Storm Technologies is an IT Value-Added reseller based in Watford. The premises sit on an industrial and business estate which means they don’t have many food or retail facilities nearby. Storm wanted to create a staff restaurant as part of a bigger extension project, and we were brought in by the project managers to help with the kitchen and catering side. Originally, we were purely part of the design team to work on the kitchen and servery but once it came to the construction stage, we were asked to work on the build too.

Supporting the overall project

Marios had worked with the project managers before so they knew that his expertise in hospitality would help fill a knowledge gap on the construction project. As a former project manager himself, Marios can always see the bigger picture and understand what the client is trying to achieve. On this particular project, Chiller Box was the missing piece of the puzzle when it came to understanding and working out how the catering elements would fit in.

With any Chiller Box project, we make sure we fully understand the client’s brief and our designs develop from that. Storm wanted to be able to offer breakfast and lunch from Monday to Friday, but also have a kitchen and facilities that could cater for corporate events and breakout areas for meetings. Once we were aware of the different catering requirements, we looked at how the space could be used most effectively.

Working on staff restaurants

Staff restaurants are an area of expertise for us and something we have worked on since the start of Chiller Box. Whether that’s supporting a contract caterer or a business in the city, it’s an area of hospitality design and build that we do exceptionally well.

With any construction job, challenges are thrown up along the way and three lockdowns obviously were a big factor in this project. However, all our elements went smoothly. We worked around the overall project timescales which had to be adapted due to the pandemic and we were able to take away many stresses for the client. The Chiller Box team are known for simply getting on with the job. As the project got closer to the end, we worked specifically with the chef to ensure everything was as he wanted it ready for the kitchen opening.

Feedback from the client

Communication has been the most important part of this project. We’ve done everything we were asked to do which may sound simple but with so many different organisations working on a project, it’s important that we deliver on this. Both the project management team and Storm Technologies are really happy with the work we did, and it’s been fantastic to go back for photographs and see everything working so well.