.

Ultimately it led to the chain withdrawing the name and issuing an apology on Facebook.

The Triple Triple Challange

Their next entry in the Wayback hall of fame, was a special one day challenge. Whoever could eat their triple triple burger the fastest would win the prize pot of $3,300. Just look at it, one commentator wondered if it was possibly a secret plan to curb world population growth.

Kim Kardashian Free Burgers

They offered the celeb free burgers and milk shakes for the duration of her pregnancy. I don’t know if she actually took them up on this, but hey, the offer was there.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning, Food Trucks, Fun Story

Electric Vans, Our Future Transport

27 July 2023

Having just ordered a couple of new vans (not electric vans, the old fashioned kind), I got to thinking about the approaching date of 2030, when the government ban on ICE vehicles comes into effect. What would this mean for our business and fleet of vehicles.

My own personal car is pretty much a plaything. I occasionally take it for a blast around the local countryside. Go to an occasional meeting, and perhaps to social functions. Some years it does a couple thousand mile, so this could easily be replaced with an electric alternative.

Vans, The Mainstay Of Our Business

But what about the part of our fleet that actually works for a living. We use a fleet of mid range vans, mainly from the PSA group (Citroen, Fiat, Vauxhall etc). So I took a look at how suitable these would be. The truth is, not very. They have a maximum towing capacity of 1000kg. Whilst our lightest catering unit is 1600kg. So they are off the list.

The only van we could find that would tow our units, is the Ford E Transit which is rated for 2000kg.

Range Calculator

Ford very conveniently provide a range calculator. So I duly types in a typical scenario. Winter temperature, all season tyres, 75% load.

What I got back was the screen below;

Turns out that the maximum range at this set up is 82 miles. Not a lot of use on our regular trips to Edinburgh which is around 240 miles. So basically 2-3 charges needed en route.

BUT WAIT. A bit if investigation and it turns out that the advertised range, doesn’t actually work in the real world. Seems that around 80% of the claimed figure is more realistic. So that cuts us to 65.6 miles. (I will be generous and round it up to 66 miles). So that’s 3-4 charges needed en route.

BUT WAIT AGAIN. This calculator doesn’t allow you to factor in the fact that you are towing. A bit more digging and most sources claim that towing cuts the range in half. So we are now down to 33 miles. That puts us on 7-8 charges needed. Or would be if you could run the van down to empty before recharging, which isn’t really practical. So most chargers quote their charging time as being from 15%. So that lets me use 85% of the capacity. Or gives me 28 miles of travel before needing a recharge, which would push us towards the 8 charges needed.

Charging Time

Hmm, how long is a charge going to take. Well, best I can find is that it takes as little as 34 minutes to charge it to 80% capacity. So that means 34 minutes gives us 80% of 28 mile range which is 22.4 miles.

Now we are up to needing 10 recharges en route to Edinburgh.

But then we are only running the charge down to 15% before recharging, so basically 65% of the 28 miles or 18.2 miles. Or 13 charges.

At 34 minutes per charge that’s 442 minutes, or a little over seven hours of charging time needed, presuming the chargers are available without a wait at each location we need them.

We have just added 14 hours to our days work. Three members of staff on overtime at £20 per hour adds £840 to the days wage bill. Which means the job isn’t financially viable, which means those members of staff are out of a job.

But there is more. The Edinburgh job which we used to allow 5 hours driving each way and 4 hours to do the job, 14 in total. Is now 28 hours. So the van, equipment and staff wouldn’t be back in time fo the next days work. So now we need double the number of vans, catering units and equipment to do the same level of work.

Wind Speed

Oh and in all of the above calculations, I have assumed that the air is perfectly still. Add in a 22 mile per hour headwind and those figure will look generous. It is estimated that a headwind of this speed cuts 20% from the range of a Tesla. So cut 20% from our range and we end up with 14.5 miles, or 16 charges or a bit over 9 hours charging time each way! That is basing the calculation on a Tesla, which aerodynamically speaking is super slippy compared to a house brick shaped Transit van, oh, and if you are unlucky enough to travel on a day with freezing temperatures, then your range drops another 10%.

At this rate, we will be lucky if the van manages to reach the end of our drive before needing a recharge.

In short, the Westminster based geniuses have no idea of how things work in the real world. The fact that a housewife doing 50 miles a week for her shopping can happily live with electric cars, does not translate to keeping the country running on a business basis.

A Cunning Plan

So, what can we do. Well the initial plan is to order double our normal fleet for delivery in 2029. This will get us a few years before we are forced into electric. The other option we are looking at is following the lead of an enterprising American guy, who added a generator to his Tesla, that bypassed the interlock to allow him to charge the car whilst he was driving it. A decent sized diesel generator in the back of each van might just give us a usable range, a bit like the electric diesel hybrid system Dr Porsche proposed for the German Tiger tank in WW2.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

Spartan Fire Trucks

23 July 2023

When the Diamond Reo truck manufacturer went into liquidation. Four young engineers left and set up a business of their own. Mortgaging their houses and borrowing what they could they formed Spartan Chassis to manufacture specialist vehicles such as fire pump trucks and military vehicles.

Within thirty years the fledgling company had become a leading builder of custom chassis.

Custom Fire Apparatus

On the fire truck front they tend to build incomplete chassis for other manufacturers to add the body and equipment. Companies such as Kovatch Mobile Equipment take the Spartan chassis, cab and driveline, and add all the extra parts to produce the finished product.

One thing about the American fire trucks is that they look sexy. Acres of diamond plate decoration, big air horns, air raid type sirens and V6 or V8 engines, whats not to like?

New Food Truck

Why, you might ask are we waffling on about American fire trucks sexy or otherwise? Simples, we have just acquired a 1982 Spartan Monarch pumper to turn into a fire engine food truck. Watch this space for more details of John W. Sanders II. (That’s the name of the truck, named after a sadly deceased young firefighter.)

Here is a little look at the new truck. A full post will be up shortly.

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Catering, Equipment, Food Trucks

What Are Smash Burgers

19 July 2023

We are continually tinkering with services and ingredients. That’s the reason that where we once offered doughnuts in sugar, we now do a full range of toppings such as Biscoff, Orea, melted chocolate etc.

Since lockdown, burgers have become a big part of our workload. We tried a number of different options before settling on a range of pre made patties. These have had great reviews everywhere we have been, and for some of the larger jobs where we have served upto 4000 guests they have been the only option realistically.

Enter The Smash

We have however always hankered at adding smash burgers to our lineup. For smaller events such as weddings or private parties these would be fine. Instead of pre formed patties we would be using loosely packed minced beef. To take it to the ultimate we could use a mincing machine and use joints of beef, can’t get much fresher than that.

But what, I hear you ask is a smash burger. Well, it is quite simple to make. You take a loose ball of minced beef. Not packed too tight or it doesn’t work the same. You plop it down on a super hot heating surface. Then smash it flat with a weighted iron. Oh, and you need beef with a pretty high fat content, around 20%.

Maillard Reaction

What happens is that the heat and the pressure combine causing the amino acids and sugars in proteins to react. This forms a deep, caramelised, rich crust, which takes the taste to new heights. The higher fat content melts in the burger stopping in from drying out and adding to the taste.

you can generally tell a smash burger from the uneven shape and height of the burger. Pre processed patties tend to be a uniform size and shape.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

Burger Joints Of The World, Kenny Rogers Roasters

10 July 2023

A bit of a misnomer this one, as Kenny Rogers Roasters actually sold wood fired rotisserie chickens, rather than burgers. But hey, I am a Kenny Rogers fan so what can i say.

The famous country musician teamed up with John Y. Brown Jr., a former KFC C.E.O. Having been the governor of Kentucky, Brown decided to return to the restaurant business, and got together with Rogers in 1991 to open the first location in Coral Springs, Florida,. Their selling point was that rotisserie chicken was a healthier option to regular fried chicken with a tagline of “less fat…less salt…less calories” .

They gradually expanded the menu to include Turkey, ribs and numerous side dishes. Growing to around 350 locations in the US, Canada, Asia and the Middle East by 1995. In 91 ‘Cluckers’ a minor chain of chicken restaurants sued them for allegedly copying its menus and recipes. They dealt with this by buying a majority stake in the chain.

The original team of Brown and Rogers expanded the chain to some 425 stores, before selling out to Malaysia-based Berjaya Group in 1996. They announced plans to open in the UK, even going so far as to purchase land, but in the end nothing came of it.

Decline And Change Of Ownership

by 1996 they had reached an annual turnover of $300 million. By 1998 they were in chapter 11 bankruptcy. As not only other chains had added similar products, but many supermarkets and other stores offered rotisserie chicken. Nathan’s Famous Inc, bought the chain out of bankruptcy for $1.25 million, and within a short space of time they had been reduced to some 90 outlets, 40 in the USA.

In 2008 ownership changed again when they were sold to Roasters Asia Pacific (Cayman) Limited, the Asian franchise owner. This proved a good move, as the chain continued to flourish in the Asian market and grew to over 140 stores by 2011.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

Brand Activation Using food Trucks

4 July 2023

Over the past 12 months we have added a number of food trucks for brand activation to our portfolio. We also have some exciting new additions that are coming soon. These are great for corporate use such as brand activations, sales promotions etc. They take a service and add a touch of style to it, so the guests not only get free food or drink, the actual truck becomes a promotional item in its own right.

Our classic Citroen HY van was used by Birmingham Bears on a tour to promote their new strip. Which was made from Recycled coffee beans. It was partially wrapped by our friends at HG Graphics, and custom printed coffee clutches provided. We opened it at a number of locations around Birmingham and Coventry. Resulting in long queues of people waiting for their free tea and coffees.

We offer a range of different quirky trucks to choose from all of which can be branded and tailored to your specific requirements. For longer term events we can acquire and build a custom set up just for you. This could be another example of something like our HY van. Or it could be something totally quirky such as building a coffee cart on a WW2 tank. Or an ice cream dispensary on a Helicoptor fuselage!

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Catering, Equipment, Food Trucks, Fun Story

Burger Joints Of The World, Sambo’s Restaurant

13 June 2023

This time we are looking at what was once one of the biggest chains in America. At its peak they had over 1100 outlets. Now they are down to one. A number of factors came into play with this massive decline. One of which was the hugely controversial name.

Ostensibly the name was a contraction of two of the founders. Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett. However the name is also one that was offensive to a large part of the population, especially with it being linked to a book written in 1897 called The Story of Little Black Sambo. Much of the interior decor drew on illustrations from the book.

Predictably the name attracted protests, criticism and petitions for change during most of its operating life. The final remaining store changing its name after the George Lloyd protests in 2020

The first store opened in Santa Barbara, California in 1957. By 1968 it had grown to operate in 98 cities across America. It also diversified operating Red Top Hamburgers, Heidi’s Pie Shop, and the Blue Ox Steak House.

Jolly Tiger

In the second half of the 70’s the chain came under increasing pressure regarding its unacceptable name. They steadfastly refused to change it, though in a number of locations they branded their eateries as Jolly Tiger, usually in locations where local laws had been passed forbidding the Sambo brand, or where they were having trouble obtaining permits due to the name.

In 1979 however the company reversed course and announced that they were dropping the Jolly Tiger brand citing poor financial performance, and would revert all restaurants to Sambo’s. They also cited a study claiming that three times as many black people ate at their chain than at other restaurants.

It was to be their peak. After 79 the company spiralled into decline. How much is down to the issues around the name isn’t clear, as a number of other corporate decisions also hastened their demise. One major issue arose when they dropped their “Fraction of the Action” scheme. This had paid the managers 20% of the outlets profits, with other staff being allowed to bid for percentages of the remaining profits.

Bankruptcy

A mere two years later the chain was filing for bankruptcy. Reorganisation and a name change to “No Place Like Sam’s” failed to help. And by 1982 all except the original diner had closed their doors. The restaurants were sold off to several operates, such as Denny’s and Baker’s square. All that now remains is the original located in Santa Barbara.

Following the riots over the George Floyd case, the owner Chad Steven, grandson of one of the original founders, finally gave in to public pressure and announced a name change, finally Christening it “Chafs” in 2020.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

National Churros Day

6 June 2023

Happy national churros day. The delightful Spanish dessert, a bit like a doughnut, but long and fluted instead of round. Traditionally served with thick chocolate, but also perfect when filled with cream, jam or a variety of sauces.

History

Like many of our culinary delights, churros has a bit of an uncertain history. Thought ot have been brought from China to Europe by Portuguese merchants. The dessert resembles yóuzháguǐ a traditional Chinese recipe.

Another school of thought is that Spanish shepards made it to make up for fresh baked goods. Churros paste was easy to make and fry in the mountains where they spent most of their time.

There is also a recipe in Apicius the Roman cookbook for fritters made from flour and water, very similar to modern churros.

Whatever the true origins, churros now are a definite hit in the modern dessert world. So happy national churros day.

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Catering, Equipment

Our New Office Coffee Machine

31 May 2023

Out of all the various catering options we offer, our favourite is the coffee service. We use quality machines, quality beans and quality grinders that are dialled in at each event to dispense perfect coffee. We serve what we like to drink ourselves.

For a long time we have had a little coffee machine in the office, from delonghi. A bean to cup machine that needed you to froth the milk yourself, but did everything else for you.

Sadly this recently became a deceased machine. In truth I had repaired it a number of times, but on this occasion I decided that after making something like 10,000 coffees it was time for a new one.

One of the issues we had, was that some of the office staff weren’t very good at frothing the milk to make latte’s and the like. So we wanted something that everyone could use. To this end we finally sourced a Siemens EQ700, fully automatic machine.

This was a pearler of a machine. Not only did it offer a full range of coffees, but for the gadget freaks in the office, it as controllable not only from a phone app, but Alexa could be asked to make a ‘Latte’ and would oblige. So the less coffee savvy amongst us could make anything.

It also had what they termed coffee world, a system where additional coffee recipes could be accessed, allowing us to try coffee from all around the world.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

Case Study, EY Waffles And Smoothies

27 May 2023

Another in our case studies, this time providing EY waffles and smoothies on their tour of universities around the UK.

It started last summer when we were asked to provide a smoothies cart around a small tour of universities in the Yorkshire/Lancashire regions. EY were signing uni graduates up to their scheme, and thought a giveaway would be better than the usual free pen or such. It worked so well that about a month later we did it all again, this time handing waffles on a stick out.

Round 2

A couple of month later we were asked to do it a third time, However after finalising that round of waffles. We were contacted by three other EY team members. It turns out that the initial team had exceeded their targets by a massive amount. The other teams looked a bit behind so decided they wanted the same advantage.

The scheme must have worked as we are just putting together the package for another round of events. This time is isn’t EY Waffles, but EY churros.

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