How You Store Catering Equipment Needs Careful Consideration

When you are in the catering business you use an awful lot of glassware, cups, plates, dishes, cutlery, and so on, and you need some sort of system for storing all these items and moving them around. This is even more the case when you undertake any form of mobile catering because you have to take all this with you to the venue where you are going to be working, and there may not be a lot of storage space when you get there.

For example, if you have to cater for a wedding reception for 100 people at a village hall you may find that it does not have a very big kitchen. In order to serve 100 guests, you are going to need a few people in the kitchen and you also have to find somewhere to put all the associated plates, glasses, crockery, cutlery, and so on. You will obviously be able to place the glasses and cutlery on the tables, but you still need to remove, wash, and store them between courses when they have been finished with. This is why you need a variety of component storage boxes that can handle all the different items. Ideally, you want the type that are stackable because that will give you more floor space in the kitchen.

You can also now get many types of component storage boxes that have wheels. This can be useful, because you may be able to slip some of the boxes containing items that have been finished with and washed and dried out of the back of the hall and into your van, which will give you some extra space in the kitchen. Even if you can’t do that because it might be that the only way out is through the dining area – and you can hardly do that while the best man is making his speech – as long as you have boxes which are stackable you will still have the maximum amount of space in the kitchen.

In the village hall situation, you will obviously need wine glasses and champagne flutes, and you can get glass storage boxes that are stackable and have different sized inserts, or cells, as they call them. You can also get them in different depths, because you obviously need deeper ones for champagne flutes than you would for, say, shot glasses or whisky glasses. You need the right sized inserts for the glasses that you are transporting, because you don’t want them rattling around inside the box.

Some of the glass storage boxes that you can buy have a choice of cell sizes, so that you can select the right size for the glasses that you use. There are also many other different types of storage box for catering equipment, many of them made of plastic which is hard-wearing and can take a few knocks without getting damaged and without anything inside getting damaged either.

You can get cutlery boxes and baskets that store the cutlery lying flat, and you can also get other types which store it vertically in compartments. Of course, if you use the type of cutlery storage boxes that store vertically, they are not stackable because the cutlery is different lengths and protrudes from the top of the box or basket. Again, to make the best us of the space that you have, whether it’s in the village hall or your own premises, having stackable boxes is the best option by far. A lot of the stackable storage boxes have lids, and many of them come in packs of three, four, or five, and when you look at the overall price, they are really very reasonable. They work out at only about £10 or £11 each.

Much the same thing goes for chinaware. You can have plate boxes which store 12" dinner plates flat, one on top of another, or others which store them vertically with a divider between each plate. Which ones you opt for is really just a matter of personal choice. If you have to transport them, the better choice would be the vertical stacking ones because of the dividers between the plates, but if you are only using them on your own premises, you may prefer to store them flat.

Caterbox is the leading UK manufacturer of catering component storage boxes for every conceivable type of glassware, chinaware, and cutlery, and can provide stackable boxes, including some with wheels for easy movement.