A short case study about our support for the 100% Club scheme.
About 4 or 5 years ago we supplied a single ride, a Carousel to a school in Leeds. This carried on for about three years, until they suddenly expanded the booking and starting reserving multiple rides and catering.
It turns out that they were running a 100% club. Any kid that had a 100% attendance record for that term would be entitled to spend a period of time at the mini funfair they had booked.
Twist Burgers At The 100% ClubDodgems Ghost Train At The 100% Club
Suddenly we started receiving requests from other schools for the exact same thing. Turns out they were all part of an academy group of schools. We now provide attractions regularly to something like 9 different schools. This ranges from the latest thrill rides to things like burger and chips.
Talking to some of the teachers, it seems that they had posted an increase in average attendance at the schools running the scheme.
The Health and Safety team at the schools were pretty fierce at the first events, and had us jumping through hoops. Gradually they seemed to relax a little and adopt an attitude of suggesting slight improvements where necessary, rather than making a big issue of it. I think the fact that we put so much effort into doing things right, coupled with us making changes as soon as they request them, helped a lot.
This entry in our world’s burger joints is a little different. Rather than a chain this is a single location in Tempe, Arizona.
Founded in 2005 by Jon Basso with the intent of serving “nutritional pornography”. The Heart Attack Grill has one major selling point. It sells the world’s unhealthiest burgers. Ranging from a single upto a octuple heart bypass burger containing a massive 16,000 calories.
If you manage to finish this, you are wheeled out to your car by your personal naughty nurse.
Your side order of fries are cooked in lard, tequila and beer to make sure they contain as many calories as possible. Your soft drinks are made with can sugar, and patrons can buy unfiltered cigarettes.
Big Guests Eat Free
If you happen to weigh over 25 stone, then you eat free. You do have to weigh yourself beforehand, and drinks are excluded from the deal, oh and you can’t share your food.
Theming
The whole joint is themed around nurses/doctors. Guests don hospital gowns before eating. The nurses take prescriptions (orders) from the patients (guests).
If you don’t manage to finish your food, then one of the naughty nurses will paddle you. With the option to buy the paddle afterwards.
So, not only is this a hamburger place that uses the time tested tactic of sexy ladies. It also aims to feed you the most unhealthy burgers possible.
What could possibly go wrong?
2011 the Heart Attack Grills spokesman Blair River died at the age of 29 from complications with pneumonia. Not sure if the 41 stone he weighed had any bearing on that.
2012 a customer suffered a heart attack whilst eating one of their burgers. The owner called an ambulance, whilst the other patrons took photos.
2012 A female customer fell unconscious whilst eating a double bypass burger. Though she was also drinking and smoking.
2013 another spokesman John Alleman (bit of a dangerous job that) dropped dead outside the restaurant whilst waiting for a bus. Not sure how heavy that one was.
When worked the funfair circuit we needed a generator for powering our equipment. Well, we used four of them in fact. When we moved totally into corporate entertainment we made it a condition of the contract that the client provided power.
This work well for a number of years, as usually we were powering perhaps a candy floss and a popcorn machine, so at most a couple of 13 amp sockets were fine.
During covid we suddenly found our clients asking us to provide larger catering services, such as serving four thousand burgers for Amazon in four hours, though that is another tale lol.
Generators
We suddenly found ourselves needing sixty and seventy amp supplies. So to translate this into a format that made sense to the client we would specify that we needed like four 13 amp supplies. What would happen is that we would arrive at the venue, be handed a four way socket and told here are your four supplies. Trouble is, the four sockets joined into a single 13amp plug. And ‘Oh’ they would say, ‘your sharing with the DJ, pizza truck and rodeo bull!’
Great, we were gonna be pulling 100 amp from a single 13amp plug. So no power problems expected then.
To circumvent this, we ended up adding some generators to our line up.
66kva Generator10kva-Generator
This gave us the flexibility to power ourselves and some spare capacity to boot.
Initially we would fill them up from a local garage that sold red diesel. But even though it was only about 4 miles away, it was still a hassle to couple up and run down there for fuel. Additionally at the time it was about £1.40 a litre from them. The local diesel supplier quoted £0.82 a litre, which was a massive saving, but would only deliver a 1000 litres a time.
So we added a fuel bunker to take advantage of this. Other people we know had similar but owning for lift trucks, would simply lift them in the air to allow gravity to dispense the fuel. Not owning a fork lift, we added a battery powered system and a metered pump.
We installed the system in the yard and had it filled. Then had a think about security. Some people feel entitled to help themselves to whatever without legal niceties such as ownership being considered relevant.
So we set about fortifying our diesel. A wifi camera provided not only monitoring of the set up, but would automatically light up the area, sound an alarm and alert me at my phone that someone was at the bunker. We also added locks to the on/off valve, filling hole. and pump switch.
My daughter pointed out that the battery just being sat there was screaming take me take me. So we fitted a secured steel lock box with the battery inside. A jokey conversation with a friend who looked at the system ended with him saying I am surprised you haven’t electrified it.
Ha, cant do that someone might touch it accidentally. Ha, they might, ha ha that could be fun. Yeah lets do it.
The end result is that the system is now fitted with a similar energiser to what farmers use to keep cows in their field. To be fair, it is remotely controlled, and not left live all the time. But I can turn it on from anywhere in the world using my phone. We also added a solar charger to keep the whole shebang topped up.
Years gone by, animal menageries were a regular site on fairgrounds. Most people hadn’t seen exotic animals, so the chance to visit a sideshow with some of the more weird and wonderful inhabitants of our planet was a big draw.
By the time I was growing up on the funfair circuit, they had disappeared. The only one with anything exotic was Uncle Gilbert Chadwicks show that had mostly things like six legged sheep (dead and stuffed) and other weird things. It also had a monkey. An actual real live monkey called Joey.
Now some of the older kids would collect dead goldfish from the hook a duck stalls, and feed them to Joey. I was invited along one day to take part in this ritual. Unfortunately not being trained in the art of feeding monkeys, I held onto the fish a little too long, and Joey decided that the quickest way to his meal, was to bite me first to get me to let go.
I remember Colin, one of the bigger kids, giving me a drink of his shandy, as a sort of bribe to not tell my dad what had happened. Unfortunately walking in with blood streaming down my hand elicited a demand as to what had happened.
The Hospital
Cue a trip to the hospital. Which wouldn’t have been too bad, unfortunately we happened to be at Hartlepool at the time.
Now, if you don’t hail from the North East, then you might not be aware of the legend of the monkey hangers. That’s how locals are referred to by other denizens of the North East. The legend is, that during the Napoleonic wars. A French ship floundered off the coast of Hartlepool. Eventually being shipwrecked, the only survivor being the ships mascot which happened to be a monkey.
The monkey luckily survived and managed to make it to shore. Where unluckily it found itself in Hartlepool. The locals, never having met a Frenchman, arrested the unfortunate primate as an enemy combatant. They tried to question the monkey, which steadfastly refused to reply. Presumably being a French monkey it didn’t understand English.
After a short trial, where Monsieur Monkey refused to offer anything in his defence. They found him guilty of invading Hartlepool and sentenced him to immediate death by hanging. Perhaps if the poor sod had been fortunate enough to be shipwrecked somewhere civilised it might have had a longer lifespan. This one was more monkey killed than monkey killer.
Anyway, having been informed by dad that I had been bitten, the doctor understandably asked by what.
The answer of a monkey didn’t really go down to well, with the doctor being a local lad. After a second request for the breed of animal met with the same answer he became quite irate. Dad calmed him down and explained the situation. Seeing the funny side, I am sure the doctor repeated that story regularly on his coffee breaks. Anyway, a call to a specialist wid animal resource in London brought the reply that it should be treated the same way as a dog bite. A bloody big needle of anti tetanus, and a through clean and bandaging of the wound. So after all I survived the attack of the killer monkey.
We have pretty much always ran PSA group vans. Primarily Citroen Dispatches, and last year we added a Vauxhall Vivaro, same van, different badge. The Vauxhall was the LWB version which came in handy when transporting our gourmet burger units.
To be fair, they have been pretty reliable. Normally we swapped the oldest one in each year. Covid, mucked the system up, and we found ourselves needing three new vans.
Originally in 2021 we ordered a new Dispatch. It was going to be delivered for September. Then October, November December, January, and finally some time after March. At that point we cancelled it.
That turned out to be a mistake, since between ordering and cancelling it, the price had gone up some four grand, and the spec had been cut in half.
Everywhere we looked, they were quoting, pretty much indeterminate delivery times. Eventually I happened on a garage with a Vauxhall Vivaro, still at a reasonable spec, but a lot more expensive then we had been paying for vans. We added that to the fleet last March.
Vauxhall Vivaro
Roll around 2023 and the decision was made that we needed another two vans. Queue a look around our usual suppliers. What we found was that they had gone up another four grand since last year, while simultaneously the spec was cut again. So in effect, we would be paying more per van than the top of the range versions had been a couple of years ago. And for our money we would be getting something not much above the minimum spec.
Enter Nissan Primastar
To be honest, the cut in spec pissed me off as much as the jump in price, so I decided that maybe it was time to look around. Now that isn’t as easy as it sounds. Citroen, Peugeot, Fiat, Toyota and Vauxhall are all the same van. We hired a couple of Ford Custom’s one Christmas, and everyone refused to drive them, the handling was that poor. My experience with Mercedes vans, is that if you drive through a puddle of water they start to fall apart with rust within the week. VW transporters were liked, but just too bloody expensive for what you got.
Eventually we turned up at Nissan. The vans were a nice drive, slightly larger inside both the load area and the cabin than our previous vans which was a plus. Similar on fuel economy. Came with a shorter service interval than Citroen which is a bit crap, but were twenty per cent cheaper and came with a top of the range spec. they didn’t come with twin side loading doors as standard, but it was an option for only £280. So overall we decided to give them a chance and ordered two.
