Athens 2004 Olympic Games Tuesday, 20 July 2004 saw the first of over 2 million meals cooked in the PKL supplied portable kitchen located at the athlete’s village at the Athens Olympic Games. PKL are no strangers to such kitchens, having constructed a similar facility at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games. What made the kitchen different was its size. The kitchen structure was nearly 4,000m˛ and at it's peak cooked up to 80,000 meals per day. This represented the needs of 16,000 athletes and officials from 202 competing countries plus 8,000 local village staff. The project was over two years in the planning and was delivered by a locally based PKL project team. They were responsible for the service and maintenance of the facility until the last meal was cooked after the Paralympics on 30th September. The whole site was cleared by 31st December, with all hire equipment returned to the PKL hire fleet in the UK. The catering equipment (over 2,000 items) was supplied from the standard PKL equipment portfolio and includes such high performance items as 24 grid combination ovens, 150lt bratt pans, 250lt boiling pans plus roll in blast chillers and 150 upright mobile hot cupboards. At the heart of the kitchen was the unique PKL designed Central Island Canopies. This concept allowed the whole kitchen to be open plan - a necessity for large volumes of meals. There was over 200m of servery space alone - all was required to serve 6,000 meals per hour. Behind every hot servery counter are PKL's Mobile Canopies - 23 in all. This was home to the display cooking stations, with Greek cuisine taking a major role. At these stations, as well as chargrills, fryers and ovens, are pizza ovens, woks, chicken rotisseries and souvlaki (kebab) machines. As well as the athletes village, PKL are providing 50 other portable kitchens and coldrooms to 20 venues across Athens for the TV broadcast crews. Sized from 50 to 1,000 meals per day, whilst smaller than the athletes village - all are equally important and require the same level of project management and logistical planning, so necessary with today's security concerns. For more information contact our hire team on 0845 840 4242 or e-mail hiresales@pkl.co.uk