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.
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.
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.
This time we leave the good ole US of A, and take a look at a chain of burger joints hailing from Belgium. I must admit a soft spot for these as on honeymoon, when we didn’t have a lot of disposable income, we frequented Quicks burgers as the most affordable eatery whilst we were in France and Belgium.
It is also nice seeing a different take in the actors and models used for the advertisements. Whereas the Americans have everyone looking like they have just stepped off a catwalk. Quicks use people that look more like, well people. Check out the welcome video on the homepage, love the part where one guy whips his wig off to reveal he is bald, whilst the other one is eating with his mouth open and full of lettuce.
The chain began life in 1971 when Baron Vaxelaire opened two restaurants in Antwerp and Waterloo. 30 years later it had grown to over 400 stores in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and a number of French overseas territories.
To be honest, the chain doesn’t really do anything outstanding or unique, but it just makes a nice counterpoint to the overload of American chains. Having tasted them I can attest to the fact that their burgers do taste a helluva lot better than your typical McDonalds fare.
Mega Giant
All in all, a nice, profitable if rather bland entry into our series of burger joints.
In the past when we specialised in ‘Fun Food’ such as candy floss, doughnuts etc. We usually had it in our contract that the client was to provide power. This worked great for single items.
However as we moved into bigger catering jobs such as gourmet burgers, the discussion would go like this.
“We need four individual 13 amp power supplies”,
Client “No problem”
On arrival we would be handed a 6 way multiplug, which connected to a single 13 amp socket, and then told that the other two connections were for the pizza van and DJ. So all in all they were trying to run some 60 amps from a 13 amp connection.
The predictable result was that we spent most of the night trying to find some way to actual power our kit up.
The Move To L.P.G.
Or to give it its full title, liquid petroleum gas. We bought in a considerable amount of kit that could be powered from portable gas bottles. An added benefit was that many of them actually cooked faster than their electrical equivalents.
The downside was that many health and safety officers don’t like gas. So many venues we were banned from using it and back to the original problem.
We already had a small 30 amp generator that we used occasionally, but for some of the larger events, this was nowhere near enough.
10kva-Generator
The Answer, More Power
It was decided that we needed to move up a class in generator systems. We looked at some new builds from a company in Peterborough. We worked out that we needed probably a 30kva set. So we decided to go for a 63kva.
The thinking behind this was that buying what we need did not give us any room for future growth. So 63 gave us some breathing space. Additionally the larger set was only some £800 more expensive, was no bigger physically, and used the same engine so should have similar running costs.
Making It Portable
We acquired a set of axles for it, and asked our friends at Fairtech Fabrications to put a trailer system together for us so that it was road transportable.
Being Mounted
They fabricated a simple two axle trailer and mounted the unit for us, giving us flexibility to power anything we are going to run in the next couple of years at least. We could probably do with a mid sized generator system, something in the 25kva range perhaps, but that is for a future project.
Finishing Touches
Once we had it mounted, we adding some basic branding with our new Crazy & Co. logo, and storage facilities for cable adaptors etc, along with a detachable fire extinguisher, just in case.
