C&C Catering Equipment wins London’s Mandarin Oriental catering refurbishment

CEDA member C&C are benefiting from their successful completion of the award winning Café Royal project by securing their latest hotel scheme at London’s Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park.

The new project is scheduled for completion by the end of September 2013 and includes new coldrooms, ventilation hoods and warewashing facilities for the hotel’s basement kitchen area.

Along with a range of new equipment supply, C&C will be removing a range of existing items, hygienically cleaning them, refurbishing them to the hotel’s exacting standards and then re-installing them. Re-designed extraction hoods are also required with special consideration of the basement area’s low ceilings adding an extra dimension to the work.

As ever the challenges don’t stop with the supply of equipment, as this landmark hotel must stay operational during the two months of installation work. This mean splitting the project into three phases with two areas remaining open while one is being completed.

Effective co-ordination with consultant’s Sefton Horn Winch, the hotel’s catering team and main contractors Phelan Construction will be an essential skill and the client felt that this was ably demonstrated by C&C in their most recent project work.

Also required are bespoke stainless steel walls for the service area which have been designed to help the builder’s save time on site with the modifications needed to the existing walls.

Success can often lead to further success and C&C were asked to tender for this project directly to the Mandarin Oriental due to their expertise with challenging historical hotel buildings. The hotel has three separate catering offers for their guests including Bar Boulud – a French-style bistro; Dinner by Heston – Historically inspired British and the classically styled Mandarin Bar.

The post tender interview secured the project for C&C and Alan Rushbrook, the Mandarin’s Technical Services Director commented on the award saying “The Mandarin is one of London’s most prestigious hotels and is home to two of the best restaurants in the city. We needed a supplier that could work to our high standards and who understood the complexities of projects in historic buildings, as well as a track record of working in a live hotel environment. We interviewed a number of possible contractors before selecting C&C and felt that their project expertise was exactly what we were looking for.”

This is one of several major hotel projects completed by C&C recently with installations across the UK including the London Metropolitan, the Connaught, the Caledonian Waldorf Astoria in Edinburgh, the Chester Grosvenor and largest of them all the Café Royal in London.