After 30 years of frying on the same three pan traditional range, the staff at Knight’s Fish & Chips in Glastonbury, Somerset, cannot believe the improvement their five pan high efficiency Kiremko is having on this 113-year-old business.
Installed in January, trade and volume are both up while gas and oil consumption are down. It’s like night and day, says manager and fifth-generation family member George Morey, who believes the biggest change to the business is the fact they can now cater for a wide range of diets and allergies due to a dedicated free from pan plus separate built-in filtration.
“It’s brilliant because we don’t have to turn customers away anymore,” he says. “We’re able to provide for all walks of life knowing there is absolutely no cross-contamination.”
The built-in filtration is also resulting in significant oil savings, despite having two extra pans. George adds: “Previously we were wasting the entire contents of our range every week just to be able to provide for gluten free customers, that problem has now gone and we don’t have that sheer volume of wastage anymore.”
During an in-house training session on the new range with KFE’s School of Frying Excellence award-winning trainer Garry Rosser, George and the team were shown the process of cascading their oils using built-in filtration. It’s a technique they have since adopted.
George adds: “It is something we weren’t able to do before and it’s a really effective way of getting the most out of our frying medium without contaminating our free from foods while also getting a better product.”
Benefiting from the advances in technology, such as Kiremko’s high efficiency pans, built-in timers and pre-set temperatures, the new range has eliminated a lot of the hard work involved in frying, which has enabled George to train up a junior frier.
He comments: “You can hit that consistent product every time because you’re not relying on someone’s skill level, you’re just relying on their passion and their motivation to stick with the consistency of what the range is producing.”
Whereas the old range had hit a ceiling point for what it could produce, Knight’s new Kiremko has the potential to serve many more customers, much more quickly.
“In the few months we’ve had our Kiremko we’ve already seen exponential growth,” says George. “Normally, January and February are our quiet months but we were hitting figures that were close to our busy summer season.
“The ability to have a back store of blanched chips and just finish them in two to three minutes transforms our ability to serve customers. They are literally served and gone and we’re ready for the next one straight away.”
Any reservations George had about upgrading to a modern frying range are now in the past. He adds: “Don’t get me wrong, it took me about a week to get to grips with the new way of frying, but with the training and the guidance from KFE and Garry Rosser, it quickly became enjoyable to work on.
“Frying on a Kiremko allows you to serve a more consistent product faster and more efficiently, and that is before you add any of the other benefits like the gas and oil savings. It’s proved its worth already.
“I have to add that we were very much in the dark initially about what modern frying ranges were capable of – we had fried on the same range for 30 years – so all credit to KFE for building our vision of what we needed.”
