Pop Up Kitchen for Seafood Scotland at Boxpark Shoreditch

A Working Kitchen in a Venue With No Water and No Power

The hardest part of a pop up kitchen is rarely the equipment. It is the services. A venue chosen for its location and its footfall very often has neither water nor power where the kitchen needs to stand, and the design has to start from that constraint rather than from a menu. PKL supplies pop up and event kitchens on this basis, designing the facility around what the site can actually provide and arranging the rest.

The Situation

Seafood Scotland wanted to showcase Scottish produce in an iconic venue and chose Boxpark Shoreditch for a weekend of events in July 2018. The space available to them had no water supply and no power, and the kitchen had to be fully functional across the weekend and delivered within budget.

What PKL Supplied

Working with Natalie Bell and Debbie Hughes of Seafood Scotland, PKL produced a kitchen design that fitted the space the team had available and gave them the production facilities they needed. PKL provided a number of designs for the setup and supplied additional tabling so the catering team had flexibility across the weekend as the service pattern changed. PKL also connected the team with a supplier who provided the generator for the weekend, so the power question was resolved as part of the same conversation rather than left with the client.

The equipment supplied included a turbofan convection oven, a microwave, refrigeration and sinks. All of it came from PKL’s hire fleet of 55,000 items of catering equipment, and after every hire equipment is cleaned, tested and re commissioned before it goes out again.

The Outcome

The setup allowed the team to feed hundreds of visitors across the weekend, serving Scottish lobster, scallops, mussels and more.

Natalie Bell said: “We knew it was going to be a challenge to create the kind of kitchen we needed, but thanks to PKL’s expert advice, installation and great kit, we had a kitchen that helped us run a really successful popup in one of London’s hottest foodie havens.”