As has been previously alluded to in this missive… missive?…wait… close enough, Ward’s Catering is the proud… producer of a youtube channel.  Over the coming weeks and months and years and decades I shall be producing little nuggets of footage explaining why we recommed some of the equipment that we sell.  The first of these was uploaded today.  It features the Lincat Silverlink 600 DF66 electric tabletop double fryer and outlines the specifications of the unit in easy to digest chunks.  Why do we recommend this particular fryer?  Because we have them on the website at a very reasonable price for a medium duty electric double fryer.  Because it has 2 x 3kW plugs (one for each basket) and therefore does not require hardwiring in to your mains.  It’s what is known in cricketing terms as “an all rounder”.  You can’t go far wrong.

So the story continues.  www.wardscatering.co.uk has for about the last 36 hours been the cheapest purveyor of Lincat® and Parry® catering equipment in the universe (or so we hope).  Have our sales of Lincat gone up?  Not really.  Have our sales of Parry gone up?  Not really.  Don’t get me wrong, we have sold some stuff, but NOT because we were the cheapest.  I personally sold two ladies a Parry 1862 electric twin basket fryer (2 x 3kW) yesterday because their exisiting gas fryer had caught fire and they needed one in a hurry.  I also sold a Lincat LCO convection oven to a company who were replacing an existing convection oven and who have dealt with us before.  Sales like this come through no matter what the price.  Next week we shall see what effect our monster price change has made.

There was a time, many moons ago, when a catering equipment supplier such as Ward’s could set their prices with impunity.  They would set their prices and their local customer would come and look around their showrooms and buy the equipment suggested to them.  Luckily this is 2010AD and such business practices are no longer viable.  The discerning customer can read reviews of equipment online and choose the perfect model for their needs.  They can then shop around on the net and find the best price from the most reputable company and have their kit delivered the next day.  The global marketplace which is piped into every office means that competition is fierce and the customer is king (or queen).  To this end… we have reduced the prices of our Lincat® catering equipment!  We were already cheap… but now we’re cheaper and hopefully the cheapest!  You, the customer, are controlling our business practices and that is exactly how it should be in a free market.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, our work does not begin and end with lowering our prices.  Box shifters we are not!  We are dedicated and educated catering equipment specialists.  Mr G sits in his office radiating knowledge on all things refrigerated.  Mr C knows more about crockery and sundries than an encyclopedea of crockery or sundries.  Mr R can field any and all questions about electrical and gas powered catering equipment and my personal speciality is pizza ovens and kebab equipment.  We can recommend, we can advise and if we don’t know then we can research.  We may be cheap, we should be the cheapest but we are still the best.

So here we are again.  Friday afternoon, the end of another trading week here at Ward’s Catering.  What’s been going on?  Well, our sales are slightly fluctuating, some days good, some days not so good.  I have almost finished the fabrication section of the website but I have had other calls on my time this week,  I shall reveal one of those now… ready?  NOW.

WE HAVE SLASHED OUR PARRY PRICES!  SLASHED I SAY.  OUR PARRY PRICES ARE LOWER THAN EVER!  Get the idea?  We have reduced the price to the customer of the equipment in the Parry® range.  For example, a Parry PG4 electric griddle is now ONLY £258 + VAT, and a BM3W (which is not a car, that’s a BMW 3 Series), wet well gastronorm bain marie is only £221 + VAT.  Why have we done this?  Because we MUST stay competitive.  So we have done. We SHOULD be offering the best value on Parry anywhere on the internet.  I hope that this is the case and if anyone finds any Parry equipment any cheaper please let us know and we’ll slash some more.

So, what else, other than the addition of thousands of pieces of Stainless Steel Fabrication, has been occuring here at Ward’s?  Well, three of us, Mr R (Partner), Mr F (Electrical Engineer) and Myself (Dogsbody) travelled to The Smoke, The Big City, Old London Town to visit the UK home of Robot Coupe for some training.  Our hosts at RC were genial in the extreme.  We were put up in Brentford’s finest Premier Inn and treated to a slap up dinner at a local gastropub.  The next morning, after a buffet breakfast, we were driven to Robot Coupe HQ and, together with some representatives from other distributors, shown the whole range of Robot Coupe machines.  This was entertaining and illuminating and, in some instances, baffling.  We saw food processors and vegetable preperation machines.  Vertical Cutters, Juicers, Stick Blenders and Automatic Sieves (these were particularly impressive and, if your company makes a lot of soups you SHOULD NOT BE WITHOUT ONE!).  We were provided with a lunch (a lot of which was a direct result of the demonstrations) and then, after some Ice Cream (made in the Robot Coupe G5000) we finished our education and made the long journey back to the wilderness of the North.  We’d like to thank everyone at Robot Coupe for their kindness and I have now made it my mission to spread the word od the Automatic Sieve.

So we’ve covered stainless steel tables, yeah?  Remember that? 2000 tables?  Well I have also deleted all the sinks and put them back on with their new codes and prices. Would you be interested in a similar breakdown of the available sizes and styles of sink?  No?  Tough!  I am not wasting that title and I can’t think of any other way of using it!  No I’m only joking.  Only joking.  Funny.  No, but seriously folks, I think it’s important for you all to remember that sinks do come in a variety of styles and sizes and that we also offer the taps (mixer and pillar) and can quote you for pre-rinse spray arms and so on.  We also sell hand wash basins and janitorial sinks.  When it comes to sinks there’s no one out there to touch us.  No one!

So, why am I making such a big deal of Stainless Steel Fabrication?  Well, can you think of a kitchen without it?  Can you think of a commercial kitchen that doesn’t have a sink or a table?  Of course you can’t, the very idea is idiotic to an almost unimaginable degree!  So, we should sell a lot of it then shouldn’t we?  If everyone uses it?  Shouldn’t we? Hmmm?  Well we do sell a lot of it yes, although one main problem is that no one has a kitchen with a gap of exactly 900mm for a table, or 1200mm, or 1500mm, or 1800mm, or 2100mm or 2400mm which were (and still are) the standard widths of tables and sinks and the like.  Well, we now supply sinks and tables from 500mm to 2400mm in increments of 100mm (that’s 10cm or 4 inches).  We also no longer only offer the standard single undershelf tables, but we offer double shelves, no shelves and half shelves.  Single bowl sinks, double bowls sinks, double drainer and single drainer and any variation you can imagine.  To give you and idea of how much stainless steel fabrication is now available on www.wardscatering.co.uk I shall show you the mathematics.

We offer tables in each of the following widths:

500mm
600mm
700mm
800mm
900mm
1000mm
1100mm
1200mm
1300mm
1400mm
1500mm
1600mm
1700mm
1800mm
1900mm
2000mm
2100mm
2200mm
2300mm
2400mm

That’s 20 Tables!  We offer these 20 tables in each of the following depths:

500mm
600mm
650mm
700mm
800mm

That’s 100 TABLES!  These 100 tables are available in 5 categories:

HALF SHELF LEFT
HALF SHELF RIGHT
NO SHELF
SINGLE SHELF
TWO SHELVES

That’s 500 Tables!  These 500 tables are available as either:

CENTRE TABLE (NO UPSTAND)
WALL TABLE (UPSTAND TO REAR)

That’s 1000 Tables!  These 1000 Tables are available as either:

FLATPACK SELF ASSEMBLY
PRE ASSEMBLED FULLY WELDED

THAT’S 2000 STAINLESS STEEL TABLES!  We haven’t even started on Sinks, Shelves, Racking, Chef’s Racks…. it’s a lot of Stainless Steel Fabrication folks.

Okay folks, we’re back in business.  Life at Ward’s is back on track.  Second post today.  I thought let y’all know what’s been going on with the website (wardscatering.co.uk).  Well, for a start it’s price change season again isn’t it?  January rolls around and everyone wants to release their new price lists and catalogues at me.  So I have to spend hours and hours working out our very best possible price and editing them on the website.  This is dull.  Dull in the extreme.  However, it is nowhere near as dull as DELETING NEARLY THE PARRY STAINLESS STEEL FABRICATION, completing a massive spreadsheet to calculate new prices and then creating images to display the miniscule differences between each product code and uploading the new content.  How many pieces of fabrication have you added?  I hear you cry.  I’ll tell you.  Next time.

My dear readers of Life at Ward’s, I apologise profusely for the lack of activity on this record of day-to-day dealings in the catering equipment industry.  We here at Ward’s have had a busy time of it recently, lots of enquiries, a few decent sales, some schemework, the usual.  Personally I am still specialising in making a pigs breakfast of any pizza oven deal that comes through.  I am also actively involved in other aspects of the sales side of the business.  My three sales colleagues, Mr H, Mr R and Mr G are all working flat out for their standard 9 or 10 hours a day, 5 days a week to keep the business ticking over.  Mr G is spending more time than ever on the road, going to sites to measure up for re-fits, refurbishments and new builds.  It’s all go at Ward’s Catering.

Afternoon all. Tuesday’s edition of our daily news flippertybob is maybe a little later in the day than I had envisioned. This is not due to lazyness on my part, but due to the sheer volume of calls and sales here at the emporium of all things catering.

A strange day is being had by all. As I glance out from my spatious air-conditioned office over the rolling pasture next to out ultra hi-tech 23rd century building I can quite clearly see snow. The sad last little remnants of the icy arctic conditions to whose vice like grip we were held in for the last couple of weeks. Snow on the ground normally means that the last thing one gets enquiries on is………..BBQ’s. However, we have an anomally! Let me take you back to about 10.30 this morning.

‘Well, thats the last G598 Blue Seal char grill gone’ proudly exclaimed Richard ‘Sam, can you arrange Pallet Network to collect this afternoon please’  

‘Sold a char grill eh?’ I replied ‘You can’t beat the taste of a char grilled steak. Well apart from maybe a steak from a BBQ on a beach in Australia. Not much chance of us selling any BBQ’s in this weather!’  We all chuckled, BBQ’s? Winter? Never!

Fast forward 12 minutes to the sound of a ringing phone ‘Good Morning Ward’s said Richard ‘how can I help’ a brief pause before the excited pointing began ‘ Cinder’s BBQ’s sir? Yes we stock the entire range from the Cavaliers through to the Hotelier’ and so the game begins…. Well you can imagine our excitement i’m sure!

Tommorow morning we shall have a conversation about Foster premier double door freezers. Hopefully I will then report on another successful transaction!!

Mr S, our resident computer techie type chap, is currently nursing a bad knee. If you do happen to call, and he answers, don’t give him any sympathy - he’s thriving on it!!