Whistler’s in the small village of Westbourne, West Sussex, is a busy takeaway that requires a four pan range to serve traditional fish and chips, scampi, butchers sausages and chicken chunks to its steady flow of regulars that stop in and order online. When a pan stopped working and another needed repairing, manager Emma Dorey decided to cut her losses and invest in a new high efficiency range from Martyn Edwards-Frank Ford.
“We had the range for nine years but we bought it secondhand and the previous owner had said it was over 20 years old then!” says Emma. “It was really old and outdated and with one pan broken down, we weren’t able to do gluten free food anymore.”
In September this year, Emma replaced her four pan island range with like-for-like but this time added integrated bain maries and filtration. Straight away she noticed significant oil savings.
“I used to have to change my oil once a week, now I can go a week and a half,” she says. “Even then, it’s not getting to the point where I have to change it, it’s just my choice to do it.
“Filtering the oil is also so much easier and safer now. We can filter anytime and it’s so quiet. When our old filter machine was in use you couldn’t hear customers speak!”
Consistency
Resulting in significant oil savings, the range has also brought consistency to the food Whistler’s is producing, with all pans reaching temperature quickly and maintaining it.
“The product is amazing,” enthuses Emma. “It’s now consistent because all the pans work the same. On the old range we’d have one pan that might work quite efficiently so you’d put a bit of fish in and it didn’t drop very much, and then another pan you’d drop a piece of fish in and it would drop by 30°C and then when it came back it would overshoot by 10°C. Now all of the pans work exactly the same.”
As well as being able to serve customers more quickly, Whistler’s has also been able to put gluten free back on the menu now that all four pans are usable. And teaching new members of staff how to fry takes a fraction of the time with each pan maintaining its temperature. Emma adds: “We literally just teach new staff to set a pan to this temperature, do that and away they go.”
With the range installed in late September, it took just two and a half days from arriving to being ready to switch on.
“Martyn Edwards were fantastic from start to finish,” says Emma. “The engineers did an amazing job and when they called me to tell me it could be turned on, I wasn’t ready to open because I thought it was going to go on into the night!”
Martyn Edwards-Frank Ford 01642 489868 www.me-ff.com
