Ritchie Catering Equipment has completed a scheme for waterside restaurant and events venue, Aston Marina.

The Stone, Staffordshire-based site wanted a new kitchen to produce a menu for its additional private dining and corporate facilities that sit alongside its banqueting and restaurant provision.

Ritchie’s MD, David Ritchie, detailed: “I first spoke to Neil Nicholls, commercial manager at the Marina, in late August. After two initial meetings, we offered four versions of design and settled on an all-electric kitchen.”

The distributor began the scheme in October, building the internal walls for the cookline, the dry store and chef’s office. To this, the team installed hygienic white walling, a suspended ceiling and stainless steel under the extraction unit, also supplied by Ritchie’s.

The cooking equipment is Blue Seal, including an induction range, and the combi oven was a Rational 10 grid. Refrigeration was supplied by Interlevin.

In total Ritchie’s were on site for 4 weeks from start to finish, working with other trades.

Aston Marina’s Nicholls recalled: “Earlier this year during lockdown Aston Marina decided to be proactive and instead of close everything down, chose to start our new build project ready for Christmas to create a high-end exclusive dining, banqueting and corporate space with its own kitchen to service it.

“Giving ourselves just under 6 weeks to build from scratch the 160metre² room and 80 metre² kitchen made hitting the scheduled deadlines paramount to the success of the project.”

He praised: “We have worked with David and his team at Ritchie’s for the last 5 years so already knew that their customer service and attention to detail was excellent, so we approached them with the brief to help design, supply and fit the whole kitchen space ready for the end of November.

“We were kept informed every step of the way with clear schedules mapped out with what was happening on what days. Any issues that were encountered (there will always be additional challenges on any new build project) were dealt with head-on by the team at Ritchie’s with excellent solutions found and no impact on the schedule.

“The finished product is a well-designed, functional, high spec (all-electric) kitchen which was finished ahead of schedule, exceeding our expectations.”